This is how the Buddha protects you: one, helping you to see that your actions do have consequences, and then, two, pointing out which kinds of actions have good consequences and which kinds have bad.

"Ordinarily, the Buddha was not the sort of person who would look for people to debate with, but there were a couple of issues when he would actually approach other teachers and say, “Do you really teach this?” Then he’d point out how destructive it was to teach those things.

There were three cases, one of which was people who taught that everything you experienced in terms of pleasure or pain came from past actions. He approached those people and asked, “Do you really teach this?” They said, “Yes.” Then he sorted out the implications: “Well, in that case: People steal, people kill, have illicit sex, they lie, they drink because of something that’s totally beyond their control — what’s happened in the past.” He says, “When you teach people that, you’re leaving them unprotected and bewildered.”

Now, that statement connects to two other teachings, one having to do with the problem of suffering. As he says, people are bewildered because of their suffering, and they search for a way out — they look for somebody who knows a way to put an end to that suffering. If you’re telling them that what their suffering is, is totally beyond their control — that what’s causing it is already set in motion, you can’t do anything about it — you leave them bewildered. At the same time, you leave them unprotected because if they have any impulses to do things that are unskillful, they feel that they can’t fight the impulses, so they’ll just go along with them.

He said that a teacher’s duty was to protect students, and one of the things he was very adamant about protecting other people from was the belief that you have no power to make a change.

When he talked about his teachings in the most basic terms, it came down to: You should develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. And you can do that — you have the choice. And you’re going to benefit from choosing to abandon the unskillful ones and to do the skillful ones. This is how he protects you: one, helping you to see that your actions do have consequences, and then, two, pointing out which kinds of actions have good consequences and which kinds have bad."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You Can Make a Difference"