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The Dangerous Weight of Influence
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil
I sat there, water in one hand, reading intently while stern words seeped into my heart. Personal consequence was the only form I’ve ever conceived of sin. If you make the mistake, you pay the price. That’s about right, isn’t it?
But something deeper caught up with me that morning. That phenomenon where something you’d previously studied dozens of times is suddenly something entirely new? This was one such experience, and I realized the strange horror of the cost of negative influence.
The realization hit me like a ton of bricks one quiet morning. Having spent the morning studying my Bible, something I did each day, the stern warning from Jesus leaped from the page:
"If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6 NIV).
Do you know how when you toss one rock into the pond, the ripples travel much farther beyond where the rock was dropped? That’s the nature of doing something wrong. If you sin alone, the damage is there, localized. But the ripples turn into waves when you involve others—whether through temptations of the crowd (peer pressure)…
