Coerce: (v) to persuade an unwilling person to do something by using force or threats.

Broken things need to be fixed. It’s just the honest-to-god truth.

Holding lives–or even damaged tables–together with a few temporary solutions just never works. Broken things always break apart even further–just at the worst times.

So somebody came up with the idea to take broken people, and try to degrade them in a pit of fear, hoping to coerce them into “being good” simply because they’re terrified of digging a deeper grave.

Sometimes we call it religion.

Other times, it’s just a series of laws put in place to intimidate.

But rather than healing the broken and making them stronger, we decide to prop them up with threats.

It never works.

You can never scare a teenager out of drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

You can never frighten a sinner from committing adultery.

And you can never coerce people who think they’re good to ever consider getting better. 

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