Considering others

Romans 14:10-12 (NIV)

10 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. 11 It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,

‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’” 12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

The apostle is impressing on those in the church that they should not do or say things that create a hindrance in faith of God in others. For some are new Christians learning. Some are weak in their faith while others are strong. Each person is accountable to God and should make their selections in life with the desires of God in mind. For one day each person will stand before God’s judgment seat to give an accounting of the things done or not done.

[Lance Morrow, an award-winning journalist with Time magazine, once set out to write an article asking if there was one universal joke, told everywhere around the world. Here's what happened:

I sent out a query to all of Time's bureaus around the world—Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Rome, Bonn, London, Paris, Rio, Buenos Aires, and so on. I asked the correspondents to tell me one or two jokes then current in their part of the world.

It turns out there is a universal joke. It was what Americans refer to as the "Polish joke." Except of course that everywhere, the role of [Polish people] in the "Polish joke" is enacted by some appropriate other group. The Flemings have Walloon jokes, for example. The English tell Irish jokes, and vice versa …. The people in Tokyo have jokes about the people in Osaka. I was once on the tiny island of Grenada (133 square miles) and was told that people on one side of the island had a large stock of vicious jokes about people on the other side of the island; and vice versa.

In the universal humor, as in universal evil, you need the Other. The Other is the butt of your joke, or the butt of your evil. [Lance Morrow, Evil: An Investigation (Basic Books, 2003), p. 25]

We all may think we have good intentions, but even our good intentions can be clouded by sin. Ensure your words and actions towards other take them into consider and think to yourself is this how The Lord would treat them.

Remember the words from Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”