Impact > Intentions

If you read Paul’s letters in the New Testament, you’ll notice that a lot of ink is spilled over whether or not Christians ought to eat meat that was involved in ceremonies in pagan temples. (That was a major source of meat in their society. You couldn’t just pick up a couple pounds of ground beef at Walmart, but the temples where all of these animals were slaughtered always had plenty.) Followers of Jesus weren’t sure if they ought to eat food that came from those religious rituals, so Paul addresses the topic at length in Romans and in 1 Corinthians.

You probably don’t wrestle with this question the way Paul’s audience did. I actually have been offered food that was involved in a religious ritual like that once (on a visit to a Hindu temple), but I bet that’s one more time than you have. If these passages have ever seemed odd to you, it’s probably because we just aren’t faced with the same dilemmas that the original readers were.

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from these passages, though.

In fact, in these discussions that are so foreign to our experiences, Paul illustrates a critical and universal principle for Christian living.

Look at Romans. The apostle believed that these foods were, in fact, clean and permissible for Christians to eat (14:14, 20). The problem was, some believers held a different conviction and were confused and unsettled by the sight of their fellow Christians eating this meat. This led Paul to write,

“If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died… Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” (14:15, 19)

Their actions weren’t wrong. Their intentions were good. Yet, Paul warned them, “you are no longer walking in love” if your behavior harms someone else’s faith.

In situations like that, many of us would probably write Paul back and say, But I wasn’t trying to cause any harm! I can’t control how someone else reacts to what I do! And that’s all true. Yet, Paul still warns them and instructs them to make a change.

Why? Why should the believers eating this meat—which is totally permissible!—why should they have to change anything?

Here’s the critical and universal principle that I hear in these verses: you need to be more concerned with the impact of your words and actions than with the intentions behind them.

In the words of Andy Stanley, “Intent is mostly irrelevant, because there’s no correlation between intention and outcome.” It’s very easy to do damage unintentionally. There’s a story about an unintended accident behind every dent in my car—but the dents are still there. The damage was still done, intentionally or not. Good intentions can still lead to negative outcomes.

And the Christians in Rome were unintentionally doing damage to their brothers’ and sisters’ faith. There were negative outcomes, despite their good intentions. So, though their actions weren’t wrong, Paul tells them to change.

Because Christians need to be more concerned with the impact of our words and actions than with the intentions behind them. 

More concerned, in other words, with our neighbors than with ourselves.