• Let’s not •
[<2 MIN READ]
Playing softball, one ACF student managed to get smacked in the chest with a bat. How? I don’t know. It’s college. Weird things happen in college. Anyway, his chest was pretty painful and the other ACF buddies wanted him to go to Student Health Services to get checked out. “It’s fine, I don’t need to go.”
Buddies kept insisting.
Victim kept insisting.
The bilateral insistence continued into the following club meeting.
“It’s probably just a bruise,” I opined to them all, “I wouldn’t go.” “See, Calvin agrees with me,” Victim declared triumphantly. “But your friends are concerned. That counts for something,” I rejoined.
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Victim disappeared, but I thought little about it because students come and go for any number of reasons. When he returned, he muttered dismissively, “They said it was probably just a bruise.”
In 1 Corinthians 8, the apostle Paul speaks to the ways eating food offered to idols can cause unnecessary conflict. “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block…” (v. 8 [ESV, and following]). Some new-church believers had established a bias that made them think eating such food was sinful. Others thought ‘no problem’. Paul connected the issue to strength and weakness of biblical conviction. I insist on no similar assumption in this bruising situation (emotional and physical), but it’s not a stretch to create a connection to this passage for application purposes.
I extend my affirmation to both sides by pointing again to Paul, this time in Philippians…
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).
FINE PRINT [CCOmmentary #6 for 2025’10’17’F] *Thanks to Art Garfunkel (YouTube. Time stamp: 00:26, after piano introduction).¶Text: Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
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