Fire In Our Laps
The question more often asked in this age, isn’t should I do this but instead, how much can I get away with, without getting caught? If you were not charged on your bill for the soup you added to your order, would you correct the oversight? If you were given too much change by the cashier, would you give back the difference? Do you complain when the only reason for your complaint is to lessen your charge or gratuity? Would you ask an unemployed person to do your chores and then compensate them unfairly to save yourself a few dollars? Would you cheat on your trusting spouse because you know you can, without getting caught? You can see where this is going. It starts with little things and before too long, we are destroying lives that we’d never initially intended. Proverbs 6:27 “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned“? One problem is that we either arrogantly believe that our character is impervious to damage or that we’ve modified our definitions of right and wrong based on what most pleases us in the moment. Would the fact that 3 of our 4 friends are being unfaithful to their spouses, justify such behavior on our part? The answer of course is no, but we may still be unable to pass by the attraction if we accept such behavior by those around us.
Our ability to rationalize unacceptable behavior has grown to epidemic levels. What we’ve termed as the golden rule, has become antiquated by our pleasure expectations. Matthew 7:12, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets“. This advice or as Jesus more appropriately termed it, “Law“, has lost it’s power as our addiction to pleasure and play has taken on greater importance to us than the penalties or retributions of getting caught or challenged for our transgressions. Yet in our unbalanced thinking, many (extremists) still expect loyalty from some while displaying none in return. For those of us raised in other times, this is hard to accept, as it should be. I’ve operated under the golden rule for most of my life and it’s a good but not perfect rule. For example, even if we didn’t care if our spouses cheated on us, such behavior on our part is still never justifiable in the eyes of God. When we scoop the fire of excitement into our laps, our clothes and those of others will scorch, but more importantly our soul beneath will one day feel the very real pain from our adventurous choices.
JC Calkins with COMMON SENSE 4 UNCOMMON PEOPLE (share comments with us & spam with others)
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Thanks for some quality points there. I am kind of new to online , so I printed this off to put in my file, any better way to go about keeping track of it then printing?