On religious baggage

Galatians 2:11-14 (ESV)
Paul Opposes Peter

11But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?"

My pastor talked about this passage last night, and he had a lot of good stuff to say. But my mind moved into another track ...

So here's Peter, chilling with the Gentiles and living like them. Not worrying about keeping the law, not worrying about what he's eating ... and rightfully so. He had a vision from God telling him that it was okay.

But then some Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem, and they were of the persuasion that in order to be a follower of Jesus, you had to keep the law. So Peter, being the genius that he is, starts keeping the law around his Jewish friends. There are two possibilities here as to Peter's motive: 1. He was trying to be respectful of his Jewish friends and not offend their sensibilities or cause them to stumble by doing things they thought were inappropriate and sinful. 2. He wimped out because he was afraid they would attack him, and he cared more about what they thought than how his actions would affect the new Christians to whom he was ministering.

Based on the fact that Paul called him out in front of everybody, I'm going to have to guess it was most likely the second possibility. We need to understand that, in a vacuum, there would have been nothing wrong with Peter's following the law if he wanted to. But his actions were negatively swaying all the new Christians in his care by confusing them about the nature of the Gospel and what it meant to be a follower of Christ. If you were in their position, you'd be confused too. You would assume that these people who had been following Jesus longer knew what was up, so it must be necessary to follow the law to receive Christ's salvation.

The lesson from this is a struggle for me. We have to understand that many Christians have certain cultural norms they expect to be followed by Christians in general, especially in church. These norms could include how one is supposed to dress, the type of music one should listen to, the style in which one should speak from the pulpit, and the specific language (words) one should use when talking about spiritual things. (There are other issues as well, this list is obviously not exhaustive.)

My tendency is, as a pastor, to simply conform to these norms to an extent that I don't feel I'm running the risk of offending some members of my congregation. The problem is that by doing that, I'm sending the message to younger and newer Christians that if you really want to grow and be serious, this is how you need to be. I have a responsibility to teach the gospel in its simplicity and clarity and not to obscure it by my actions and manner of life.

What do you think?