Social Drinking and Weak Consciences

D.A. Carson comments on 1 Corinthians 8:12-13, which reads

"When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, lest I make my brother stumble.

(1 Corinthians 8:12-13)

"There are two elements in this spiritual counsel that must be understood.

First, the kind of situation Paul is facing here must not be confused with quite a different one. Suppose you are a Christians who, owing to you r cultural background, has always engaged in social drinking. Now you move into a circle that is more socially conservative. Some senior saint comes up to you and says, 'I have to tell you that I am offended by your drinking. Paul tells us that if anyone is offended by what you do, you must stop it. I'm offended; you must therefore stop your drinking." How would you respond?

This senior saint is simply manipulating you. He (or she) is not a person with a weak conscience who is in danger of tippling on the side because of your example, and thus wounding his weak conscience. Far from it. If he sees you drinking again he will likely denounce you in the most unrestrained terms. In his eyes, he is the stronger person, not the weaker. In other words, this case is not at all like the one the apostle had to deal with. Indeed, you might be wise to tell him, 'I'm sorry to hear that you have such a weak conscience.' He will probably be so unclear as to what you mean that he may actually leave you alone for a couple of weeks.

To develop a modern example somewhat akin to what Paul faces, we would have to change the story somewhat. Now you have become a youth sponsor in a church. Some of the young people from socially conservative homes see you drinking and, against the conscience they have developed over such matters, follow suit; in time they become sloppy about all kinds of serious moral issues. You have thus become party to their substantial destruction."

--D.A. Carson,  The Cross in Christian Ministry

Sexual Immorality: The Downward Spiral of Our Rationalizations

"Consider sexual promiscuity. The official line is that modern people do not take sex outside of marriage seriously any longer; mere moral realists say this is because we no longer realize the wrong of it. I maintain that we do know it is wrong but pretend that we do not...

...Another tactic is inventing private definitions of marriage. Quite a few people 'think of themselves as married' although they have no covenant at all. Some even fortify the delusion with 'moving-in ceremonies' featuring happy words without promises. Unfortunately, people who 'think of themselves as married' refuse the obligations of real marriage, but demand all of its cultural privileges. Rationalization is so much work that they require other people to support them in it. Such demands make the cultural protection of marriage more difficult. 

Yet another ruse is to admit that sex belongs within marriage but to fudge the nature of the connection. By this reasoning I tell myself that sex is okay because I am going to marry my partner, because I want my partner to marry me, or because I have to find out if we could be happily married. An even more dangerous fudge is to divide the form of marriage from its substance--to say 'We don't need promises because we're in love.' The implication, of course, is that those who do need promises love impurely, that those who do not marry are more truly married than those who do.

This  last rationalization is even more difficult to maintain than most. Love, after all, is a permanent and unqualified commitment to the true good of another person, and the native tongue of commitment is, precisely, promises. To work, therefore, this rule requires another: having deceived oneself about the nature of marriage, one must now deceive oneself about the nature of love. The usual way of doing so is to mix up love with the romantic feelings that characteristically accompany it, and call them 'intimacy.' If only we have these feelings, we tell ourselves, we may have sex. That is to say, we may have sex--if we feel like it. 

Here is where things really become interesting, because if the criterion of being-as-good-as-married is sexual feelings, then obviously no one who has sexual feelings may be prevented from marrying. So homosexuals must be able to 'marry;' their unions, too, should have cultural protection. At this point suppressed conscience strikes another blow, reminding us that marriage is linked with procreation. But now we are in a box. We cannot say 'therefore homosexuals cannot marry,' because that would strike against the whole teetering structure of rationalizations. Therefore we decree that having been made marriageable, homosexuals must be made procreative; the barren field must seem to bloom. There is, after all, artificial insemination. And there is adoption. So it comes to pass that children are given as a right to those from whom they were once protected as a duty. The normalization of perversion is complete."

--Jay Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience