I am occasionally challenged by some who believe me to be in violation of “the stumbling clause” (e.g., Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 8:1-13) when I speak about my views on certain subjects (usually movies and music). I have made some adjustments to my website in the past in reaction to some valid points, and I wish to make plain what I believe stumbling refers to and how we should act according to biblical precepts concerning the subject. There are two issues I wish to discuss: (1) What is stumbling? and (2) How does the command not to cause others to stumble affect public ministry?Before beginning let’s get the specific passages out on the table. Paul writes in Romans 14 that “we must not pass judgment on one another, but rather determine never to place an obstacle or a trap before a brother or sister. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean in itself; still, it is unclean to the one who considers it unclean. For if your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy by your food someone for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let what you consider good be spoken of as evil. . . . Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. For although all things are clean, it is wrong to cause anyone to stumble by what you eat. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith you have, keep to yourself before God. Blessed is the one who does not judge himself by what he approves. But the man who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not do so from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin.”And in 1 Cor. 8 he says, “But this knowledge is not shared by all. And some, by being accustomed to idols in former times, eat this food as an idol sacrifice, and their conscience, because it is weak, is defiled. Now food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do. But be careful that this liberty of yours does not become a hindrance to the weak. For if someone weak sees you who possess knowledge dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience be ‘strengthened’ to eat food offered to idols? So by your knowledge the weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed. If you sin against your brothers or sisters in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. For this reason, if food causes my brother or sister to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I may not cause one of them to sin.”What do we learn about stumbling from these passages? First, stumbling is not simply doing something that upsets a fellow believer. Rather, it is willfully and knowingly taking part in some action that another Christian sees and so decides to join in even though they think it is sinful (although it is not). So, for example, if I think smoking is a sin and someone smokes in front of me I don’t stumble if I don’t decide to join in. The key to the issue is that a strong believer (who knows the truth about whether or not an action is truly sinful) can cause a weaker believer (who is in error) to sin if they follow the lead of the stronger by partaking in action that they (mistakenly) think is sinful.Second, stumbling only occurs in situations where the action being taken is truly not sinful. In other words, the weaker brother is weak because they are wrong in their judgment – they believe something that is false. Thus, the teaching on stumbling would not apply to, say, robbing a bank (that’s just sinful) or saving a child from drowning (that’s just good).
Third, the strong believer is not expected to pretend that they agree with the weaker believer, nor are they to affirm them in their error. They are also not to allow the weaker to speak evil of that which is not evil. Rather, they are simply told not to partake in the action in question in front of the weaker if it might cause them to join in and go against their own conscience.
Now all this brings up an interesting question: How do the weaker become stronger?
Obviously at some point they will have to be confronted with their error or they will never mature and grow stronger in truth (I am indebted to Leroy Lamar for this insight). Thus, teaching someone the truth about a certain action’s ethical status is not the same thing as performing the action in front of them.
For example, one day a student of mine called me and told me that he has decided that he needs to get rid of all his secular music because he thinks it is sinful to listen to and wants to know what I think about that. Now, I have a fairly well developed position on this subject and disagree with his view. However, as someone in a teacher-student relation to him I have to be very careful (James 3:1) here. On the one hand I am not to allow him to call something evil that is not evil, but on the other hand I am not to cause him to stumble and I may be in a good position to do so. I would say that in this situation because I already know what he thinks I am not to try to convince him to listen to secular music – especially not by doing so in front of him. However, I think this is different than educating him on my position. Simply communicating one’s position cannot be wrong because that is what Paul does in the very passages under consideration (e.g., “we know that “an idol in this world is nothing”). It is quite clear from Rom. 14 that the difference of opinion was well known - the issue had to do with using one’s freedom to partake in certain actions in front of those who did not think it OK to do so.
If this is true then what do we do who have more publicly accessible ministries with a more widespread audience? For example, is the posting of thoughts in a magazine, book, BLOG, or website a means of causing others to stumble? Doing so seems to differ from Paul’s examples quite a bit. Paul is referring to people in one’s immediate vicinity at the time the action is taking place. So, for example, he says not to eat meat in front of a vegetarian for their conscience’s sake (Rom. 14:2). However, that did not stop him from stating in the very same breath that the vegetarian position in question (that eating meat is sinful) was wrong. Nor did it stop him from eating meat elsewhere. If Paul, a public figure if there ever was one, could “post” his views in Scripture then it should be no problem for someone else to do so on a website or in a book. Letting someone know your thoughts on behavior is not practicing that behavior in front of them (and since it is the job of a teacher to help make the weaker believers stronger by teaching them the truth, a public forum dedicated to such teaching should also not be considered a stumbling block either).
Many times it is assumed that some action is one of those “questionable” situations and therefore it should not be done by stronger believers. But stumbling only refers to issues that are not (truly) morally questionable. So it begs the question because to the stronger believer the action is not questionable in the first place! It is up to the weaker believer to alert the stronger that it is an issue for them. But this raises an insurmountable practical issue for public teaching. The only way to solve all potential stumbling problems on the planet (if this is what was meant by the term) would be to stop saying much of anything because there are people who might ‘stumble’ over almost any view on any topic.
For example I have a movie evaluation section on my website and I have been accused of potentially causing others to stumble because of my position on various moral aspects of films. OK . . . but guess what? Some Christians don’t think we should go to the movies at all! So should I now take down my entire evaluation site? So far no one who has taken issue with my views has said so – but why not? If I cannot express certain thoughts because someone might stumble then following the same line of reasoning I should not post any movie evaluations at all. What about music? Well, that’s even worse – believe me! What about bible versions? Does the fact that I do not generally quote from the KJV mean that I am in danger of causing KJV-Only folks to stumble? What about my articles on the cults? Some Christians don’t think we should engage the cults. Am I causing them to stumble too? Are my beliefs in the Trinity going to cause Modalists to stumble??? Obviously we are not accountable to the entire Christian world in the area of stumbling.
In order to properly accuse someone of potentially causing some member of the general Christian public to stumble we would all need to agree on which actions count toward “stumbling” and which are simply black and white issues. But since Christians do not have an agreed-upon set of issues that are in the stumbling category (which is true by definition) then we cannot use the stumbling clause to accuse others of doing so on a widespread basis. Going public with one’s thoughts over a certain matter is not a potential stumbling block, at least not in the sense that Paul uses the term. In conclusion, then, based on Paul’s practices and the absurd results of trying to do otherwise, I answer that the command to withdraw from potential stumbling activities is limited to performing actions in the presence of known weaker believers and not to the general publishing of the thoughts of stronger believers.
