The Consequence of Choices
When I was younger, my mates and I rarely gave thought to our actions; we just did things on the spur of the moment. But as we got older we realised there were consequences to the choices that we were making.
One night we were in Steve’s house. We were sat there listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers, smoking draw, and this bloke came walking in, a real skinny guy, and he sits down. And then Steve comes in and says, 'I want to introduce you to my brother. This is my brother, Tommy.' 'Nice to meet you, Tommy. Are you alright?' 'Yes, I’m alright.' He said, 'Tommy has just got out of prison after doing three years for burglary.' Then halfway through the evening, Tommy told us that he’d just had some heroin. Do you know what, we were intrigued. We were like ‘Wow!’ He’d just had some heroin. I remember thinking how does heroin make you feel? Three days after that we had some, and we were disappointed with the effect. It didn’t give us the buzz that we were expecting. Regardless of that, we had it again a few days after, then we had it again, and before you knew it we all became heroin addicts. Do you see what happened? We chose to take heroin for the first time and the consequence of that choice was addiction.
There are consequences to the choices that we make. If you choose to smoke, the consequence can be lung disease or cancer. If you choose to have sex that’s unprotected, the consequence can be sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. If you choose to do crime, the consequence can be prison.
One of the oldest stories out of the Bible is about two people who made bad choices – Adam and Eve. One day Adam was talking to God in the garden and he said 'God, why did you make Eve so pretty?' And God said, 'Because I wanted you to like her.' And then Adam said, 'But why did you make her so stupid?' And God said, 'Because I wanted her to like you.' Adam and Eve were in the garden and God said they could pick off any of the hundreds of trees but one, that one tree that gave knowledge of good and evil, but they chose to eat from it, and the consequence of that choice is that people were separated from God and all of life’s imperfections spilt out into the world. That’s why Jesus had to come to mop up the mess that they’d made.
There are consequences to the choices that we make. James Foss said: ‘In this life we have to make many choices, some are very important choices, some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine our futures, because we have to live with the consequence of our choices.’
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