A friend in recovery asked me not to drink around him. I do not think I am doing anything wrong, so does his struggle really have to change my behavior?

“Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.”

This sits in a chapter of laws about ordinary neighborly life, mixed in with paying wages on time and leaving grain at the field edge for the poor. The command protects people whose vulnerability could easily be ignored, and it ends by invoking the fear of God, since nobody else would ever see it. Israel's holiness was measured by how it treated the person who could not push back.

“But take heed lest by any means this liberty of your's become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.”

Paul is answering Corinthians who had worked out, correctly, that meat offered to idols was only meat. He agrees with their theology and then tells them their knowledge is not the deciding factor in the room. Freedom exercised in front of someone whose footing is unsure can become the thing that trips him. Love, in Paul's framework, is willing to lose an argument it could win.