I had a conversation this past week with a friend who has a new teaching job at one of our so-called “inner-city” schools. She told me that she has several students with various forms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (or “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” to give its current official name.) Teaching these children is a huge challenge, because on of the commonest symptoms they exhibit is an innate inability to connect actions with consequences.
I encountered a young man with this condition several years ago. At the age of seventeen, his adoptive mother had almost given up on him. It seemed as if hardly a week went by that she didn’t’ receive a call from the police: “Come and get him at the station.” He eventually ended up in a group home under constant supervision. When his mother asked a police officer what was going to become of him, she was told “He’ll probably spend most of his adult life in jail.”
It is sad, but because he is unable to connect cause and effect, he cannot learn from his mistakes. He doesn’t like jail, but he can’t make the connection between taking stuff from stores and spending time behind bars. It is unlikely that he will ever be a contributing member of society. In his case, the justice system will probably always have the last word. There are many people like him—too many.
I suspect most of you didn’t come here today to hear a public health lecture. Nonetheless, I want to suggest that FAS is a kind of metaphor for the spiritual illness that afflicts much of today’s world. “Spiritual FAS” leads us to believe that there are no lasting consequences to our actions, because we cannot see beyond the immediate gratification of our desires. We do what feels good, assuming that nothing really matters.
I sincerely believe that most people here today are not deeply afflicted with such attitudes. The fact that you have taken the time to walk into a church on a Sunday morning suggests otherwise. Even so, we live in a society in which many people think otherwise, a world increasingly devoted to instant gratification.
But let’s not kid ourselves: in some ways this is nothing new. Human beings have always tried to avoid or deny the consequences of their negative choices. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve made a wrong choice, and then each one tried to blame someone else. Sin had consequences then, and sin has consequences now. And sin had consequences in ancient
God had appointed the prophet Jeremiah…
… over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.[i]
God sent him to watch a potter at his work, and there Jeremiah understood that God could—and would—deal with sinful
We often read this story for its first few verses, which emphasize God’s absolute control. Stopping at verse 6 leaves us with the image of humanity as a lump of clay in God’s hands, ready to be shaped and reshaped until God gets it right.
The reading ends with an invitation to change, to participate in our redemption. What happened to the people of Judah, to whom it was first addressed? We read on, and hear a tragedy. In verse 12, the people say
It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.[iii]
They will not turn back to God, and so God vows that he will
…show them my back, not my face,
in the day of their calamity.[iv]
Actions do have consequences. We are participants in our destinies, invited to share in God’s future—on God’s terms, not ours. The terms may be difficult: just listen to Jesus’ words in the Gospel. But the choice is placed squarely before us, as Moses charged the Israelites:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him…[v]
Moses, Jeremiah, Jesus—all call us to turn again to God, to set our selves to do his will, looking not to our own desires, but the good of all of God’s people. They tell us that our actions have consequences, often far beyond our ability to imagine.
In a world afflicted with “Spiritual FAS,” where people all too often seek only the quick and pleasurable, we are called to bear witness to the eternal and sometimes uncomfortable truths of God.
As this church season begins anew, we hear God’s call to turn, to amend our ways and our doings, and we pray that our wills may be stirred up, that God may richly reward us. We hear, we follow, and we pray. We pledge our continuing faithfulness, and give thanks for the God who is willing to shape and to re-shape us, and to shape us again until we get it right.