October 28, 2010
Bad Company
As maturing believers we sometimes have to pry our fingers off worldly pleasures. Often it’s a matter of chipping away at justifications, rational and our sense of entitlement. For the last few years my local newspaper has become more biased, self-serving and encourages community division. I’ve tried to weigh the need for keeping my finger on the pulse of the community against being sucked into the media toxicity. Yesterday, after a lifetime of being a daily newspaper reader, I cancelled my subscription…and I actually feel a sense of liberation. Although Paul was talking specifically about people, I think his warning can also apply to keeping company with anything that might corrupt good character…say a video game, a novel and yes, even a daily newspaper. “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” (1 Cor 15:33 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I don’t think your premise that I Cor 15:33 applies to video games, novels, news papers, and such needs qualification by demonstrating its similarity to keeping company with people. In as much as people create this stuff, indiscreetly imbibing it is keeping company with those who created it. For company is about sharing in statements of values and propositions. No matter how free of indoctrination a creation may seem, every one of them carries such statements from it’s creator’s particular point of view, most often, purposefully. Culture, community spirit, fads, political and religious alignment, education, and even abiding by the laws of a land are just some of the multitudes of other ways we might keep company without necessarily being face to face.
-----Sociological traits soak into a person in ways she does not even suspect, most more subtle than she is able to even realize. Take, for example, the wearing of trousers. Today, all over the world, with a few excepted areas, both men and women freely wear trousers. We think little of this. But, until the late nineteenth century, it was unbecoming of a woman to wear them, if not a bit disrespectful. Yet, the community’s returned disrespect for her unwillingness to “keep company” by remaining in a dress was somewhat tempered by a well guarded admiration of her independent spirit. A lady who by circumstance had to trouser up and punch cows was acceptable as one of the boys. But the late nineteenth century invention of the practical bicycle sparked a change (not referring to those giant-wheeled, dangerous contraptions or the eighteenth century wooden novelty which was no more than a stick horse on wheels). The bicycle, of all things, became both influence and inspiration for the early woman’s suffrage movement. It sparked a craze for the convenience and free movement it presented, indeed, it became a fad representing freedom and independence. But riding one in a cumbersome dress of those days was like wearing mittens to pit cherries. It just didn’t work. Yet women were not going to be forbidden the pleasures of the bicycle. So they wore trousers, and it became not only acceptable, but also a statement of their independence. Today we see women in trousers everywhere, even in church, and we think next to nothing of it. Moreover, any thought of its impropriety has become unacceptable.
-----So, to be sure, women in trousers are no evil. But trousers and bicycles perfectly illustrate the subtle way multitudes of abject evils gain acceptance into the community mind through the sociological shaping and molding of keeping company with bad character. And the penchant of man’s arrogant heart for rejecting God steeps society in bad company.
-----But we are unable to disconnect from society, as Paul wrote in I Cor 5:9-10, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men; not at all meaning the immoral of this world...since then you would need to go out of the world.” Then the difference between association and company becomes the subtle discretion between using and accepting embedded ideology. If an idea aligns with the truth of the Word, accept it. If it does not, take it captive for its utility in argument for the Word’s truth. Thus a person can keep her subscription to that daily rag in spite of its bias and deceit and either associate with or keep company with those who produce it in discrete accord with the particular fallacies or truths they present in it.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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