A number of years ago, I went to Kwasind, the Baptist camp is Muskoka to be the director for their Junior High camp. Not knowing what was really expected of me, I asked them to send as much information as they could to help me out.

I noticed in the info package that there would be another group on site at the same time, doing their own program; and that camp was for single adults. It would not be a large group I was promised and their program would be able to be flexible around the one for the Junior Highs. I was a bit skeptical and concerned about how to set a camp atmosphere of a Junior High camp when all of these adults are around. So I thought I would bring my ghetto blaster and have it playing Christian band selections as the kids arrived with their parents to get settled in.

So I watched as they arrived. Sitting near my ghetto blaster near the registration area, I watched. As they heard the music, I could tell it helped them, but maybe even more so the parents – they relaxed a bit. And I smiled and thought I was so smart. But then something happened. One guy who was part of the other camp, came up to me and asked that I turn it off! I was caught off guard a bit and asked what he meant. He said, “turn that stuff off!” – and reached out and did so himself. I was fuming, but I didn’t know what to say – at least not right away. Finally, I said something like, “that’s Christian music you know”. To which he responded, “I don’t care; we are at a camp and I want it off!” After some back and forth, he said something like, “the bible teaches that if you are doing something that is a problem for someone, you should stop doing it. Don’t be a stumbling block.”

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It can be hard sometimes to know the right thing to say to people when they are doing something, or saying something you do not agree with. When do you speak out and when do you keep silent? Paul, the writer of what we have just read, teaches that those who are strong in their faith need to be careful of coming down too hard on those who are weaker – those who are probably newer in the faith. He warns not to judge people on disputable matters; and today, there are more disputable matters than there were then. Taken to another level, this passage can also help us to reflect on how we act towards those who are not yet believers.

I was at a lunch meeting the other day with Phil Cann and some other youth pastors. (Phil is with Youth For Christ, counsels teens incarcerated in a maximum security prison in Vancouver, was the Retreat speaker at BLIZZARD 2002 and produced the QUEST video series for teens that we have recently been going through on Friday nights with FNL – I am going to show a clip from it this morning.) Phil wondered aloud at one point, “what comes first, do we expect people to change their lifestyle first and then they can become a believer, OR does someone come to faith first and then their lifestyle changes afterwards?” Phil shared that as a young man of 21, his life had finally hit bottom after a weekend of partying. Afterwards, he was feeling the weight of his lifestyle, that it was a dead end. He was unhappy, unsatisfied... On his walk thinking about it all, he ended up at the door of the local priest at 2:00 in the morning. The guy had been fast asleep in bed, and only knew Phil from his coming to the church for food on occasion - but he let him in! As if that were not enough, Phil said that as they sat down, he started to roll a joint and proceeded to smoke it in his house! And Phil ended with this comment:

“the thing that got me that night, besides the hours we spent talking, was that he never once told me not to.” Over the next months, Phil was encouraged into the faith by people who did not tell him not to. I had to think about that comment for awhile. I wondered to myself how I might have responded ………. Phil said that from that moment, it was a slow progression of him moving out of the lifestyle he had been in – taking about 8 months. He learned the teachings of Jesus, he learned the stories of the Old Testament, as he read the letters of Paul, as he began to worship and discover God, he began to make these changes in his life. No one told him he had to not _________. But as he developed a relationship with God and learned from scripture, the Holy Spirit transformed him. It was after all of that happening that he decided he was ready to be baptized.

But how often is it the other way around? We see the sin in someone else’s life and tell them the errors of their ways. Or maybe we don’t even speak with them directly but we speak with our friends about so and so. Or it may be not-so-subtle hints in discussions we have – and they know our disappointment, our dissatisfaction with how they live. Who are we to make that decision? Who is more holy?

On our Retreat weekend at the beginning of October, I introduced the QUEST video series with Phil Cann and there is a section that we need to look at this morning.

(video clip)

Regardless of age, that is what it often comes to really. We come across as if we are saying we are holier than them. It seems that all they hear is us saying that we know what is right, they don’t. We can get away with that sometimes with our own kids (especially if they are younger) and we are trying to tell them to do something a certain way. We can get away with it then, but not with others. And it’s probably at that point they say to us, “I don’t want to hear it.” At the best of times, I think it’s fair to say that none of us likes to have someone come up to us and tell us how to live our life. Would you? And if that is true, then where do we go from here? How do we approach people today if they don’t want to hear what we have to say about Jesus?

Some, have a misconstrued idea of what the church is like and what Christians are like. But there are a lot of people who have been hurt, betrayed, lied to and deceived by Christians, by the church. What can we say that will make any difference? In his book, Let Me Tell You a Story , Tony Campolo quotes St. Francis of Assisi: "We should preach the gospel all day long – and if necessary, use words." I think that’s awesome. Let me read it again, We should preach the gospel all day long – and if necessary, use words. As we live our lives each day, if we can do that in such a way as to both live and speak our faith more clearly, it will communicate.

There are a lot of issues today that are up for discussion and the church needs to enter in to those discussions. We cannot be silent. At the same time, we need to be wise about how we enter in to those discussions.

This is not really new stuff though in my mind. Diverging views is a matter of course in every country. In the early church, Paul had to deal with a Jewish community that felt that the Gentiles (those who are not Jewish) had to become Jewish in order to be considered God’s chosen people. The section we are looking at today speaks to that. Paul had been a Jewish leader once and is now fighting for the rights of the Gentile believers against those who wanted them to submit to Jewish laws in order to become Jewish. Practically, to become a male Jew meant to become circumcised. Paul argued that was not required at all, that what God desired was a circumcision of the heart. (read Romans 2.28-29) It was a big deal back then and threatened the existence of the early church. Gary Nelson says that if we can imagine the scene: Paul has successfully argued his point and non-Jewish believers are not under Jewish Law, meaning they do not have to be circumcised. But for some, it was too late. In pain and suffering, they find out that they went through all of it for nothing. 

There was a day when the religious leaders brought a woman who was an adulterer to Jesus. You can read the story for yourselves in John 8. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, it says that persons caught in adultery are to be put to death. They bring the woman to Jesus to see what he has to say. An aside to the story is that both people are to be put to death (usually by stoning?) – here, it is only the woman that they bring. (Why is that?) Anyway, they bring her and Jesus challenges them with the comment that the first one to throw a stone at her is the person who has no sin. And so no one throws a stone because they know that they all have sinned.

I wonder how accepting we would be of one another if we truly knew each other? What would you think, how would you treat the person beside you if you knew what they thought, what their secrets are? What would you say to them? What might they say to you about your secret thoughts? I wonder. 

To relate to the Canadian culture this way may mean that we need to change the way we approach people who believe differently than we do – particularly on matters of faith. In a 1981 Census, 7% of Canadians responded that they had no religion. In 1991, that rose to 13%. In 2001, that number was 21% - with 41% of people in the under 35 yrs. of age responding that way. People are still spiritual, but what this census clearly shows is the amount of dissatisfaction with organized religion. So then if we can embrace the idea of Christians being a minority, we can better understand the responses of a Canadian culture that decreasingly does not parallel our belief system. So then, we need to approach our culture with a mind and heart of being a missionary; yes, a missionary in our own country. We need to think about that and then make some changes.