Romans
14:14-15 As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am
fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards
something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed
because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love.
We all have certain traditions we maintain that
serve to link us with past generations of family. They bind us tightly with
other people in our own social or religious groups. Often times we do not even
know how the traditions came to be.
The story is told of a family where a ham always had
an inch or so sliced off from one side before it was put in the oven. A guest
asked why this was done and the woman cooking said “My mother always prepared
ham that way.” With her interest stimulated, she in turn asked her mother about
the ham. Her mother said, “Because my mother always prepared ham that way.”
When she then asked her great-grandmother about it, she laughed and explained:
“The oven in our first home was so small that a whole ham would not fit into
it. So I had to cut off part of it.”
Traditions affect modern people as much as those in
Paul’s day. To understand this passage we
ought to take modern and ancient traditions into account. We must
realize that people in our day who accept the good news are embedded in
cultures and religions with their own traditions and that those traditions will
not always be easy to give up. Traditions are never and excuse for sin. Paul
encourages us to turn away from any traditions contrary to God’s revealed will.
But many traditions are not clearly sinful, and when this is the case, we are to
take a slow and loving approach to them and to the people who hold to them.
