Manly Thor's Day special: Why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?

Here are some lines from 1 Corinthians 10.

25Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, 26for "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's. 27If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 28But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—29I mean the other's conscience and not your own.  For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?

The problem is that there is an apparent contradiction. First Paul tells us that if there is a danger of upsetting someone else by offending the dictates of their conscience—"then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I mean the other's conscience and not your own". He then immediately tells us what seems to be the opposite message—"For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?"

That's from the NRSV. Here are the same lines from the RSV.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience For "the earth is the Lord's and everything in it." If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. (But if someone says to, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then out of consideration for the man who informed you, and for conscience's sake—I mean his conscience not yours—do not eat it.) For why should my liberty be determined by another man's scruples?

I don't know what grounds the editors of the RSV have for putting the one line in parentheses. Their doing so does not necessarily disagree with the choice of the NRSV editors not to. A comment doesn't have to be in parentheses to be parenthetical. By parenthetical, I mean that it is an aside. Paul is making his main point and then some qualification, exception or specification occurs to him so he breaks his stride long enough to slip it in.

I mention this because the apparent contradiction I noted above disappears if we take the first part as parenthetical.

One way to test whether something could be parenthetical is whether it can be dropped out and the text still make sense.

First a bit of context. Paul is speaking about meat that has been offered in sacrifice and then sold on the market in Corinth. We think of a burnt offering as taking meat and reducing it to ash but the actual sacrifices of antiquity were more like a giant community barbecue—smoke went up to heaven but most of the meat was quite edible and even yummy thank you. When, as was often the case, there was more meat than the people at this sacrifice/barbecue could eat, the excess was sold off at markets. And it was sold off cheap. Some Christians in Corinth thought it wrong to eat this meat. Others argued that since the idols this meat had been "sacrificed" to didn't even exist there was no reason we should curtail our choices because other people entertained bizarre illusions.

Okay, now let's go back and read it without the possibly parenthetical comment.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, for "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's. If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?

That's pretty clear? Is it what Paul really meant?

Here, I think the answer is, "Yes ... but ...".

For Paul prefaces this paragraph with the following:

23"All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. 24Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.

In other words, don't insist on your rights if doing so will damage someone else's faith so as to alienate them from the church. If someone else seeing you eating this perfectly harmless meat is deeply upset because of their silly scruples, you may damage their faith.

Why am I so sure that their scruples are silly? Because Paul has told us so back in 1 Corinthians 8:

7It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

Paul is telling us that we need to restrict our own rights for the sake of the Christian community. Ultimately, he tells us, these weak people's salvation depends on their being part of the church because the church is the Body of Christ. If you drive them out, you are committing a serious sin.

So, might we read this as the Letter of Saint Paul to the Libertarians? We might but we have to make a judgment in order to do so. We have to read the people who condemn liberty for the sake of conscience as having a weak understanding. That would be an interesting perspective. We would have to believe, for example, that Pope Francis doesn't understand economics and so he imagines that policies that will actually hurt the poor will help them. On the other hand, there are lots of people who buy into this nonsense so opposing Francis too directly might cause scandal by making it appear like Catholic Christians don't care about the poor so it might be best to not mock his economic delusions because, even though they are really based on a fear of idols that do not exist, to challenge him too directly might upset the weak.

A related question is what is the abuse of power and the moral status of what we do in private. Take Paul's example from above. You are a Corinthian Christian invited to a dinner by a nonbeliever and you don't raise any questions about the meat you are served and no one else does either. Can you just go ahead and chow down. Paul very clearly says yes.

Okay, but suppose there is a scandal later. In the short run, you can deflect any danger by saying that you didn't realize there was an issue. But, in Paul's context, you don't believe there is an issue. You only avoid scandal for the sake of others' weak consciences and not because there is anything wrong with eating this meat.

Now, let's suppose something else. Let's suppose that the rich and powerful members of the Corinthian Christian community could eat all the meat they wanted. They didn't need to buy meat that was cheap and therefore, might have been "sacrificed" to (nonexistent) idols. So we have poor people whose weak consciences might cause them to stumble and fall on one end of the spectrum and rich people who might just be willing to exploit this fact to cause the rest of us to go without meat because this "sacrificed" meat was all we could afford while they could buy the more expensive meat that had no such tainted associations. Would powerful people do that?

Of course they would. I've done it myself. Have you ever wanted other people to stop doing something for reasons of your own convenience but framed your objection in moral terms that made it sound like something larger was at stake? Imagine, for example, the mother who tells her children to play quietly for the sake of others when what she really wants is to have a conversation with the other adults present without having to attend to the kids. It's a form of hypocrisy we're all prone to. Take that hypocrisy and mix it up with the political ambitions of the powerful and you have the potential for serious abuse.

Final question, is Paul quietly telling us to go ahead and do whatever we have a right to do but do it quietly so as to not raise scandal? I believe he is.