“Stumble”
“Stumble” existed as a word in company with words such as “backslide” or “slippery slope”. These were not words describing an old sock-hop dance (The Backslide Stumble), but rather words that referred to some kind of moral failure that apparently had terrible spiritual effect.
It’s long ago enough now that I can look back to when I was a youth pastor in a particular bygone era in Christian social history. In the context of the evangelical church and the youth culture associated with it, this was the time at which a band called DC Talk (“I luv rap music, always have and I always will”) was near its peak in terms of popularity (and “evangelicool”) within the contemporary Christian music scene. At the time, in my local context, I had some connection with a band called Hokus Pick (“I’m So Happy”). My friend was the drummer in the band and Hokus Pick became big enough that they toured with DC Talk for a time. Those were the days. Whenever I think about the word “stumble” in its evangelical frame, a song comes into my head. It’s a pensive, melodramatic, intensely self-centred song. The song seems to argue that that if the person singing makes the wrong moral decision (if they stumble), then maybe the Christian hope for all of history will be in jeopardy.
“What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?”.
To be fair, the love of Jesus is presented as secure in the song, even in the case of moral failure, but the message is clear that the reason the world does not believe is that Christians make moral missteps, they “stumble”.
If you grew up in the evangelical church, in the company of words like “stumble” and “backslide” you may have discerned that a stumble, as serious as it might be, is just a stumble, but multiple stumbles make a backslide. It’s a kind of evangelical math.
There are a number of problems with these ways of thinking. Perhaps the biggest is that such reasoning puts the moral decisions and actions of the individual at the centre of the world and at the centre of spirituality. In this way of thinking everything, absolutely everything, depends on my choice and my moral determination. This is at best a form of immaturity, at worst a form of sickness. The problem becomes not that people don’t think about their actions enough, but that they think about themselves entirely too much. Christian scripture is actually consistently trying to get us to think about ourselves less and other people more. Teaching teenagers to fixate on their moral success or failure does not encourage spiritual growth, it hinders spiritual growth. I think that it also hinders mental wellness.
The word translated as “stumble” does come up in the Bible. However, it is not used in the manner in which many people were taught. In the book of Romans (chapter 14) there is a well known passage of scripture about not causing your brother to “stumble”. Evangelical sub-culture was marked by great concern about brothers being caused to stumble. Indeed, many young women can recall that they were told they should constantly consider that they might be causing boys to stumble. Countless sermons and youth group talks placed this word in the opposite context to how it is used in the actual passage. In the actual passage there is a discussion about religious rules and their place in Christian faith. Some of the readers of the letter apparently thought that all of the rules must be followed perfectly. Other people thought that the rules (the law) pointed to something greater and that the rules must not be thought of as an end in themselves. The writer of the letter refers to some people as weak and other people as strong and says that no one should think of themselves as better than the other. The sermons and youth group talks of evangelical culture presented that the strong people were the ones who insisted upon the rules and the weak people were the ones who did not. This is the opposite to what the text says. The strong people, in faith, are the ones who were able to hold rules within their proper place. The example given in the text is eating meat previously sacrificed to idols (somehow this became listening to secular music or swearing or drinking in 90’s Christian sub-culture). If meat has been sacrificed to idols of course you can eat it because the idols are not real, so no big deal at all. However, if you are with someone who just can’t imagine ever eating meat sacrificed to an idol, maybe you should just not eat the meat. Your love for the other person should take into account their weakness. The person who can’t stop focusing on rules is seen in the text as the weaker person, and the compassionate thing to do, to not cause them to stumble in faith, is to refrain from eating the meat.
How different would evangelical churches have been if we had known this more consistently, that the rule lovers were the weaker people? Loving them, however, should not have meant that they were given all of the places of leadership. We should never assume that someone is strong in faith simply because they are loudest about the rules. That would wreak havoc on a community.
As a pastor I carried this reminder with me much of the time in church. When someone became upset about the rules (often arbitrary) not being followed I would remind myself of the passage from Romans and aim to compassionately recall that though they may be weak in this area, we are still family in the church. My faith calls me to not look down on them and to love them and to reject any sense of superiority.
If my freedom was terribly upsetting to someone else, I ought to consider that. However, this does not mean that I should ever regard the one who loudly insists upon all the rules as being strong.
I still have that song in my head.