The Effects of Our Bad Choices in the Past

How Our Wrong Choices Affects Us?
A Devotional Study on 1 Corinthians 10:1-15

I was watching a medical show on television, it was featuring ebola virus, SARS  and HIV, which the resource person stated that they were originally  transmitted to humans by eating monkey's meat. I heard and read about this fact from the internet and other magazines, but only this moment I thought of two things: One, was it poverty and famine that drove those people to eat monkey's meat? Second, if those meat were not eaten by the very first people responsible for transmitting the diseases, is the existence of these diseases a probable zero?


HIV Originated from Monkeys, not chimps


The show led me to think  about Adam and Eve:  What if Eve didn't eat the fruit of knowledge and instead disperse the Satan in the form of snake to leave her alone? What if Adam chose to be with his wife, Eve at that time? Perhaps, Eve would not be tempted?

Eve's choice to eat the fruit of knowledge and persuade her husband Adam to do the same, led to the fall of mankind, making all generations born after them sinners and predisposed to do evil more than good. The couple's choice led to their being driven from the garden of Eden, closing the door of heaven to all mankind. But their choices led God our Creator sent the Savior Jesus Christ, to save mankind from the consequences of our ancestors' wrong choices.

The Bible, Romans chapter 5 (NIV)

The choices we make always have effects to us and to the people surrounding us, even to the environment where we live. It is a law in nature called The Law of Cause and Effect.

Going back to the past before generations were born, the Bible, the early men made choices that impacted the generations to come, whether for good or for bad. The New Testament attested to this fact, as it discussed in the writings of Apostle Paul in ! Corinthians 10: 1-15. Paul exhorted the people to make right choices to reap good effects. To this I drew a table to clearly understand what Paul wants us to learn:


The Bible, 1 Corinthians 10:1-15

1. Desired Action: To Have  Something ---> Right : Ask, Work for it  -> Effect: pleases 

                                                                                 God. He will aid you to have what you desires.
                Wrong  :  Lust After things --> Effect: Displeases God, You hurt yourself & others.


          2. Desired Action: To worship --> Right : To God    --> Effect: blessings
                                                                Wrong: To idols  ---> Effect : calamities, plagues, perversions


          3. Desired Action : Sexual Intimacy ---> Right : Within Marriage --> Effect : love, harmony
                                                                                                                                      blessings
                                                                            Wrong: Outside Marriage ---> Effect: STD's,
                                                                                                          unhappiness, unwanted children


           4. Desired Action: Obey Christ ---> Right:  Obey & Follow ---> Effect: blessings
                                                                     Wrong: Tempt Christ ----> Effect: Death, plague


           5. Desired Action: To be Thankful ---> Right: Be thankful. Be grateful -->Effect: People will
                                                                                                                                  always care
                                                                     Wrong: Complain, Nag -->Effect: destruction



If only mankind has made right choices in the past, perhaps there's no global warming, no incurable diseases like HIV, ebola, SARS and the like. If only we made right choices in life, we avoid relationship failures, unwanted and unhappy children, depressions, and suicides. If only we used our knowledge to make right choices in the past, perhaps things are better today. This might be a euphoria-kinda-thought, but hard truth knocks hard. Now, we are living, with the past cannot be undone, lets make right choices, not out of emotions or principle but out of the context of what is truly right and good.

       
Finding it hard to make the right choices? God has promised that even before we make a step to choose, he assured us that His wisdom is available for us to seek, and in His omniscience, He knows the outcome of our actions...yet in His faithfulness to us, He reminds us not to copy or follow the wrong choices of the past. Enough is enough, but in case our frailty overtook us, Paul  said,
" No temptation has overtaken you except such is as common  to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it." 1 Corinthians 10:13.



"To admit a weakness is the key to be stronger."