A penny for your decision?

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Everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible —but not everything is constructive. - 1 Cor 10:23

Paul said this in the context of decision making. I have been thinking about this since the shepherd meeting on Monday and I think I have some views into this verse regarding how we make our decision.

Permissible? One question we often want to ask is whether the decision that we are going to make is permissible under the authority of God's word. The bible listed in the OT and the NT that there are certain things that are not permissible Yet Paul said that everything is permissible. A lot of times, even as I listened to the teaching about deciding what is beneficial, I wondered why Paul said this, that everything is permissible. My only explanation is, in very summarised form, that under the covering of the new covenant through the sacrifice of Jesus, everything that we do is being covered by His grace and mercy. That's why 'everything is permissible', because we have His covering of grace. I have no time but to say that I derived this from Paul's writing in Romans and other epistles. But to consider this alone without context would be a fallacy. It does not mean that we make stupid decisions or go about sinning, because this principle does not stand alone.

Beneficial? Obviously, this is the next question to ask ourselves. The fact that everything is permissible doesn't mean that everything is beneficial for our spiritual health per se. We can go about doing what Woods or Letterman has done previously but how is that decision going to be beneficial? Of course, the next question is beneficial to what? As I said, to our spiritual health, our spiritual and personal relationship with God (this is a redundant statement because we can't really have a 'physical relationship with God literally until the second coming). It is to this end that we have to ask ourselves this question. That's why the first question has to be asked in context with this second question.

Constructive? Other than permissibility and benefits, we need to look at the constructiveness of the decision. As the following verse says, we need to do good for the sake of others, we need to make decisions that can help to build people up and that are constructive, rather than making decisions that benefits ourselves and nobody else in the end. I think one very common example is going for SEP. It may be beneficial and may not be wrong but at the very end, I think students need to ask if their decision is constructive to God's ministry to them? This applies for a lot of things as well.

The only reason why I decide to post this up is because of the interesting wording that Paul uses. I think we really need to consider why he said 'everything'.

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