All Permissible things are not useful

A restaurant in Las Vegas called 'Heart Attack Grill' came on the news when a customer had a heart attack while eating in the restaurant. People weighing over 350 pounds can eat free there. The menu lists 'triple bypass' burger and 'quadruple bypass' burger with a slogan that says "taste worth dying for." After dinner, you will be taken to your car in a wheel chair by waitresses who are dressed in nurse uniforms.

We may not like to eat at the Heart Attack Grill, but we may sail too close to the wind many times. 'Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food' was a slogan used by the teachers in Corinth (1 Cor 6:13). They believed that the body is going to perish one day and so you may do anything to gratify the body. Paul is trying to direct them to a more healthy and expedient way of life by giving them a new and radically different slogan: "The body is for God and God is for the body." Though the body is perishable, God will redeem it to a a new and imperishable one. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit? Therefore honor God with your bodies" (1 Cor 6:19,20).

Our senses are our only connection to the reality of the outside world. They feed data to our brain which processes the data for decision making. The commercialism is based on the premise that if you can control human senses, heart and mind will follow. When we grow up saturated in a particular society or social group, we can't see that certain common practices are sinful. We embrace these practices as normal and acceptable. These are called 'cultural blinders'. There are many blinders like gambling, alcohol, smoking cigarettes, night clubs, going to the bar, eating unhealthy food and many more. These things are not expressly forbidden in the Bible, but they can seduce us and lead to dangers.

Modern cultural blind spots allow the social and entertainment media to dictate our moral codes. The world of movies, Facebook, Instagram and many others constitue a world of constant display. The desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread when they lose popularity on Twitter. Moral life on the virtual world is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; rather on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion. This creates a set of common behavior patterns that can lead to ruin. Social media can be vicious to those who don’t fit in. Paul's warning thousands of years ago is still relevant. "These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, during the end times” (1 Cor 10:9-11).

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Blessings

Mathew Philip

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