Scripture: Romans 14:1-18 (NIV)

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

If there are any true words in A New Hope, they are probably these: “This bickering is pointless.” Granted, the fact that one of his subordinates had just been choked within an inch of his life by Darth Vader was probably a little stronger than “bickering”, but the point was made. The Imperials were all on the same side, trying to get the Death Star operational, the plans found, and the Rebellion taken care of. Granted, this was an organization that dealt with treachery and self-serving actions all the time, but there was no reason to fight among themselves here.

That’s what we do as humans, though. We fight and bicker all the time. In fact, I think now that we have taken infighting to a whole new level in this age of polarization and extremes. You can have two people that both claim to be followers of Christ having knock-down, drag-out fights in the comments section of an article or on Facebook. They would hurl terrible things at each other, never looking at it from another point of view but defending theirs to the death, certain of their own “rightness”.

Find a topic, find a point, and suddenly there is bickering. We have a vaccine now for COVID-19, yet there is still arguing about whether people should take it. You would think that something that saves lives like that would be immune to our inability to make peace with our neighbor but you would be mistaken. We will defend our positions like they are our children while doing anything we can to “own the opposition”. We can’t be seen to be weak or soft by trying to bridge a gap or giving an inch to the other side.

This entire approach is completely contradictory to the teachings of Christ. As Paul states in Galatians we are all part of the body. There’s no slave or free, no man or woman, no Jew or Gentile. We are all His. Arguing with another member of the body is like having your arm argue with your leg. (Then again, there are times my back argues with me so maybe that’s not the best analogy!) We should be trying to find the common ground and recognizing what is important to them might not be important to me and if it isn’t, we let it go. If it is, we try to figure out how to coexist, not how to destroy the other person.

We should not be judging those that disagree with us. We should be loving them, even if we aren’t behind them in certain situations. We can not compromise the word of the Lord but we are also called to serve one another. We can do that while holding fast to our faith. We are all going to be in the same place at the end, standing before the Lord and awaiting His judgement. If we are loving each other and acting out our love of God in our relationships with them, that judgement is not going to be a Force choke but a loving embrace!