God and Vegetarianism

© Meredith Sizemore Photography

¹ Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. 

Romans 14:1-4

When I read this last Sunday, it made me smile.  I never realized the Bible had anything to say on vegetarianism!  This passage speaks directly to the issue.  If you want to be a vegetarian, do so.  But whether you are a vegetarian or not, you should not be judging people who have different diets.  Instead you should support their gastronomical choices.

This verse is of course more than just about food.  It's about the fact that it's not our job to judge others.  That's a tough thing to swallow. (Pun intended.)  It's much easier to judge.  We all have perceptions of good and bad.  God says that he doesn't care, he forgives it all whether we think an act is good or bad.  And that's the point: God is the arbiter.  He decides what is good and bad.  It doesn't matter what we think, whether we agree or not.  God decides when someone has done something wrong and will handle the situation at the appropriate time.  It's our job to do our best to forgive.

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Judging Others

1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

I picked this verse after I saw a picture of a tatoo on someone. When I was younger I was not a big fan of tattoos, to the point they bothered me. I still don't get them, but I'm really just indifferent to them now. When I saw that tattoo though, the the verse that came to my mind was the above from Matthew - about not judging. I have found that one of my huge stumbling blocks is that I judge people easily. I have gotten a lot better at not doing that, by just taking a step back. But it's sometimes difficult. So the whole tattoo thing reminded me of how I often need to remember that different people like different things. This is the thought I pass on to you tonight - to think before you judge.

This doesn't mean that we should never have opinions, or that we should never share them. But when we DO share them, we should be doing so from a place of love.

http://kairosverse.blogspot.com