We’re all contagious!
Did you know that? Whether we are medically sick or not, every one of us is constantly emitting contagions that affect the people around us. And we are constantly catching contagions from people near us, contagions to which we are not immune, though we sometimes think we are. Let me give you some examples.
The summer after I graduated high school, my grandfather took my brother, dad and I on a week-long fishing trip up in northern Saskatchewan. And I couldn’t believe it, within a couple days I was saying things like, “Nice day, eh?” and “soary” instead of “sorry.”
Have you ever noticed how yawning is contagious? If you see someone yawn, studies have proven it is much more likely that within the next minute you’re going to yawn too.
Laughing is also contagious, and smiling and frowning, even shivering. If you see someone who’s obviously cold, it triggers in your mind feelings of being cold and you might shiver too.
It’s said that if you have a close friend who is obese you are three times more likely to become obese yourself. There’s lots of psychological reasons for that, but one reason is because when you spend time with a person who has bad eating habits and you watch them eat, it triggers in your brain feelings as if you were eating that way and it causes you to desire to eat like that even more. Another reason is, we like our friends to like us, and if we exhibit self-control in our eating and exercise around them, it may make them feel bad and they may not like us and so we, maybe unconsciously, feel pressure to be like them so that it won’t hurt our relationship.
You’ve probably noticed, some people are like fountains and some are like drains. Some people put air in your balloon, while others deflate it. Ever notice how hanging out with a positive, thankful, joyful person can lift your mood, and how spending time with a “downer,” a whiner and complainer, can drain you of joy and energy? We tend to absorb the feelings and emotions of those around us. I read an article this week written by a doctor. He said he was taught that one way to recognize if a patient is depressed is by examining your own mood once you’ve finished interacting with them. If you feel kind of depressed yourself after you interact with them, it’s a good chance they are depressed.
I think of my childhood and adolescent years and it appears stupidity is contagious too. What possessed me to stand in an open field with my bow and arrow and shoot arrows straight up in the air and then try not to get hit by them? Well, my friend did it.
Emotions, attitudes, mannerisms, language, ideas, perspectives, values, behaviors, style, dress, habits are all contagious. Whether we like it or not, whether we are conscious of it or not, we are influenced by the people we spend time with. And we are, largely, reflections of the people we have been surrounded by in our lives. We are all somewhat like chameleons. We change colors depending on our background.
This is not just a fun fact about human psychology, but it is also a principle God wants to impress upon our hearts.
One of the places in scripture where I think God really wants us to get this is I and II Kings.
Scriptures that teach about the power of social influence
These books tell us about the history of various kings of Israel and Judah. With each king it gives a life summary statement, like “King so-and-so did right in the eyes of the Lord,” or “King so-and-so did evil in the sight of the Lord,” and then it tells of how right or evil he was. Then very frequently, you find a statement that reveals a major factor in why the king was whatever way he was. It’s a statement about a predominant influence in the king’s life, like who he was married to, or who his mother or father was, or his counselors or close friends. Let’s look at some examples.
Influence of a Spouse
The most mind-boggling one to me is that of King Solomon (I Kings 11). Solomon in his early life was full of faith and love for God, like his father David. David had a great influence on him and Solomon was very much like his father. And remember in the dream one night God said He would give him whatever he wanted and Solomon wisely asked for wisdom to lead and judge God’s people well. So God gave him wisdom like no one had ever had. We have a lot of that wisdom available to us in the Proverbs. He was an awesome man of God when you read the first chunk of I Kings. But He did not heed God’s warnings that He’d given through Moses. Genesis through Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are frequently told to not marry those who serve other gods, or they will turn their heart away from God and to other gods. But perhaps Solomon thought he was so strong in his faith and love for God and he was so wise that he was an exception. I Kings 11:1, “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, [Sure makes you question his wisdom. How could you be wise and bring upon yourself 700 mother-in-laws? I don’t know.] and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8 And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.”
So not even Solomon (the wisest man in the world) was immune to the contagions of the people. As I thought about how this could have happened, I realized Solomon probably did not acquire these thousand women all at once. I suspect it was a gradual process throughout his 40 years as king. He gradually brought in these influences into his life. And I think this evil he became involved in was also a gradual development. I can imagine how this would go: He’s got a wife who grew up worshipping another god (some of us husbands know how persuasive a wife can be) and she says, “If you really loved me and cared for me, you would respect my beliefs and let me worship my god, and you don’t have to worship him. I’ll set up an idol and altar on the outskirts of the land and I’ll worship my god there.” So he lets her do that, but then after a while she says, “Why don’t you come with me? You can stay on the camel [or in the car] and I’ll go worship. And then after a while it’s, “Why don’t you come in? They’ve got nice coffee and snacks, and you don’t have to worship. Then it’s, “You know it’s kind of awkward when we’re all kneeling and bowing and you’re just standing there. Why don’t you just go through the motions? You don’t have to actually believe it.” Then if he does that for one wife, he has to do it for the others.
