The Consequence of No Consequences
Food for thought from Roman Catholic Man’s guest writer, Fr. Bill Peckman:
“It occurred to me as I was driving back from Jefferson City today, that perhaps the greatest problem we have now is that people have lost any sense that there are consequences in life; consequences that bear on oneself and upon others.
We have erased that sense of consequence out of a burning narcissism that so defines our culture. We have become so selfish that we believe that if my actions or words have consequences at all, that it is either unfair (I hate that word) for me to suffer or for you to notice. If my actions disturb, unsettle, or otherwise creep you out; well, that’s your problem and not mine, you intolerant so and so.
As long as I get what I want, who cares from whom it is taken, who is hurt, or even who dies?
How did we get here? Given the age old sin of Adam as a given, I would say it is because we first became a culture of enabling. We found excuse after excuse to mollify behaviors, constantly absolving of fault, and turning everyone into an unappreciated or underappreciated special snow flake. We stroke self-esteem without exhorting towards the things that led to actual self-esteem. What a nasty little narcotic that turned out to be! Real life consequences were to be protected from and ignored lest accountability and responsibility were resurrected like some long dead monster to come and ravage our hollow hyper inflated egos.
Then culture and clergy took this to its ultimate end with universalism. Everybody goes to heaven…because God is evidently a befuddled unjust brain dead doofus who throws open the door to heaven like Barney on Quaaludes. It is the ultimate erasure of accountability and responsibility. It is the heaven of self-satisfaction.
So what’s the big deal?! Big whoop! Except where there are no consequences there can be no morality other than the morality of tolerance. A tolerance, by the way, that must eradicate any and all entities that profess ideas like consequences and morality. There can be no deviancy or sin in this utopia. Except, life doesn’t look like that. No, cause and effect redound throughout reality. Denial of such is simply bad psychology and science. The only thing that this prolonged denial can produce is copious amounts of anger… a natural byproduct of the mental and spiritual contortions necessary to alleviate reality and its resulting exhaustion.
I don’t see this ending well if we do not reverse course. We better pray and pray hard that truth starts to make a comeback. The only other option is the quick descent into madness that is anarchy.”
Fr. Bill Peckman
