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
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
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.
Related Newsletters:
Greatest Direction For Our Times
The
Art of Being Father or Mother
Raising Children in the
Modern World