 The other day Clint McBroom, the executive pastor of Cokesbury, was riding in my SUV with me to lunch. After lunch, I was going to another appointment and he was going to ride back to Ninth Avenue with someone else. As Clint got in the car, he was drinking a cup of coffee. We went to the restaurant, finished lunch, and I went on to my other appointment. I picked up Happy, my golden retriever, at the groomers. I put Happy in the back seat for the trip to the office. On the way back home that night, Happy got in the front seat and slurped up the remaining coffee Clint had left in the cup in my car. Within nine minutes of her drinking the coffee, the coffee spewed from her mouth along with all the other contents of her stomach onto the front of my suit coat.
The next day, I laughingly told Clint what happened to his coffee. He gallantly said to let him pay for the cleaning bill. I said, “No, Clint, I had culpability as well. I thought of throwing the coffee away and did not.” It seems in our culture, we look to blame others for things where we have, at least some degree, of mutual responsibility. I read about a lawsuit filed against McDonald’s because the person ate there every day and got fat. Surely, anyone who eats at a fast-food restaurant would realize the potential for weight gain. In our culture, people don’t want to claim responsibility for their own lives.
As a spiritual leader, I have had many say to me, “You need to get some person to come to church. It would do them a world of good.” I often imagine myself when they say that going to this person’s house early one Sunday morning, waking them up, and saying, “I turned on the shower for you and laid out your clothes to get ready to go to church.” I would probably get arrested or, at the very least, my sanity would be questioned because the only person I’m responsible for coming to church is me.
Sadly, many times people deny their part of the responsibility in any situation. Generally in our culture, people have a high expectation of what others should do and a low expectation of what they themselves will do. The fact is, we’re responsibility for our own lives.
In the end, as we come to the judgment of God, we will be judged for what we have done and not done. The culpability will be all ours for what we have done with our own lives. It behooves us to claim responsibility for what we do and don’t do. If there is mutual responsibility, we need to at least claim our share. We are responsible for what we do with our lives.
One of Averette’s principles in child rearing was the principle of natural consequences. If one of our girls did not do something she had been told to do, she had to deal with the natural consequences of the forgotten task. For instance, if they didn’t wash their track suits, they had to explain to the coach why they didn’t have the suit. We did not accept the responsibility. It was theirs. The truth in life is we are culpable, responsible for what we do and don’t do. The next time I will throw away the coffee cup before Happy ever sits in the front seat.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, help us to be responsible for our own lives. Amen. |
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