Self-Inflicted

While you don't hear it much these days, in my younger years people used to say, "He shot himself in the foot."  One didn't really need a gun to do that, just an opportunity to make a bad decision and reap the consequences that follow.  I had a chance to watch up close a fairly literal illustration when my oldest brother, Frank (now deceased), shoot a hole in our kitchen floor with a shotgun after saying, "This gun isn't loaded, see..."  Then he pulled the trigger and boy did we ever see and hear has that 12 gauge discharged inside the house.

The reason the gun discharged in the house, creating some additional ventilation, was twofold: 1) Frank made a bad choice and 2) Because it could.  The second reason is what is known as Murphy's Law, which came to be so called when Captain Edward Murphy, who was working on a deceleration project for the Air Force in 1949, cursed a technician for wiring a transducer wrong saying, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will find it."

We have changed the original to, "If it can go wrong, it will."  However, that is a corruption of the original as it takes out the personal responsibility in things going wrong.  Murphy's Law wasn't about things going wrong but rather our making poor choices that cause them to go wrong because they can and will when we are careless.  In the South, "Bubba's Last Words," are a close parallel: "Hold my beer and watch this!"

While we tend to blame bad luck or Divine Providence, the truth is that most calamities are the result of someone's poor use of the freedom of choice.  We make ill-informed, rash, stupid choices.  Recently, a terminal patient recently asked me, "Why did God allow this to happen to me?"  I responded, "Do you think your smoking for 40 years had anything to do with it?"

While there are some natural causes like tornados and earthquakes.  And sometimes cancer is purely genetic.  Even a well thought out plan can sometimes fail due to unforeseeable circumstances.  But on the whole, we shoot ourselves in the foot.  As Moses said, "You can be sure your sins will find you out" (Num 32:23).  And the apostle Paul affirmed this truth in Galatians 6:7, "A man reaps what he sows."

There is a remedy for the self-inflicted wound: Pray, Plan, Proceed.  As Solomon put it, "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans" (Pr 16:3).  Jus' Say'n.