When I was in high school, the neighborhood that I grew up in was less than ideal. At the time I did not know this because I had lived there all of my life and didn't think that the living was sub par. The crowd that I was involved in, is hard to classify, but there is no doubt that they could have been bad influences. Many of my friends did drugs, and committed several cases of vandalism. We were a Parks and Recreation Department's nightmare. (One of my friends actually still uses a park bench he stole as furniture.) Although these friends can be classified as criminals, they are some of the best people that I could have met and I thank God for having them in my life. I still hang out with one of these friends every once in awhile. He usually spends his days drinking, playing guitar, and sleeping on my couch. I once was asked, "Why do you still hang out with this guy?" There also a psalms quote that would go against him being in my presence, "Blessed in the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers" (Psalm 1:1). But I think that this quote means don't do what the wicked do and don't mock the wicked. I believe that it is the Christian way to be around sinners, but not to do what they do.
The best example of this is Jesus. All of Jesus' followers were what we would consider to be the low rung of society, such as tax collectors, prostitutes, and people with anger issues. But Jesus never sinned with them, instead he got them to change their ways. The philosopher emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, said in his
Meditations, (And I apologize for this being such a long quote), "Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to mine, not not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of divinity, I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my brother, nor hate him. For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away." In short, what Marcus Aurelius is saying is that, we must cooperate we those who sin, because they can't hurt you unless you let them hurt you. Ultimately, you can't blame someone else for your sin, the only person you can blame is yourself.
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