If at some point in my past I had had training as a sociologist, or even in statistics or accounting, I perhaps would have made up a list of the different kinds of questions I have been asked over the years as I have spoken in a variety of places. I would have tried to make an analysis of those questions in terms of their frequency to determine what really are the chief problems that concern Christian people. I think if anybody would ask me what is the number one question in whatever form it has been asked, I would say that it is about the will of God.
People ask it in terms of marriage and want to know who it is they should marry. Or they ask it in terms of a career. They wonder what field they should enter, and what college they should attend in preparation for that field. They ask about specific jobs and whether or not they should accept a certain position. These and other matters are the common things that are often on our minds. We want to know what the Lord’s will is for us in these areas.
Within that I would say there is a special and also very prominent category that has to do with knowing the will of God in doubtful situations. I say it is a special category because when you talk about a job, for example, generally speaking, when Christian people face that, it is not a doubtful situation. You might have doubt about what you should do, but in the long run it does not make a whole lot of significance whether you take a job with company A or company B. Not a lot is resting on that in terms of your Christian witness and testimony.
But there are areas in which we have significant questions about the given choice we will make. Should we take a stand in a particular situation? Maybe that action is not the right one to take, or perhaps it will be misunderstood. When we really do not know what we should do, we wish that the Bible were more clear. But the Bible does not address every situation in which Christians find themselves today. Some, for example, believe that it is always wrong for a Christian to go see a movie. Others do not feel the same way, and will decide on the basis of the content of each movie. What the Bible does do, rather, is lay down principles by which we should live. And it is those very principles with which we sometimes have a problem.
In chapter 8 Paul gets into a matter that we would call a doubtful situation. He discusses it, not merely in chapter 8, but in a portion of chapter 9, and even into chapter 10. As we look at this, we will see that the issue was not one Christians face today, at least not those in the West. But we have our doubtful areas, too, and what Paul has to say is of help for us in dealing with the doubtful situations in our own time.
