“But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.”

I Corinthians 8:9

I am haunted by an illustration that Chuck Swindoll used about the difficulty of some Christians to get along with other Christians. He tells of a group of porcupines in cold weather. The group came together to keep warm, but soon began to poke and prod one another until they separated thus losing the warmth that was needed for them to survive the cold. Pretty good description of some churches, isn’t it? However, “When ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.” V12.

So the mature Christian is responsible to endeavor to keep from offending the weaker brother’s conscience.

Upon reflection, I found an interesting reason that the porcupines poked each other. It appears that as long as the porcupines are going along in the same direction at about the same speed, there will be no problem. However, when one of the group becomes too high on himself and tries to push his way into the lead, he’s going to run into the quills of the others in front of him, or if a member tries to back up, those behind him will feel the pain, unless they begin to back-slide, too. As long as the entire group keeps heading in the right direction at a constant pace, no one will get hurt.

Of course, you can see the allegory to the church. As long as we keep  our eyes on Christ trying to promote Him, and have no interest in our own promotion, we cannot be hurt. That kind of hurt can only come when we stop looking at Christ and start looking at how what others do affects us. However, we can also hurt others if we begin to become backslidden, thus influence those following us.

These things will hurt the church immensely, thus causing lost people to be turned away from the church and the salvation that they can find there. But as damaging as these things are to us, they cannot change our own salvation. Once we come to Christ by faith, He promises that there is nothing that will cause Him to cast us out. If we trust Him to get us to heaven, then He’ll do that for us, even if our actions cause other people to turn away from salvation. John 6:37, 39                Pastor Jerry