Living with the Consequences

A five-year-old girl had an older sister who had misbehaved. As a result of her misbehavior, their dad was scolding the older sister. The little girl listened to this with a certain amount of pleasure. At one point, the father said to his older daughter, “Young lady, you have disobeyed me, and you are going to have to live with the consequences.” When the father was through with his speech, the younger girl crawled into her father’s lap and said, “Daddy, when my sister goes to live with the ‘consequences,’ may I have her room?”

Actually, the “consequences” are not a family that you go to live with; they are the results of the actions that you take. Stephen Covey said that while we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. I would agree.

Actions inevitably lead to consequences. We do not live in a vacuum. What we do has an impact on the world around us and upon us as well.

Sometimes the consequences of our actions are hard to predict. There is “the law of unintended consequences.” These consequences may be beneficial or harmful. For instance, many people over the years have taken aspirin for the relief of various aches and pain. Several years ago it was discovered, quite unexpectedly, that aspirin not only relieved aches and pain, it also thinned the blood and decreased heart attacks.

On the other hand, sometimes the law of unintended consequences operates negatively. For instance, in this country in the 1930s, kudzu was introduced as a plant that would stabilize dirt work along roadways and prevent erosion. Whether it ever prevented much erosion or not is debatable. It may have just hidden most of the erosion. There is no debate over the fact that kudzu enjoyed its new environment and gobbled up significant portions of the landscape. And, while I cannot attest to the truthfulness of this report, I have been told that it grows so fast here in Mississippi on warm summer nights that the sound of its growing keeps people awake who live in the area.

When it comes to sin in our lives, the consequences of committing sin are much more deadly and predictable. Sin leads to distress and ruin in our lives. Satan is a master at concealing the real consequences of our sin. He convinces people that sin is the way to happiness and fulfillment in life, and every generation who has lived since the time of Adam has fallen for that lie. Fullness of life never comes that way.

Jesus told us the truth about life. He said that Satan is like the thief who comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Jesus has come that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. Our lives are made up of a few years of choices and an eternity of consequences. All of us will live with the consequences of our choices.