Maximizing Your Potential

Benefit—Laws Allow for Full Expression Laws also allow us to express ourselves completely within the context of community. Consider what would happen if you bought a house in a nice neighborhood to raise your children in a safe, nonviolent environment only to have your neighbor open an adults-only bookstore. The traffic on your formerly quiet street now quadruples and your children are exposed to unhealthy materials as people come from the shop leafing through pornographic literature. One night a patron is shot in front of your house by his wife, who is enraged by his attitudes and his actions toward her after he has been looking at his girlie magazines. Suddenly, your nice neighborhood is no longer safe. Civil laws help to control what is and is not permitted within a community so that all may enjoy the environment they desire. Although these laws may irritate us because they compel us to act in a certain manner, they permit us to enjoy personal preferences within our personal space. Consider, for example, the following situation. A resident in an apartment complex enjoys listening to classical music, but the young man in the next apartment blares his rock music so loud that it rocks his neighbor’s walls and drowns out her music. If you are the young man who prefers loud rock music, the rules of the apartment complex that control noise appear to be restrictive and binding. For the person in the neighboring apartment, however, the regulations permit her to enjoy her own taste in music. Laws allow each person to enjoy his individual preferences so long as he does not infringe on the freedom of others to do the same. Benefit—Laws Maximize Potential Laws help us to do and be our best. The very laws that restrict negative behavior also encourage and uphold positive attitudes and actions. The classroom rule, for example, that makes the entire class responsible for monitoring cheating and gives a failing grade to anyone who copies from another student’s paper also encourages excellence because it exerts peer pressure for honesty and guarantees that each person will be graded by his or her own efforts. Thus, the law both sets consequences for negative behavior and rewards those who work hard and do their best. The very laws that restrict negative behavior also encourage and uphold positive attitudes and actions. The Bible clearly shows that laws do not restrict positive thoughts and behavior: ...live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is