Consequences

I've been thinking about something a lot lately, and venting a bit to my fiance, (I'm engaged by the way!) Anyway, I've noticed a lot of lately people trying to avoid the consequences of their actions. One of the basic things I learned as a child, is that every action has consequences, whether good or bad, and we need to learn to accept them. We also don't get to choose the consequences, other than that we generally know what they are before we make the our decisions. We generally know the possible consequences of our decisions.

For example, a girl who decides to have sex has to know that a possible consequence of her action is pregnancy, even if she uses protection. I recently went to my doctor, since I am getting married, and she gave me a paper with different methods of birth control, and something I noticed is that not one of them was 100% effective in preventing pregnancy. The closest it came was 99%. So it seems to me, that any girl should be aware that if she is having sex, the possibility is there that she might get pregnant.

Now along with this, comes abortion. Abortion is nothing more than the attempt to avoid the consequences of your actions. Oh, there is the occasional case of rape that results in pregnancy, but I doubt that a significant percentage of abortions performed are for these cases. So generally, it is a selfish attempt to avoid the consequences of choices you have already made. A co-worker of mine the other day asked me if I don't believe in choice, and I told her sure, I'm pro-choice, in that I believe you already made your choice, when you chose to have sex. I think the whole pro-choice thing is another part of the delusion that we don't have enough self-control to not indulge in premarital sex, which I find insulting. I am 28 years old, and I have never been with a man, by choice. And I know other women my same age, or close to it, who have made the same choice. We chose to control our actions, and therefore have more control of our lives.

But I didn't mean for this to become a lecture on chastity and morality, so I will move on. Another prime example of people trying to avoid the consequences of their actions, is the economic crisis we are in now. This was not an accident. It was not caused by the government. It was caused by people being greedy. Companies that are largely involved in keeping the economy stable got themselves deeply in debt because of greed. To much was bought on credit, and credit is not real. Eventually, it had to come tumbling down, and it did.

This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. A realtor I know explained to me that she saw it coming, as did many of her colleagues. Banks were giving out mortgages as if they were candy. Credit was entirely too easy to obtain. I was a student at BYU and had a couple of credit cards I had gotten over the years, and when I decided to buy a car, I looked into my credit in preparation. I hadn't paid much attention to my credit cards, since I very rarely used them, but as I checked it, I realized that the limit on my oldest credit card, the one I hadden gotten through my bank right after my mission, was $15,000! And I was a college student, with a net income of MAYBE $500 a month. What on earth were they thinking at that bank? They knew how much I made, my work made direct deposits to my account. What made them think I could possibly afford to make payments on that kind of credit if I was foolish enough to use it?

And so now that the Piper has come calling, no one wants to take responsibility for their own actions. They want the government to buy them out, while at the same time blaming the government for not regulating their spending and excesses. As if they should not be responsible for controlling their own money! Are they children, playing with all this money and power? And hasn't so much of the energy of politics been poured into keeping the government out of business? Even a few years back, when people messed up big, they took responsibility for it. But now, all these CEO's are blaming everyone but themselves for having brought down old companies.

Ok, I feel like I have vented a bit too much, but this is something that has bothered me for several months now. I'll just say I am grateful for the church teaching us to stay out of debt as much as possible, and grateful that I am in as good a position financially as I am right now, and pray that my family won't be to terribly affected.