At his store in Orchard Park, My dad had one of the largest apple displays in Erie County. I remember one year when we had twenty-six different varieties of apples on display. These apples would come in large wooden totes that would contain forty bushels of apples. We would have to break those down into bushels, half-bushels, and eight quart baskets for different displays. It was a lot of work.
We would have to sort through the apple displays, looking for the one bad apple, and remove it from the others. One bad apple very quickly contaminated those around it. It was amazing how fast rottenness would spread. The work of sorting through displays was endless.
And it was not just with apples. The same would occur with peaches, nectarines, oranges, etc. The good fruit never made the bad fruit better. The bad fruit always made the good fruit worse. It had a corrupting effect.
1 Corinthians 15:33 says, "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."
There is much evil in communications today. Much of what is on television, the internet, movies, and music is evil. We are told to not be deceived. Do not think you can watch and listen and not be affected.
As we see believers involving themselves in these evil mediums, we see more and more good manners being corrupted. Good manners are being corrupted in the home, the church, and the government.
Companions can also corrupt us. Proverbs 29:24a says, “Whoso is a partner with a thief hateth his own soul.” A person can affect the spiritual part of his being - his soul - by hanging around a bad person.
We need to be in the world, but not of the world. 2 Corinthians 6:14 says, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" Verse 17 says, "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,"
For the sake of our spirituality, we need to recognize some forms of communication and some people as "bad apples" and stay away from them. They are sure to corrupt us if we allow them to influence us. "Sort out" your life from time to time and get out anything that is rotten.
