The law of Sowing and reaping

Actions have consequences.

If someone in your life is sowing anger, selfishness, and abuse, are you setting boundaries against it?

Or are they getting away with not reaping (or paying the consequences for) what he/she sowed?

Also known as the Law of Cause and Effect, this is the Law of Sewing and Reaping.

When we behave in a particular way there are consequences: our behaviour has an impact on ourselves and also on others.

If we make decisions based on ‘worldly desires’ for example, I want to eat that second piece of cake, drink that third glass of wine, we need to understand the consequences of that. For example, I might carry too much weight, increase my chance of diabetes, have a troubled sleep, on so on. If we do not manage our finances, it will cause problems for us later on.

However, if we consider the value of our actions for ourselves and others, our life will be easier. No overeating means a healthier lifestyle and better long term options. Better management of our finances means we can care for ourselves into retirement better.

If we are physically and financially healthy, we can better support others. Also, others are more drawn towards us because we can be more loving and responsible and show our care for others.

Now we can see others who apparently ‘get away with doing whatever they want’ without concern for the consequences. It may not be apparent immediately, but the chickens do come home to roost. Celebrities might seem to live glamorous self-centred lives. Later on they may not look so happy though. Also, we must not confuse their self-promotion with reality – it may be just whatever product they are promoting.

Some people don’t reap what they sow, because someone else steps in and reaps the consequences for them. This might sound familiar. Your parents may send you money to protect you from your creditors and thus bear the consequences for your spendthrift ways. You may walk on eggshells around your moody husband, try everything to make him happy, and enable him to have his tantrums as he likes while you bear the entire burden of his moodiness.

Thus people may interrupt the effect of the law, just as one catches a glass that is falling off the table. Yet the law of gravity is not changed by that. And in the same way the Law of Sowing and Reaping is not repealed if somebody interrupts its effect. The only thing that has changed is that somebody else bore the consequences.

Now there are situations where this has to be the case. Parents may step in to prevent children from a true disaster. Spouses rescue each other out of difficult situations because they love each other.

However, if you truly love your spouse, your sons and daughters and so on, you allow them to experience the effects of their irresponsibility. It is unlikely to happen immediately, but eventually the lesson will be learnt. When you no longer enable, you are able to support.

If our ‘boundary’ is functional, e.g. doing the washing, cleaning the room, paying a bill, that is relatively easy to identify.

It is when we consider the relational sowing and reaping that it becomes more difficult. Do you carry the moods of the person you love? One example is where wives tend to carry the emotional burden for their husbands, without even realising it. The consequences of this can be resentment unconsciously directed to the husband, he may feel a sense of guilt for what he doesn’t know, he might feel a constraint to his freedom as a result. When we sow, so shall we reap. But in either aspect the problem is the same: The person who created the problem doesn’t have to face its effects and thus sees no reason to change it. The spouse who takes responsibility for dealing with the problem does not realize that this problem is not his problem and thus does not say or do anything about it. The solution to this is in the setting of boundaries that can break the cycle.