14 December 2009 by Sophie
Our guest blogger James Bradley is a final year
ordinand at St
Stephen's House, Oxford. He hopes to be ordained in
September 2010 to serve as assistant curate at St
John the Baptist, Sevenoaks.
Actions have consequences. From going to war to choosing whether
to have a curry the night before an important meeting or if your
wife or husband gets the gadget they want at Christmas - actions
have consequences.
And while we all know that to be true, many of us are
less-than-great at doing very much about it. How often do we reach
a decision based on little more than a mere five minute conference
call or, even, gut feeling?
How many times do we work late (or, indeed, early) and compromise
our ability to make right judgements through our own tiredness or
exhaustion?
It doesn't seem right that the consequences of our actions-which
often affect others far more than ourselves - should depend on such
insubstantial methods of decision-making.
We would be appalled if a high-impact decision relating to us or
our family was made in such a way, and yet, more often than we
might care to admit, we do the same.
The thirteenth century Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, tells us that
the best way to deal with an impossible situation - the sort where
neither option seems right or desirable-is to give ourselves
time.
Making a decision based on poor information, or merely because of
the limits of time, can rarely be moral - some things, especially
in the world of finance and business, are too important to deal
with in such a slap-dash way.
Instead, St Thomas suggests, we should give ourselves room to
breathe; to allow the situation to unfold in front of us - often
making the choice a much clearer one to make.
It's not always possible to do this but sometimes simply taking a
step back, getting an early night, or delaying a difficult phone
call or decision for another day, is actually the right thing to
do. And right actions, eventually at least, have good
consequences.