Unforeseen Consequences

Richard Salbato – April 11, 2009

 

I am a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, which is not to be confused with the true Body of Christ in the Eucharist.  The Mystical Body, also called the Communion of Saints, is a sharing body, a body that shares in all the grace and all the sin within the body.  It has been compared to a real body, where the actions of the brain affect the rest of the body, and a pain in the hand is felt by the entire body.  The Mystical Body is hard to understand for non-Catholics when you include the fact that One Sacrifice of the Mass affects the entire Church and everyone in it.  This is grace and something we do not easily see.  This may seem radical to a non-Catholic.

However, the truth is that good and evil affect everyone throughout the world, knowingly or not. I would like to take a look at the consequences of our actions within a family, a nation, a world and even a generation or millennium.   

Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, but seldom think of the long term consequences of their actions. The only way we can know for sure that we are doing the right thing and the long term consequences are going to be good, even if they don’t seem so at the time, is if the actions are in harmony with theological and natural virtues.  “There is no law against such things” because there is no bad consequences.  (1 Corinthians 13:13)

There might seem to be bad consequences if you are self-absorbed because some people will take advantage of your Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness or Gentleness.  Over time, however, these virtues will always pay good results in relationships and in the life to come.  If you are offended by people’s reaction to your kindness and this upsets you, then the motive for your kindness is not perfect.

The laws of God and the natural law can be summed up in the word “Love” but love cannot be love without the father of all laws – Justice.  Justice means that all people are treated fairly and equally no matter who they are or what station in life they enjoy.  That does not mean they are equal but they are treated equal.

No one is born equal or earns equal rewards for their hard work or actions, but justice requires that they are treated equal in opportunity in relation to their efforts.  Good parents love all their children equally but do not treat them all in the same way, because some earn more and others earn less. 

In all justice we cannot reward the lazy child the same as we reward the hard working child, nor should we.  If we, as parents, violate any of the commandments of God, our children will copy us and also violate these commandments.  This is an example of the bad long term consequences that sometimes we do not see for years.

Create equal rules for everyone and let them compete just like they do in sports.  I think sports are a great education for future life, because there are rules and people to enforce these rules so that the competition is equal.  Someone wins and someone looses but the rules are equal and enforced.  Image a basketball gave without referees?  When the rules and enforcement went away in the banking system, everyone lost.  Even when we had rules and enforcement there were large banks that had unequal enforcement with the government because they were heavy contributors to the politicians.  Imagine paid off referees in a basketball game, and you will see the real history of the major banks in America, which is not true Capitalism.

Enforcement should be in little things as well as big things because if people get away with braking rules in even small things, they will not respect rules for anything. It may seen like a small thing for a pro-football player to miss or come late to a practice but when he misses the next game he sees that this is not a little thing to brake any law. A man who goes to work late should not be angry at being fired.  However, if his parents let him get away with braking small rules, he will be angry at the company who did not treat him the same as his permissive parents.  

Some Christian parents like to bring up the prodigal son as a bible example of rewarding the bad son and making him equal to the good son. These people read this lesson from Christ falsely.  The father showed that he loved the repentant son just as much as the good son, but the repentant son had spent his inheritance and no longer had any.  After the father’s death, the repentant son would no inheritance and have to work for the responsible son.  This is justice.   

The greatest unforeseen consequence I see is weak parents who let their children get away with way too much in their first 18 years of life.  Some children are so weak in personality they cannot take care of themselves and never leave home.  Others join the army not because they love our country but because they want to use the army as another mother and father that will take care of them.  These do not survive the disciplined army or they change.  Others want the government to take care of them for the rest of their lives.  I have even met people who prefer jail to the real world because they get free food and housing.

People who drop out of school because they do not see any immediate rewards for hard work, will see in time that they will not have what hard working students have in the long run.  They may have more fun in the short run, but the long term unforeseen consequences are self evident to us that have lived through this.  Ten or twenty years later these drop-outs will envy and even hate the more successful hard working students that they laughed at years before. 

Drugs are a good example of unforeseen consequences.  Someone tries something as innocent as marijuana and thinks that he does not hurt anyone except himself.  But how he got this marijuana is a long list of people who have been killed, beheaded, jailed or use the money you gave them to addict others to even heavier drugs that kill.

The unforeseen consequences of world wide birth control are just now beginning to evolve as Pope Paul VI predicted.  The first unforeseen consequence was the explosion of illicit sex, homosexuality, divorces, less marriages, and finally a radical fall in birth rates.  This fall in birth rates will be the economic downfall of many nations.  Like America, it will be the financial ruin of the social security net for the elders because there will be more retired people than working people to pay for it.   

This departure from Virtues started with the French Philosophers, who actually preached hatred for virtue. The unforeseen consequence of these philosophies was at first the French Revolution, then the wars of Napoleon, then the rise of Socialism, Communism and Nazism. The results of these philosophers are so far 300,000,000 people killed by their own governments and another 2,000,000 killed in wars. 

 Our flight from absolute truths and virtues have bread Humanistic Psychology and this has bread two generations of students that have no morals.  It has produced a school system that does not teach even though it has the highest cost per student in the world.  Fair and Equal Competition is the great justice in life, but these new psychologists and sociologists do not believe in competition.  They want to eliminate losers by making the smart and the stupid equal, and the hard workers equal to the lazy.

One method of equalizing the smart and the stupid is to demonize success with false sciences like global warming, and this will bring all people to a lower standard of living. 

Logic, common sense and God require us to obey the rules of justice, equality of opportunity and fairness, no matter if it is just civil laws, God’s laws or the natural laws. The job of educators, mostly parents, is to teach these laws, enforce them, and pass on a love for these laws of justice so they can live in the world in peace and love. 

Now let us use our logic and see what the unforeseen consequences are going to be in the next 4 years because of this massive government printing of our money and the massive growth of government.  This is the start of the consequences of parents raising children that want everyone to take care of them the rest of their lives. 

Only a virtue filled life has good consequences even if we never see the consequences in our lifetime. 

 

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