Meat offered to idols

“Conscience, I say, not your own, but that of the other. For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience? But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I give thanks? Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:29-31

For the first time in 11 years, I received a complaint about posting photos on Facebook of our Carnaval party for the preschool children. We have celebrated Carnaval with them for 16 years, with the approval of their parents and guardians, but I have only had a Facebook account since 2008. The boys dress up as Spider Man or Batman, the girls as Disney princesses (or pirates) and we used our parade around the neighborhood as an opportunity to pass out tracts from Cristo Para Todas Las Naciones (the Spanish Lutheran Hour) before CPTLN shut down operations in Venezuela. “But Christians do not celebrate Carnaval,” this person insisted. “It has pagan origins.”

A bit of background: In many countries, especially culturally Roman Catholic countries like Venezuela, the two to five days before Ash Wednesday is a time for masquerades, parades, parties and pranks. If that sounds something like Halloween, well, it is, and for some people it raises some of the same issues.

The word in English is carnival and it has the same origin as Carnaval, but the traveling shows known as carnivals are a somewhat different topic. People in the United States may be most familiar with pre-Lenten partying in the form of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, “mardi gras” being French for “Fat Tuesday”, the day before Ash Wednesday.

“Carnem levare” is the Latin root, and it means to take away the flesh or take away the meat. In medieval Europe, it became mandatory to abstain from foods derived from the bodies of land-based mammals and fowl during Lent, although the severity of the rules varied according to time and place. To remove some of the temptation, and, as a practical matter, because certain animal-based foods like eggs and butter would not keep for 40 days, it became customary to consume all remaining meat and dairy products in the house over several days of non-stop feasting.

The association of “carnivale” with masquerades and parades began in Italy, and soon spread to France and Spain, and from those countries to the New World. As with Halloween, which began with Christian observance of All Saints Day, but coincides with the approximate dates of ancient fall harvest festivals, some customs of pre-Christian origin may have been incorporated into festivities that usually coincide with the coming of spring.

Now the issue for Christians today is not so much the origins of Halloween or Carnaval, but what these events have come to mean as secular celebrations. In my childhood, Halloween was the occasion for pumpkin carving contests, bobbing for apples and going door to door in costume to receive candy. Some older youth were more into “tricks” than “treats” and sometimes crossed the line into vandalism, but that was the extent of the trouble with Halloween. For Luz Maria, who grew up in western Venezuela, “Carnaval” meant masquerade parties for children, parades and water balloon fights in the streets for the rowdier types.

Nowadays, many in the USA really think Halloween is a pagan festival and are tempted into actual witchcraft and occultism. Likewise, in many countries, Carnaval has become an excuse for sexual immorality and abuse of drugs and alcohol. Particularly in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Carnaval has grown into an international event that throws a spotlight on Brazil’s social problems, such as sex trafficking and an extremely high occurrence of HIV/AIDS. Especially this year in Venezuela, in the midst of shortages of food and medicine, high crime rates and political tension, there are some who question why there should be something like Carnaval, frivolous at best and a invitation to wretched excess at wo

rst.

But should we for these reasons deny children a time for make-believe and simple games? The first Christians lived in a world full of pagan ritual and symbolism. They were commanded to avoid idolatry, but did becoming a Christian mean cutting all ties with unbelieving family and friends, indeed with your whole culture? Furthermore, the mission of the church was to reach out to these same unbelieving family and friends to bring them into God’s kingdom.

The Apostle Paul deals with this issue in 1 Corinthians, especially chapters 8 and 10, when he speaks of “meat offered to idols”. The city of Corinth, like all urban centers in the first-century Mediterranean world, was full of pagan temples and shrines. Based on archeology and other sources outside of the Bible, we know that animal sacrifice was a key feature of all pre-Christian religion, including ancient Judaism. The meat from animals sacrificed on pagan altars would be consumed in feasts in honor of the god or goddess, since every temple had an attached dining hall. Any meat left over would be given to the priests of the temple and their families. Also, when the dining halls were not in use for the religious festivals, they would be rented out for weddings, celebrations of victory in battle and what we might call award ceremonies. Sacrificial meat would be served at these functions. Finally, if there was still some meat left over, it would be taken to the vendor’s stalls in the public markets to be sold to the public.

