Everything is permissible, and many things are beneficial.

If you can excuse this blatant distortion of a famous passage of Scripture, I believe I have a valid, and even Biblical, point to make here.

The Apostle Paul originally wrote the following in a letter to the Corinthians, who were apparently trying to justify as much sin as they could get away with, based on the idea of "freedom in Christ":

"Everything is permissible," but not everything is beneficial (1 Corinthians 10:23)

This is certainly a valuable piece of Scripture, that can guide us when we find ourselves tempted to dance right on the edge of the line of sin. It can guide us when we confuse our freedom in Christ for a free pass from God to engage in whatever behavior our hearts desire. I think this is the intent of Paul's words.

Unfortunately, this passage often seems to be used as a kind of all-purpose guilt-trip tool. When there's something we just think is bad or dangerous, but we can't find any clear Biblical teaching against it, we pull this little trump card out of the deck. Game over.

But there's often a double standard. For example, Paul also stated that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10). People always point out, and rightly so, that it's the love of money, and not money itself, so there is nothing inherently wrong with acquiring wealth. In fact, wealth is a very good thing when it is used appropriately. I agree.

But you never hear anyone saying, "Well, you should just avoid the temptation to love money altogether by just not having any." No one counsels a man whose getting a raise by saying, "You know Bob, from a Biblical perspective, you probably shouldn't take this raise. No, there's nothing in the Bible that forbids it, but there's a line, and shouldn't you want to stay as far away the line as possible?"

If Paul says "not everything is beneficial," the other side of that is that there are many things that are beneficial. While we should certainly use Paul's words as an impetus for throwing out bath water, let's keep the baby in the tub.