Natural consequences hurt.

Close your eyes and imagine standing in the presence of God the father.  What does he look like?  For most of my childhood the picture in my mind’s eye was very clear; he was large and grey haired, sat a pale horse well, and usually wore a denim shirt.  He was gruff and unyielding; but he liked me.  He was always there even when I didn’t want him to be.  He knew everything, he could do anything, and nobody messed with him.  He was just like my Grandpa.

Grandpa was referred to with fear and reverence by all of us cousins as <em>the Duke</em>.  I spent my summers working, playing, and learning in his shadow.  The lessons were as constant as my creative disobedience and general immaturity required. 

My chores on <em>the Duke’s </em>ranch included the feeding and medication of a bull calf.  I raised a calf every year and gave them names fitting their destiny like Wellington, and Pot Roast.  They were known as drop calves because they came from the dairy auction.  I would go to the feed lot with Grandpa and sit on my hands for fear of making an unwitting purchase while picking my nose or scratching my head.  Grandpa would buy a calf, we would load it into the truck, and we’d be back home in time for breakfast.

Before sunrise each morning I would roll out of bed and head for the pens.  I imagined myself as skillful as Lariat Sam, roping the calf and effortlessly looping the line around the center pole of the corral.  The reality was quite different.  The job included the simple task of roping the calf to be medicated and bottle fed.  It was complicated by the fact that back then eight week old calves out weighed eight year old boys.  It was also clear that they did not enjoy being roped before breakfast, particularly when the meal included a hot dog sized pill.  The medication treated scours, the bovine version of colic.

One such morning I was having a particularly rough time.  The new Angus bull calf had been roped easily enough but had no interest in being tied to the center post.  He had dragged me through the ochre slime and knocked me into the fence.  I’m sure I made that cartoon anvil-to-the-head noise before I snagged the rope and rose to plant my feet.  Angry, humbled, and determined, I thought of the most potent cuss word I knew.  Throwing my weight toward the center pole I commanded, “Come here dammit.”  I looped and tied the rope neatly to the pole and stood back to survey my solitary victory.  “Is that the calf’s name” said the quiet voice of the Duke.  <em>How did he do that?  He’s always just there</em>  “No sir”, I replied in hushed tones.  “It is now” he said, and he went about his work.  I didn’t hear another word about it that day or the day after. 

As usual the entire clan sat down for dinner on Sunday.  My grandpa sat at the head of the table and I sat near the opposite end.  I think I was across from my Volga-German immigrant grandmother and next to my mother the kindergarten teacher.  We were in the satiated quietness that punctuates the place between stuffed and pie.  Then it happened; he removed his tooth pick, leaned back in his chair and donned a puzzled look.   “Now Scotsman, what was that calf’s name again?”  I glanced at my grandmother and my mother and then looked back at he-who-must-be-obeyed.  “Uhhh; Dammit sir” We repeated this ritual every Sunday until that wretched animal took his rightful place in the meat locker.

This was not the last time that my grandfather used logical consequences to guide me toward maturity.  Many years later I learned that Alfred Adler had similar ideas.  Adler was a contemporary of Freud’s, but his ideas were so similar to grandpa’s that I pictured them discussing character development down at the feed lot.  Grandpa would make his point and Adler would respond with his thick Austrian accent and wild gesticulations that would result in many accidental livestock purchases.

Back in reality, Adler did share his ideas with Rudolf Dreikurs who developed a practical method of dealing with children using logical consequences to instruct and guide.  The hope is that logical consequences may save the child from suffering the more severe and lasting natural consequences.  Maybe Dreikurs also had a grandpa who caught him smoking a cigar behind the barn.  “So, you like cigars” he said, as he materialized behind me.  “Uh….yes sir?”  “Well that’s good, because what you don’t smoke you are going to eat.”  I tried my second (and last) cigar about four years ago.

Jesus was on the farm with his guys when he described his use of the same concept.  “I am the vine, and my father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”  He is certainly talking about the need to be connected to the life-giving vine.  The natural consequence of an inadequate or non existent connection is ineffectiveness or even separation.  The logical consequence is that the gardener strengthens the connection and productivity by pruning.  Trials are the troubles that make us strong.  Later on we will return to the topics of trials and the activity of abiding in the vine.  At this point we are focused on the principle of guiding people with logical consequences.

God, government, employers, educators, and parents use this principle.  I’ll use simple government and employer examples to keep myself from belaboring the point.  The lines on the freeway are painted according to the government’s uniform code to suggest orderly behavior.  Crossing them erratically will get me honked and gestured at, and possibly ticketed.  That’s a logical consequence.  Hitting the guardrail is the final logical consequence between me and the natural consequences of careening out of control.  An employer provides guardrails inn the form of company rules laid out in an employee handbook.  A wise Human Resource manager once handed me a handbook and said, “These are the rules; if you break them you will have fired yourself.  I’ll be the guy that tells you about it.”

When I suffer natural consequences of unfruitful behavior (like getting whacked in the face with a rope) there is seldom an argument as the punishment fits the crime.  The same is true of logical consequences because there is a clear connection to the negative behavior and the goal is obviously correction.  The disconnect comes when; from the perceptive of the recipient, the consequence is disproportionate to the offence.  I often feel that I am being unfairly treated when I suffer consequences.  Remembering the methods that grandpa and Jesus have used to guide me thus far helps me to put lessons in perspective and “keep it between the guardrails.”