Unintended Consequences

     This is the first summer in recent years in which Kalispell had a non-smoking section. I could go outside, see blue sky, and breathe clean air, even in August. This is in spite of, not thanks to, environmental groups who have protested every timber sale for decades. But instead of losing millions of trees to logging, we lost millions of acres of trees to forest fires. The unintended consequences of protecting forests from human management were disastrous fires that not only burned the trees and animals activists wanted to protect, but later caused landslides that destroyed homes and polluted rivers, killing even more creatures. Although groups still sue to stop timber sales, I'm sure their member's enthusiasm cooled when many of the houses that burned were their own. The methods they now teach those who live in the woods to mitigate the danger of forest fires is what used to be called--logging. And the protect by neglect movement is gradually burning out.
     But there are worse consequences than forest fires. For most of my six decades, American culture has been protesting the validity of objective truth or standards, not to mention the God who established them. We want the right to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong. The unintended consequence of doing what is right in our own eyes is that some people have really dirty lenses. They see nothing wrong with things as abhorrent as pedophilia and mass murder. After a shooting, there is a national outcry--How could anyone do that? We already have the answer, but we don't want to hear it. Without objective standards, or a God to answer to, the shooter's viewpoint is as valid as anyone else's.
    Human culture is subject to the same principles as the natural world--intentional or unintentional, all actions have consequences.Whether we are choking on smoke or gunpowder, something precious and irretrievable is going up in flames.