Eidólothutos, the word translated “meat offered to idols” first appears in Acts 15:29. It was a Jewish term (Gentiles referred to such meat with the term, hierothutos), and the passage in Acts represents the preoccupation of Jewish Christians with sharing meals with Gentile converts. The Jerusalem church council advised Gentile Christians to avoid serving meat that had been offered to idols, along with any other meat not prepared according to kosher rules out of love for their Jewish brethren (not because they were bound by the ritual purity laws of the Old Testament).

In 1 Corinthians, the emphasis is on encounters outside the community of faith. St. Paul warns that Christians absolutely should not participate in pagan religious rituals. In chapter 10:21, he says, “You cannot drink from the cup of the Lord and from the cup of demons.” Although the gods of pagan mythology, like Zeus, Apollo or Hermes, did not exist as such, nevertheless the temptation to idolatrous worship was the work of demons. Today there can be no “interfaith” worship, even with those who claim to worship just one god (Jews or Muslims).

But there were those in the church at Corinth who believed themselves to be of superior understanding and “strong” in the faith. Because they did not believe the pagan gods had any power over them and that all meat was just meat, there was nothing wrong with attending feasts at pagan temples that were not specifically for religious purposes.

Paul rebukes their spiritual pride and tells them that, even though it was quite true that the pagan gods had no power over them, that meat offered to idols was just meat, and that simply entering a pagan temple did not tempt them to idolatry, they should be concerned for the “weak” who could be tempted by such things. They should not even give the appearance of condoning pagan worship or allowing that pagan gods had some kind of authority.

However, Paul affirms the principle of Christian liberty against those, who out of a different kind of self-righteousness, would go to the other extreme. Meat sold in the public markets was not labeled according to origin, therefore there was no problem with purchasing it, even though it was likely some had been sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 10:25). Likewise, if invited to a meal in the home of an unbeliever, with the opportunity of sharing the Gospel, the Christian should eat what is set on the table and not make a fuss about where the meat came from. However, if someone else were to identify the meat as having been sacrificed in a pagan temple, the Christian should politely refuse it, rather than dismiss the scruples of weaker brethren before unbelievers.

One form of legalism is to insist on observance of ceremonies that God has not commanded as necessary to salvation or Christian living. Another is to insist that all abstain from practices that are not contrary to God’s will. We should resist efforts to force such views on us. As with meat offered to idols, we may enjoy customs that may have non-Christian origins, as long as no one is really tempted to sin by them and they provide the opportunity to share God’s Word with those who have not heard it.

Postscript on the capybara

I cannot talk about the Lenten fast in Venezuela without mentioning the capybara or “el chigüire” as it is known here. Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris is world’s largest species of rodent. It has a heavy, barrel-shaped body and short head, with reddish-brown fur on the upper part of its body that turns yellowish-brown underneath. Adults grow to 106 to 134 cm (3.48 to 4.40 feet) in length, stand 50 to 62 cm (20 to 24 inches) tall at the withers, and typically weigh 35 to 66 kg (77 to 146 lbs.). In the 16th Century, the Pope responded to a petition from Venezuelan priests to declare the semi-aquatic rodent an exception to the rule against eating red meat. Since then, eating chigüire during Lent has been a Venezuelan tradition, much like turkey dinner for Thanksgiving in the United States.

Ash Wednesday and apagones

Our Ash Wednesday service on March 6, 2019, was bookended by power outages or apagones in Spanish. On late Monday afternoon, our power went down for 21 hours. I do not know if this was just a local blackout, because it didn’t make the news, but the next one sure did. On Thursday, March 7, the entire electrical grid went down across Venezuela for 60 hours, leaving most of the country without electricity, telephone, television, radio, Internet or water (because no power for the pumps). The lights came back on at 5 a.m. Sunday for 5 hours, then went out again. It was the same Monday: Five hours of electricity early in the morning, then a blackout for the rest of the day. Finally, at 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, full power was restored.

