Our text for today is 1 Corinthians 9:22
“To the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”
Of course Paul isn’t saying I AM weak, or I become a dunkard, or a liar. Paul is saying that he does not let the change of the culture around him prevent him from reaching out to other with the Gospel of Christ. He make that clear with verse 23, “I do this for the Gospel’s sake.”
I wish I could say that I am the same way. I admit I struggle with seeing cultures different than mine and accepting them. If I see someone who has pieced their eyebrow or a man wearing a bun I immediately have an impression that I have to overcome.
I come by this naturally. My old grandaddy used to say that women should not piece their ears. He said, “If God wanted you to have a hole in your ear, he would have put one there.” I love my grandad, but he was wrong. That was his culture. I should not hold that against his memory.
If I cannot move with the change around me, I will not help people find Christ.
Of course I resist cultural change. We all do, but it is hurtful to us and those around us,
The other day I read one extreme example of how silly it is to resist change.
In the earliest and best-known critique of writing, Socrates warns his companion that writing will only make human memory weaker:
Plato said, “This invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.” (Plato 1925, 274e–275a)
We remember this, of course, because Plato wrote it down.
Do not change for change’s sake. Do not give up God’s teaching.
But beyond this, be ready to become all things to all so that you can reach out to them.
Lonnie Davis