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.