Did you ever do anything bad as a child? I’m not talking about trying to kill someone or something insane, I’m talking about anything bad. Something that you knew at the time was not the right thing to do yet you did it. Even if it was something small.
You didn’t understand thinking through the consequences of the actions before performing the deed. One might argue that everything that we ever do has this same pattern. We are confronted with an option to do something (we know is wrong) or to not do something (which we know is right), we decide to do the first thing. Knowing it’s wrong, but not understanding the full weight of the consequences for doing that thing.
It’s nice to think that we only did this when we were younger, but that’s not true. In fact, we still do this, but now, the consequences are bigger. As we get older, what we do has bigger and bigger consequences. People who live continuously in this lifestyle can end up putting themselves in a place that they have consequences that change the course of their entire life.
When you’re a young kid, something like breaking a window seems like the end of the world. Maybe your parents make you work to pay for it and it takes you two months. In your 8-year-old mind, this has completely changed your course of life, but in reality, it’s a rather small chunk of time.
Now, picture the football jock in school who sleeps around with girls at the school and ends up getting a girl pregnant. The decision that he made has an enormous impact on his life. Regardless of whether he marries the girl, tries to ditch the girl. Regardless even if they keep the baby, it will have a life-altering impact on his life.
I believe that if we all could fully see to the future of where our decisions would lead, the world would look very different. For starters, those who are committing atrocities around the world by killing and murdering innocent lives would see that their actions lead to an eternity in Hell. Maybe the thought of that doesn’t convince them, but if you gave them a taste of what the Hell actually was like, I’m willing to bet that they would do everything they could to stop everything they were doing.
On a smaller scale, being able to see the consequences of your actions, even if it’s something as simple as feeling terrible after doing something you shouldn’t have done, would cause many people, including myself to live more purposeful lives that revolve around the important things instead of the things that bring temporary pleasure.
Short term pleasure vs long term gain is never worth it, and giving in to the things that you know you shouldn’t do never, never satisfy you. Never. No matter how they fell in the moment.
Lastly, however, it’s important to note that life isn’t just about avoiding all of the wrong things. As if avoiding all the bad things in life would make us happy. At the end of the day, realize that that’s how people have tried to live for millennia (basically since the beginning of time), but it never works. If you simply try to do all the right things, you will fail, and then you will feel bad about it.
Instead, we haven’t been granted peace and contentment in life by doing all the right things, we’ve been promised that when we surrender all of those things, all our hopes, all our dreams, all our desires, to God, and say, not my will, but your will be done. When we do this, Christ takes the burden from us having to “do the right thing” and says that even when you do the wrong thing, I have taken that and bore those wrongs upon myself. He has paid the price for our wrongdoing.
Does this mean we are free to live in that lifestyle? Paul makes it abundantly clear that that is absolutely not the case (Romans 6:2).
Instead, because Christ has saved us from all wrongdoing, we are able to live a life apart from all of that wrongdoing. We see what he has done for us and want to live a life for him instead of ourselves because we know that if we do, that is what brings true peace and contentment, regardless of circumstances.
All decisions have consequences. Even King David found this out when he sinned against God and ended up losing a child because of it (2 Samuel 12:14-31) We are wise to think through these before making decisions.