“Wickedness loves company–and leads others into sin” (Prov. 16:29, TLB). People who aren’t ashamed of their wickedness, or who have been convinced by our godless society that what they’re doing isn’t even wrong, will always try to get those around them to participate with them. It’s a fact of human nature we can’t get around. And when these people are the leaders of social groups, the kind of peer pressure that will exist there is all too predictable.
Overcoming Compulsive Desires by Lester Sumrall
The ideas you swim with affect you in many ways, and the effects may be readily visible or subtle.
And often, you get these ideas from the people you choose to spend your waking hours with, both physically present or through their work like books and articles.
You can’t really say I am influenced by nothing. Because surprisingly, you might be using the toothpaste you are using now because of an ad you saw when you were a kid (mine was Colgate) or a backstory you read ten years ago (I read the history about Pepsodent). So yeah, I end up switching between brands, whatever is available at the local grocery store.
Have you ever noticed how people are easily angered online? It seems that they always see something to feel bad about and are not afraid to tell the whole world wide web about it.
From Why I’m an Optimist:
The words most frequently used to describe today’s Zoomers are not hedonistic, erotic or orgiastic. They are closer to entitled, self-absorbed, anxious, sanctimonious, conformist and complacent. We are known as the generation concerned with the appearance of virtue, rather than virtue itself. We rail against anyone who does not subscribe to a putrid ideological orthodoxy but show no sign of actually enjoying the orthodoxy we preach.
And following this kind of people, convinced by their definition of what is right and wrong, you might begin to wonder, perhaps I need to be more accommodating with perspectives, and I have to be like them. So to be like the people you want to belong to, you become “entitled, self-absorbed, anxious, sanctimonious, conformist, and complacent” just like them.
Isn’t it nice to belong to a group that strongly believes in a cause?
I remember how in one of the recent church sermons, Pastor Sumrall talked about entitlement which teaches people that they should have the things they did not necessarily work for just because they want it. And that these entitled people often cancel others by walking away from those they disagree with.
I’ve heard so much about people canceling people these days.
That is why you must carefully choose what company to keep. Often, the wrong people become violent when they don’t get their way. As it says in Proverbs 16:29 (AMP):
A violent and exceedingly covetous man entices his neighbor [to sin],
And leads him in a way that is not good.
jessa 