Whisper it gently but I think that the “weaker and stronger brother” principle is perhaps one of the most overused and misused principles in the Bible. The principle comes from Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. Early Christians had a dual challenge, first there was the question about whether they should only eat kosher food, then there was the challenge that most meat was bought from butchers where it may have first been slaughtered as part of an offering to the gods. Some Christians out of concern not to eat idol offerings were refraining from eating meat at all. Others were enjoying their new found liberty in Christ to eat whatever they wanted.
Paul’s instruction was that yes you were free but you were not to use your new found liberty to do as you pleased, causing others to stumble. People should not be forced or emotionally manipulated into getting ahead of their own consciences because that would bring them into a place of guilt and shame, they would be sinning. We should rather, prefer the needs of others, putting the “weaker brother” first. Liberty is something that we grow into as we are taught grace.
It’s a great principle but it can easily become overused. Whenever someone is uncomfortable with a decision or practice, then once every argument has been exhausted, they fall back on “but I’m the weaker brother.” It could be a matter over whether or not you have multiple worship services or just the one gathering, singing hymns or contemporary worship or the recent debate over evening services. What it does, is it enables someone or a group of people to exercise a veto over everyone else.
However, whilst there may be times when the principle is needed, I want to suggest that it isn’t always. Indeed, I suspect it happens a lot less often that we have been encouraged to assume. The original advice arose out of a pretty extreme circumstance. Truth be told, we don’t always get to play the weaker brother card. In reality, on many occasions it is simply about our personal preferences,
We should prefer each others needs of course but church would be a lot simpler and more enjoyable if from time to time we just admitted that no great doctrine is at stake, no one is about to fall into deep sin, it’s just that we have a particular preference.
