Permissible vs. helpful

Paul said that all things are "permissible" for me but not all things are "helpful" (1 Corinthians 10:23)---which I have always taken as an option. I was fine with "permissible" for years. I didn't need to be the first in line in heaven as long as I was in the pack.

Honestly, I didn't even really know what "permissible versus helpful" meant, seeing as I have no struggle with foods offered to idols, that being the original context of the Apostle's remark. But you can be sure that if I ever wanted to go some place or watch some movie or marry some guy, permissible won out every time.

That is why until now I had no idea what blood-and-guts warfare is activated when one begins to contemplate going for helpful over permissible. It engages depths of the mind never before explored and stops at floors of my psyche that my elevator has never stopped at before.

Sin makes you think it has a loose grip on you---until you exert the slightest effort to shake free. There's the old joke: "I could quit smoking any time I want; I've done it a hundred times." I started thinking that maybe I should not read a certain letter I found in a box of letters a friend asked me to store because it might not be "helpful." You would have thought that would settle the matter, but it was then that "permissible" started yipping and growling, though it had lain like a sleeping dog all the years I used to pet it.

You don't know how much Bible you know until you give a serious shot to pursuing "helpful." You start to see that the attitude "I don't care if it's 'helpful,' as long as it's 'permissible'" is like saying "I don't care about the glory of God. Or at least I don't care to go overboard with it." Tease that out a little further and it's "I'm saved, leave me alone." This is the reasoning of a person who is drunk on cheap grace.

Now that I have bothered to scratch 1 Corinthians 10:23, I have found many things in my day that are perhaps permissible but not the best---permissible but not to the maximum glory of God. And I have come to understand that if I go with permissible it is sin for me. I know too much now. I can ask my friend David that question I am curious to ask him---a question is just a question. But now I can think of a handful of reasons why it is not the best thing to do: Could hurt him, could hurt me, is not in line with the command to think about "whatever is true . . . honorable . . . just . . . pure . . . lovely . . . commendable . . ." (Philippians 4:8).

"Oh, that's OK," says the rousing pit bull. "You're getting over-scrupulous. You're becoming a fanatic, and don't think people won't say so."

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