Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Careful!

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. (1 Corinthians 8:9)

A 80 year old South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge 21 hours after his family thought he had died. This was after his family called in an undertaker who took him to the morgue after an asthma attack. The morgue owner said he sent his driver to collect the body after the family reported the death. "When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing," the morgue owner told the press.
But a day after staff put the body into a locked fridge, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost. The morgue owner called the police.
When the police arrived, the group entered the morgue together. He said the man was pale when they pulled him out. "He asked, 'How did I get here?'" The man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors when they felt that he was stable. The man's family was informed that he was alive as they were making funeral arrangements. Funny as this may seem, here the family were careless not to call a doctor who was qualified to ascertain whether the man had really died.

The Apostle Paul urges the believers in Corinth to be careful in how they exercise their freedom so that they do not become a stumbling block to the weak. He was specifically dealing here about eating food sacrificed to idols. He said,
"For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. (1 Corinthians 8:10-12)

Believers who are new to the Christian faith closely watch the ones who have been believers for a long time and emulate them in several areas of their spiritual life. It thus becomes imperative that the latter do not become a stumbling block to the proper growth of the new ones, but guide them in the right path, not serving themselves but serving Christ wholeheartedly.

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