Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up (Romans 15:2)
Suppose your neighbor had a house that
desperately needs work and you agreed to work on it. How would you respond if
the neighbor asked you to put in an inground pool half of which extends into
the house ten feet? Or, if they told you to install holes in the roof? Suppose they
insisted that you install wiring that is not to code, or that you mount razor blades
on the floor. Would you insulate with asbestos? Would you do it to please them?
Most of us would like this verse to
end with the word neighbors when we are the neighbor to be pleased
but we’re all about deciding what is “for their good” if we’re the ones called
on to do the pleasing. We think we know best how to build our own houses as
well as the houses of our neighbors. We’d never put asbestos in the walls or
razor blades in the floor, or expose the neighbors to the cold they’d face if
they had a pool that extended through the wall of the house, or holes in the roof.
No matter how much they claimed it would please them, we’re just not that
cruel.
But then we get on social
media and we’re told that we should please women who claim they have a right to
harm other people. We’re told we should
please people who want to normalize the use of toxins, or who want to do themselves great harm under the misguided
notion that mutilating their bodies will make them happy. We don’t have the
right to speak against these things or deny them their “rights” but when it comes
to their pleasing us, they pronounce that what pleases us is not good for us,
and we must be denied our pleasures for our own good (or theirs.)
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