This is a very tough choice: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8,9). Jesus is addressing the fact that evil likes convenience. Evil looks for a glide path from easy access to something to someone misusing it. That’s why we don’t let children play with matches.

We face difficult choices as a society (so-ci-e-ty noun: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community). When should we restrict access to something because it is disordering us? Overprescribing opioid painkillers led to the heroin epidemic that seems intractable. Availability of military weapons to the general public made it easier for madmen to kill lots of people. What do we think legalizing pot will lead to? I know. There’s money to be made.

Not everyone with two hands steals with them or with two eyes looks at pornography. Not everyone who needs to take a pain pill becomes addicted. Not everyone who owns guns wants to shoot people. But when the prevalence of something destabilizes everything, it may be time to cut some of it off.