When I am with my friends I go along with things I would never do alone. How do I stop caving just to keep the peace?

“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:”

This line sits inside Israel's civil law, in a section about giving honest testimony in court. The concern is that a crowd generates its own gravity, and that ordinary decent people will swear to things they do not believe rather than stand alone. Israel was told to expect that pull and to name it in advance. The pressure is ancient, not a private weakness of yours.

“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”

Paul quotes a line from a Greek play here, common wisdom his readers already knew, and turns it on a church that had argued itself into positions its friendships made comfortable. His point is unsentimental: company shapes character quietly and over time, not by persuasion. Who you spend your Friday nights with turns out to be a spiritual question and not only a social one.