“Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again.” Proverbs 19:19 NLT
Our dog had a nasty habit of licking the dishes and silverware that were in the dishwasher. She had that habit. The habit is now gone. In fact I don’t think we could even get her to go lick the dishes if we wanted to. The difference? One time her collar got stuck to the dishwasher rack and when she pulled away the whole rack came with her and the rack “followed” her around the kitchen for a few minutes. What training could not correct, consequences did.
There are two teachers wisdom and consequences. While it is usually better to learn through wisdom, (learning from others) for some of us consequences are necessary for us to actually to change our behavior.
There are times when the best thing we can do is not to prevent consequences but to learn from them. When we remove the consequences, we can stifle the teaching that just may be necessary to bring beneficial change. Sometimes, removing consequences, or saying it is OK when it is not, is the least loving thing we can do. It just may cause someone to repeatedly fall into the same snare.