If I Give an Inch, Does it Become a Mile?

Vanguard's senior pastor, Kelly Williams, begs a question on Facebook every Tuesday. Each query focuses on the message he's writing that day with the purpose, as I understand it, of stimulating a conversation both for his teaching and our learning, since thinking about these subjects certainly breeds consideration of them. Or so I hope.
This week's question was about Jon and Kate Plus 8. While I have commented sporatically in the past, I don't make it a regular habit simply because I don't always remember to keep track of them each Tuesday. But this one I caught in my feed and answered my gut. Here's what I wrote:
"In a postmodern world, reality tv has found its niche. Our culture talks a good line about the relativism of right and wrong but, if we were really honest about it, we haven't left the modernist black and white of morals behind as much as we'd like to believe. This show started as an exercise in voyeurism. But it fast became what can potentially happen to all of us: you get a little of what you think you want and tell yourself it doesn't matter how you're changing...and before you know it, you have too much of what you never wanted: the absence of all that once mattered to you."
Yes, I believe this is true for this couple, but I can only postulate about their lives...I can live mine. So, I point this lens of evaluation back at myself and acknowledge that this same potential lives within my bones, too. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it lives in yours, too.
We all face the temptation to make little allowances that create big trouble: we even have names for them. We decide we'll tell "a little white lie" or make an exception "just this once." We are concerned, but we "bite our tongue"; we are hurt, but we "take one for the team." We determine that "keeping the peace" is more fruitful than "rocking the boat", not because God says so, but because we're too tired to do otherwise.
I don't confuse this with grace and compassion; indeed, sometimes these very exercises are what we should do in the name of grace and compassion. Giving into the subtle temptations is rarely about doing the right thing and often about doing the easy thing. They're not about giving to another as much as preserving ourselves: that's the difference between the two.

I don't want to sacrifice my black and white, my right and wrong, at the altar of the grey because I'm too tired, too scared, too busy, or just plain too lazy to do better. I want to live boldy. I want to live real. Not postmodern, figure-it-out-as-you-go real, but true to who God made me to be, who He says I am, how He's called me to live...in this, I have hope.

In this, I know what matters.