So it’s basically boiling a frog alive. At least, so I’ve heard (never tried it myself). Have you heard how you boil a frog alive? You don’t throw it into a pot of boiling water, because it’ll jump out. You put the frog in room temperature water and then slowly gradually turn up the heat. Since they’re cold blooded, they won’t really notice and they’ll stay there until they’re boiled alive. But I think that sort of thing happened to Solomon and can happen to us. We begin to permit subtle, bad influences in our lives. Maybe we just watch some movies that aren’t exactly wholesome, in a sense they’re godless; we’re watching these people who give God no priority in their lives, they just do what’s right in their own eyes, and they seem so happy and funny and it’s very attractive. But it’s okay we think, just because we’re watching them doesn’t mean we’re going to do what they’re doing. Maybe we just hang out with some worldly people. And we think it’s okay, just because they do things doesn’t mean we’re going to. We do these things and we don’t realize the encroachment on our thinking, our attitudes and our values. The more you see and are around ungodliness and sin, the less disgusted you become with it and the more comfortable you become, it becomes more normal, more acceptable to you. Though we’re supposed to set our minds on things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5), the more we sit before those shows and hang out with those people, the more it distracts our minds toward worldly things. And I think the temperature is rising and we may not realize it.
Then look at I Kings 21:25, “Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD, [why was he so bad?] because Jezebel his wife incited him.” He wouldn’t have been as bad of a guy had it not been for the influence of his wife.
II Kings 8:18 , about Jehoram, “And he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for [Why did he do that?] the daughter of Ahab was his wife. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
II Kings 8:26, “Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah; she was a granddaughter of Omri king of Israel. 27 He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done, [Why?] for he was son-in-law to the house of Ahab.”
And… I’ll just say it plainly. If you’re unmarried, do not marry an unbeliever. Now if you’re already married to an unbeliever, that’s okay, I Corinthians 7 says if your unbelieving spouse wants to stay with you, then stay with them and be faithful to your vows and be the best influence you can be. But if you’re unmarried, and the most important thing in the world to you is your relationship with God, and you want to bring as much honor to God and blessings to other people as you can, then why would you tie yourself to someone like a weight? It’s going to make it more difficult for you to pursue God and minister to other people. I’ve heard frequently from people who want to marry an unbeliever, “But I think I can save him (or her). If I marry him and I spend more time, I think I can.” Maybe, and maybe not, and for how many years are you going to be tied to someone that’s hindering you from helping others and drawing closer to God? So all through scripture, there’s this warning. It’s a repeated story about the affect your spouse can have on you.
But it’s not just who we marry that we need to be careful with…
Influence of those you surround yourself with
2 Chronicles 24:1, “Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. 2 And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.” And Jehoiada in the context, he raised Joash and was like a father figure to him. So all days Jehoiada was alive, Joash did right in the eyes of the Lord. But later in Joash’s life, Jehoiada died and notice 24:17, “Now after the death of Jehoiada the princes of Judah came and paid homage to the king. [So notice here, his father figure dies and the king gets new friends and listens to them.] Then the king listened to them. 18 And they abandoned the house of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.” So it had to do with who was influencing him, who was surrounding him. He was kind of a chameleon and changed colors accordingly.
I Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals.’” He’s saying do not delude yourself into thinking, “The people I hang out with will not affect me or the shows I watch will not affect me or who I marry will not affect me or the places I go and the environment I put myself in will not affect me.” Now just to clarify here, that doesn’t mean we should just withdraw from the world and seclude ourselves from anyone who is not a believer. Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He would build relationships with them, be very kind to them and serve them. We are called to follow in his steps and be the light of the world, the salt in the earth. I think we should do like He did and get to know people, finding out whatever ways we can help them. But also, like Jesus, we need to make it very clear to people that the most important thing in the world to us is our relationship with God and serving God; and if they want to be close with us they’re going to have to change their priorities and love God too. One time Jesus was teaching in a very crowded house, the whole house was packed, they were even gathered outside the house listening to His teaching, and then somebody said, “Teacher, your mother and your brothers and sisters are standing outside waiting for you, they want to talk to you.” And Jesus said, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers and my sisters? It’s these who hear the word of God and do it.” In other words, He’s saying these are the ones I’m really closest to, it’s those who listen to God and obey Him. And I think that should be the same with us; we’re a friend to tax collectors and sinners, but the ones we’re closest to, those we really hang out with, our best friends, are those who hear the word of God and do it.
Just two proverbs and a verse from Psalms and then we’ll end.
Proverbs 13:20, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” You walk with the wise, you become wise. If you’re a companion of fools, you’ll suffer harm. There’s a couple more modern proverbs I came across and they sound a lot like this. One of them is, “Show me who your friends are and I will show you who you are becoming.” Another one is, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I think often that’s about right. It sounds kind of like Proverbs 13:20.
Proverbs 22:24-25, “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.” We don’t realize this is happening, but Solomon had great wisdom into how humans work and he knows when you’re around a hot-tempered person, somebody who gets easily angered, you start to catch their way of thinking and looking at things and their response to things, and it will start to influence you and make you more of an angry person. As I think about that, it makes me want to be very careful at my house, especially with my kids, about the things I say and do. They will pick from me either thankfulness and think about what God’s doing or being a complainer. They’ll learn from me about priorities. What place does the word and prayer have in your home? What place does television have? How do you delegate your time? That will influence those in your home.
Let’s look at one more verse, Psalm 119:115, “Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God.” Whoever wrote that understood that in the company of bad people, it is difficult to be good, and in the company of good people, it’s difficult to be bad.
You know, there’s a lot of influences and company that we don’t really get a choice in the matter. We don’t get to choose who our parents are and we don’t usually get to choose who sits next to us on the airplane. And God doesn’t approve of us just divorcing our spouse if we don’t want them around. So there’s some things we can’t change, but we can make a lot of choices about the influences we have. We can choose what we watch, what we read, who our closest friends are and other influences
From what I see in Scripture those are some of the most important decisions we can make. Those decisions are essentially about who we’re going to be developing into.
-James Williams