This is apparently what happened: There was a major breakdown at the Guri Dam hydroelectric plant. When it was built in the 1960s, the Guri plant was the largest generation facility of its kind in the world. Today it is the third-largest, at I7,426 meters in length and 162 meters in height. It impounds the Guri Reservoir, which has a surface area of 4,250 square kilometers (1,641 square miles) . The Guri hydroelectric power plant is situated 100 kilometers upstream of the Caroni River in Necuima Canyon i. With an installed capacity of 10,200 megawatts, it has for years provided 75 to 80 percent of Venezuela’s electrical demand.

Electricity generated by the smaller Matagua hydroelectric plant and a thermoelectric plants allowed the government to implement the draconian energy rationing program of five hours of electricity per day.

In La Caramuca, we lost contact with the outside world, except for intermittent cellphone signals. But we were able to pump water from our well with a portable gasoline generator. We have not used the generator for some time, because even gasoline is strictly rationed now. Also the generator is over 10 years old, has been overhauled several times and no longer has the capacity to do everything we would like it to do. But it earned its keep this past week. No more than ever, we would like to install a battery backup system, perhaps with solar panels on the roof, and a satellite link to the Internet.

Down on Animal Farm

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell is a dark fable about how farm animals on an Engiish farm are convinced that their lives would be so much better if they got rid of the drunkard farmer and ran the farm themselves. In the end, the animals are worse off than before, enslaved to a master crueler and more unjust than the poor old farmer ever thought of being. The story is a thinly disguised caricature of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, but the same drama has played itself out since then in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba and, now, Venezuela.

Why does it happen again and again? It is not the result of people betraying their ideals, but of staying faithful to false, corrupting beliefs.

“Socialism” is a political philosophy that insists there must be an economic system superior even to one driven by the acquisition of private capital. Karl Marx defined socialism as an intermediate state between capitalism and communism, the true classless society in which there would be perfect equality and no distinctions between persons based on education, wealth or sex (Marx left it to his latter-day disciples to elaborate on total sexual equality would mean). Of course, the word communism has gained unfortunate connotations, involving gulags, secret police and killing fields, so many of Marx´s latter-day disciples prefer to talk about socialism, rather than communism. The end in view is the same: A more equitable distribution of wealth, so that no one would be homeless or hungry, while at the other end of the scale, there would be no idle rich.

There are even those who argue that the socialist vision would be an application of the ethical teachings of Jesus. Throughout Latin America, in fact, there is a school of thought called “liberation theology”, which draws upon some European theologians and Marxism to justify the establishment of a new social order, by violent means if necessary. This requires a radical reinterpretation of the Scriptures. But why doe people think this way?

Marx appropriated this description of the early Christians in Jerusalem for his vision of “communism” or “the classless society” from Acts 2:44-45, “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” However, what is described here is the voluntary sharing between believers, not the expropriation of private property by the state. It was not even a law laid down by the apostles, but a free manifestation of true charity. The well-to-do Christians were willing and eager to make these sacrifices when it was evident that this was the only way in which the needs of their brethren could be supplied. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11 was not that they withheld part of their assets from the common fund, but that they lied and led everyone to believe that they had given all.

 The Bible affirms the need to work for one's living (Genesis 3:19) and the right to enjoy the fruits of honest labor as God's blessing (i.e., property). This is implied in the commandment, “You shall not steal”. Martin Luther comments on this commandment in the Large Catechism: “After your person and spouse temporal property comes next. That also God wishes to have protected, and He has commanded that no one shall subtract from, or curtail, his neighbor's possessions. For to steal is nothing else than to get possession of another's property wrongfully, which briefly comprehends all kinds of advantage in all sorts of trade to the disadvantage of our neighbor.” Luther goes on to denounce a variety of dishonest business practices, but does not condemn private enterprise per se. When Jesus chased the vendors and money-changers from the Temple (John 2:13-22), it was not because he did not think, in principle, that they did not have a right to make a living, but that they had appropriated a portion of the Temple grounds dedicated to prayer and worship, and, with the approval of the chief priests, were charging the people exorbitant prices. The rich young man was told to sell all that he had and give the proceeds to the poor to test his love of God, not because he did not have a legal right to his riches.

St. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” A man that is persistently idle, that refuses to work, should indeed also be excluded from the legitimate fruit of labor, the food necessary to sustain the body. Instead of becoming objects of charity and depending upon the liberality of others, Christians will at all times conduct themselves in their work so as to have enough for their own needs and to spare for those of others. Likewise, the apostle writes in Ephesians 4:28, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” It is not only thieving that is here condemned, but every form of appropriating one’s neighbor’s money or goods by methods that do not conform to the law of love, all cheating and profiteering. Every person will be able to obtain an honest return for his work.

Socialism legitimitizes covetousness and greed in the name of the collective. The divine law reads: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his.” Luther says, “For above, in the Seventh Commandment, the vice is forbidden where one wrests to himself the possessions of others, or withholds them from his neighbor, which he cannot do by right. But here it is also forbidden to alienate anything from your neighbor, even though you could do so with honor in the eyes of the world, so that no one could accuse or blame you as though you had obtained it wrongfully.” But socialism justifies exactly this, because one can say that someone else has “too much”, regardless of how they acquired their riches, and should be despoiled. Not because you envy them their good fortune on your own account, of course. You simply want “justice” for all who have less. This is all a great lie, and it leads to more lies and more mischief. Once there is no respect for the property rights of “the very rich” or “the one percent”, soon there will be no respect for the property rights of the not so rich.

On an even deeper level, one fundamental theological error of socialism is assuming that sinful human beings can regain paradise. The root causes of poverty and injustice are the rebellious human will and the failure of each and every one of us to love God and our fellow human beings as we should. The use of force by the civil government can, as we say, restrain the exterior actions of evil mean (up to a point), but cannot move us to love God and others. Attempts to force people to live lives of sacrificial love always fail. Without the recognition of the sinfulness of human nature, the only answer to this failure is more force, ultimately resulting in a society where there is neither freedom or justice, but worse corruption and inequality than there was before. Checks and balances on government power are not seen as essential, because power in the right hands is not seen as corrupting.

 Because socialism fundamentally denies original sin, liberation theologians do no see Jesus' death on the cross as vicarious atonement for our sin: rather, Jesus died because He upset the religious/political situation of His time. The significance of His death is found in His example of defiance of the privileged classes. There is no Scriptural promise of equality of outcome in the struggles of this life, but rather “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (2 Corinthians 4:17), that is, in the life to come. To love earthly riches more than God is to risk eternal damnation, not temporal judgment (Luke 16:19-31; Matthew 6:24; James 5:1-6).

The Scriptures speak of equality in three ways. First, all human life is of value in God's eyes, because God created us all. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:13-14). All human life is precious in God's eyes at every stage or condition, especially those who are unable to speak or act for themselves, such as the unborn, the disabled and the elderly. Secondly, all human beings stand equally condemned by God's law. “ For there is no distinction:all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23). However, thirdly, all equally receive salvation through the blood of Christ (Romans 3:24). This is the true meaning of Galatias 3:26-29, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.” Social distinctions are not abrogated in the world, just as all the other differences will continue to exist (1 Corinthians 7:17-22). But within the Church, before God, we are all alike, poor sinners in need of salvation, children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and therefore all one in Him. The kingdom of God's grace (the Gospel) should not be confused with the kingdom of God's power (the Law).

In addition to moral arguments against socialsim from God's Word, a study of history shows there is less of a gap between how things are supposed to work in a free.maket economy than there is in a centrally planned, socialist economy. This is because market economies, while not promising heaven on earth, are more consistent with “natural law”, or how God designed the world to work.