Why Do We Do What We Do?

I watched a TV show last night in which a young girl needed emergency hospital treatment for something she'd done long ago. Five years earlier, the foolish child had eaten a small blue Lego block, and in the time since then, her body rallied a resistance to the foreign object, now giving the child major medical problems and a difficult diagnosis. Plastic doesn't easily show on most diagnostic tests.

That episode reminded me of an incident many years ago when my youngest brother, then a two-year-old toddler, decided to jam a half dozen raisins up his nostrils. Up in there the raisins mixed with his sinus secretions, swelled in size, and ultimately required an emergency trip to have them extracted. What made him even think of doing that?

Later, that same boy swallowed a spring, a small metal spring from inside a pen. Why did he do that? You've got me. I do remember searching through his "output" until said we knew the spring had been successfully expelled.

More recently, my three-year-old nephew, while living in our household for a few months, experimented with shoving Kix cereal balls in his nose. He didn't get far as I discovered him in the act before things got ugly. What made him think it was a good idea to do that?

And finally, my youngest daughter announced to us one day that she had just swallowed a pen cap. She was five, and I looked at her and said "Why did you do that?" Of course she shrugged her shoulders. She didn't know why. We watched for about a week till that pen cap showed itself, and then all was well.

Kids sure do the dumbest things. They put us through stress and agony doing these silly, inexplicable things.

However, as adults we do our own heap of stupid things too. Why do we do some of those things we do?

We fall into temptation.

We don't think.

We make that bad choice.

Children are immature. They don't weigh the consequences of their actions. We can almost excuse away their foolishness. However, as adult Christians, we don't have to give in to the stupidity of poor choices.

A scripture I read today says, "You are of Christ, and Christ is of God" (1 Corinthians 3:23). Let's think about what this really means.

God gave you to Jesus. You are the Father God's gift to his son. God thought you were worth enough to allow his own son to go through a bloody, tortuous, horrific crucifixion on a wooden cross, to obtain your redemption.

If we allow ourselves to really consider what his death means for us, it will help us resist those temptations to do stupid things. In fact, we may get to the point where we cannot, and will not, do those offensive things, for we belong to Christ. Understanding what it means to belong to Christ can pull us away from that cliff of disobedience.

Lord, help us to understand the value of belonging to you. I want to be one who brings delight to your heart, not grief. I want to please you with the choices I make today. Amen.

Now, let's be on guard and keep our eyes on the kiddos and the tiny things.