Consequences – You Don’t Avoid Them Series

CONSEQUENCES – YOU DON’T AVOID THEM

[A]. INTRODUCING THE SUBJECT –

All of us know that if we trip on a set of stairs, we will tumble down. If we drive too fast around a sharp road bend, we are likely to skid off the road. If a branch separates from a very tall tree, it falls down and hits the ground. If we spend year after year lying in the topical sun with no shirt on, getting red like a beetroot a lot of the time, we know we are good candidates for skin cancer in later life.

On the other hand if we take a lovely present to a sick child in hospital, we are likely to receive a smile. If you do a good deed to for a very needy person, you receive their gratitude, unless the person in an ingrate.

What we are looking at here are consequences. A law of physics says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A ball bouncing from a certain height that lands on concrete will rebound to another assured height. If dropped from a higher height, it bounces higher.

Some of the examples cited in the opening paragraph work according to set laws. These laws do not change. There is the law of gravity, the law of motion, the law of velocity to put it in layman’s terms.

From where did these laws originate? For those who claim some big bang formed everything, and that evolution explains all life on the planet (in other words, God is cut out of the equation), I would like you to enlighten me how all these laws of nature, and of science, and of Mathematics, came into being, for mindless randomness is incapable of logical design and intelligent thought. The result would be utter chaos with no connection.

The whole universe is held together by really complex laws and Mathematical formulae, but within that we could state another law – THE LAW OF CONSEQUENCE.

Everything has to answer to consequence.

Walk on jagged cut glass = a bleeding, cut foot.

A cut foot = it will bleed.

Spray a blowfly = it will die (if sprayed correctly).

Continue not to water a pot plant = it dies in time.

Leave the oven on too long when cooking = burnt food.

Steal something from your business and you get punished (fined, dismissed, demoted, etc.). Even though you may get away with that crime, it does not mean you avoided consequences. You just delayed them.

Man has set up Law Courts to deal with crimes and disputes. Judges and juries are supposed to hand down just decisions in cases before them. Maybe we can call those places “Courts of Consequences”. That idea must have been in the mind of Gilbert who wrote the songs for the Operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. These words are from The Mikado (1885):-

[[“My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time—

To let the punishment fit the crime,

The punishment fit the crime;

And make each prisoner pent

Unwillingly represent

A source of innocent merriment,

Of innocent merriment!”]]

“Let the punishment fit the crime”.

Everything in nature (such as the water cycle) and in all human behaviour, has consequences. There are no exceptions. What we may perceive as something lacking consequences may be because we are focussed on a certain outcome and miss the proper consequence. Closely associated with Consequence is Cause and Effect.

In our world all actions are so closely connected with the outcomes, that it is impossible for us not to think of consequences in every situation. That is what causes us to drive safely on the road. It causes us to think about Avoidance in so many situations so we keep safe and healthy.

I have lost friends to pancreatic cancer and to strokes related to excessive alcohol. I lost my father at 64 through lung cancer because of heavy smoking.

The Hubble and James Webb telescopes have shown incredible wonders of God’s creation. In some of the released images, I was impressed with the collision of two galaxies. Galaxies are huge. Our own Milky Way is about an average galaxy and is 100,000 light years across and 10,000 light years deep. Considering light travels at 299,792 kilometres a second, it makes a galaxy absolutely enormous.

BUT even galaxies, and indeed, the whole universe, are governed by the laws God implemented, so that when two galaxies get too close, the gravitational attraction pulls them together so they collide. It is simply CONSEQUENCE!

[B]. A BIBLICAL PRINCIPLE

In the bible we can trace where Rules were implemented and consequences for those broken laws/rules were spelled out. Adam and Eve operated under the very minimum of rules, but still failed, and they bore the consequences of that. The best example of this is the Law of Moses, and here is just one sample of laws and consequences:-