Unintended consequences

Most decisions are made with careful planning and with a desire to improve some situation. However, despite the best of intentions, these decisions often come with unintended consequences. These are the consequences that no one saw resulting from the decision that was made. These might be positive or negative. A positive unintended consequence might be a newly developed drug that was found to have healing power for another disease that was not expected when it was being developed. An example of a negative unintended consequence might be the higher number of women and children who would fall below the poverty line when no-fault divorce laws were enacted throughout the country.

Churches can make decisions that result in unintended consequences. A clear example of this is a church that decides to build a new facility believing that "if we build it they will come." In some cases, not only do new people not come, but long-term members who opposed the new building leave the church resulting in a large debt that must be paid for by fewer people attending the church.

Jesus told us to count the cost when we are making our plans. Certainly, we need to consider any unintended consequences that might result as a result of any decisions we might make. Rushing into a decision is seldom a good idea because doing so is almost guaranteed to result in unintended consequences.

Some communities are trying to do away with their police departments. Others are attempting to take money out of police budgets. All of this is the result of recent police actions which has led to demonstrations across the country. There is no question that some of these actions were unacceptable and individuals need to be held accountable. But, does anyone really believe that eliminating the police departments is the answer to solving these kinds of problems? Can the people promoting this not see the unintended consequences that would result from eliminating police departments? Or do they have another agenda altogether? There are so many obvious negative consequences associated with doing away with police departments that it is hard to even refer to them as unintended consequences.

There are better steps that can be taken such as better screening of candidates, minority recruitment, better training, better funding, the return of regular beats where the police and individuals get to know one another better, and finding ways to connect the police to the community they serve.

When I did a study of bivocational pastors a few years ago I found that some of them were serving as police officers in their communities. There is no problem with Christians serving as police officers, and we should see more Christians seeing this as a possible life-calling. Talk about a way to impact people's lives! There could be a real opportunity for positive unintended consequences in such a calling.