Advice to My Son 14: Choices Have Consequences

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my life, it is that choices have consequences. Life is like a lot of things, but one thing it is not like is a Road Runner cartoon. In the wonderful world of animation, no matter how many times Wile E. Coyote falls of a cliff and is smashed to smithereens, he always gets up in the next scene and begins his chase all over again.

Would that it were so easy to erase our foolish choices and rash decisions! Alas, we live in a physical, time-constrained, three-dimensional world of cause and effect, where the movement of one thing sets off a chain reaction of other movements that spread outward quickly.

We fool ourselves into believing that we can always take back a bad choice, and indeed, there are cases where a quick repentance and a sincere attempt at restitution can make up for an error in judgment. But most of our choices are not simple ones that take place in a vacuum. To the contrary, they take place along a straight road that gives way to sudden forks and branching pathways that themselves give way to other forks and pathways.

We make a choice that takes us down one of those pathways. Sometimes we realize quickly that we’ve taken the wrong path and turn back to regain the right road. More often our choice of the wrong pathway leads to another choice that takes us down yet another pathway. With each choice we move further and further away from the road. In the end, we get so far off course that it is no longer possible to find our way back to that narrow path that leads to salvation.

I speak here in physical terms, but those branching paths run as well through our heart and our soul. You must understand, my son, that our choices not only determine the lives we lead but the kinds of people we become. Each time we make a bad choice, each time we choose pride or lust or greed over love of God and service to others, we drive ourselves farther and farther down into a self-enclosed narcissistic prison.

Thankfully, God is merciful, and his Spirit will often lead us back along the twisted paths of our rebellion. As Light of the World, Jesus can illumine the road that has sunk into darkness.

Still, God’s forgiveness of our sins does not, in and of itself, remove the earthly consequences our choices set in motion. David’s contrition and repentance brought salvation to his soul but his family was destroyed by his dual sin of adultery and murder. His first baby with Bathsheba died, his sons and daughters brutalized each other in a lurid dance of betrayal and revenge, and the most charismatic of his sons, Absalom, stole the kingdom from him, publicly slept with his concubines, and drove him into exile.

When you are young you feel invulnerable. Life is your playground, and you feel confident that you can always rebuild what you have broken and take back what you have given away. It is a glorious thing that the God of the Bible is a God of second chances. It is never too late to repent and be saved; but be careful, my son, that through your choices you do not make a shambles of your earthly life and legacy.