Food Sacrificed to Idols
I watched comedian Josh Johnson on YouTube the other day. He said, “As a black guy from the South, I don’t think you’re racist until you attend your second Klan meeting.” He told a story about a friend who got invited to a backyard barbecue, like you do in the South. They served delicious ribs. His friend went inside to get another plate and returned to a burning cross in the backyard.
“Oh no,” he said in shock, “I’m already here!”
As he recounted the story to Josh afterwards, he said, “I had already eaten all their food, so I had to stay for their meeting!” Then, Josh looked over his friend’s shoulder and saw a to-go plate of ribs.
“Are those Klan ribs?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I have some?”
“Yes.”
Josh said that the Klan makes the best ribs, and you can’t even taste the racism.
I remembered this funny story a few days later when I read 1 Corinthians 8, the famous passage about food sacrificed to idols. In America, we still worship gods and goddesses (read “inanimate objects” of Isaiah 37:19, or even call them “consumer goods and services” if you really want to get on people’s nerves), but few people identify our idol worship in such terms, so I think that Paul’s whole point about “food sacrificed to idols” goes sailing over many heads.
1 Corinthians 8, like famous chapter 13, is about sacrificial love and submission. It’s about giving up something for someone else’s sake – in this case, something that you are allowed to have! Contrary to all of the “I’m brutally honest, I tell it like it is” brothers and sisters whom we know and love, Paul admonishes us to be thoughtful, kind and considerate of others’ feelings and opinions before we act freely. If you’re not good at being kind and thoughtful, then just fake it until you make it, or imitate someone you do know who is good at it.
Now what if Josh had reacted differently to those ribs? What if he had said, “You went to a Klan rally? And you ate their food? Did you shake their hands and smile and thank them for their hospitality? Did you subscribe to their marketing emails and newsletters?” Klan ribs are just ribs, after all. Get over it, Josh! Klan ribs are no different than my pastor Eddie’s dry-rub ribs. A Klansman can eat the same ribs that Martin Luther King Jr. can eat. They’re just ribs. It’s just food.
Except that Klan ribs satisfy an appetite for hate and violence because Klan ribs gather Klansmen. They worship the antichrist when they rally and eat delicious ribs together. They dip their ribs in white supremacy sauce. They wash down their ribs with Haterade. The only people in America who need a lecture on the evils of the Klan are the Klansmen themselves, so when I say to you that some good people might be offended if you ate those ribs, you wouldn’t ask, “Why would they be offended? They’re just ribs. Get over it. If you’re offended, that’s your problem.” You know what the Klan is and what they stand for.
Even in America, just about everyone can understand the significance of food sacrificed to idols. Paul said that he would rather be a vegetarian than eat Klan ribs if eating Klan ribs caused a fellow Christian to stumble. If nobody cares that you wound up with a plate of delicious Klan ribs, then eat the Klan ribs! They’re just ribs! But if it does bother someone, then be thoughtful and respectful of that person, and don’t eat the ribs. Paul doesn’t give a “Thou shalt not” command here; he tells us to act like Christ, to think from the heart and to discern what is the right thing to do in that situation.
This is only a silly metaphor, but I think it’s a good metaphor in American culture. "Food sacrificed to idols" can mean just about anything, not just food. With this metaphor in mind, having understood Paul’s teaching, what other “freedoms” can we (or do we) exercise that can affect our brothers and sisters, regardless of whether exercising those freedoms is morally right or wrong?