I think a lot about what kind of people we are, and about what tends to go wrong in our lives. It’s complicated business in one way, yet in another, it may be fairly simple.
Our lives are set into this real world, without us asking to be put here. And while we’re here, we learn (to some degree) and we make lots of choices (good and bad). And we draw lots of conclusions about what the world is like and what our role in it should be. The following ten items are things that many seem not to learn to love very much while they are here. And I cannot help but to believe that the world would be a much better place if more people did love these things more:
- To accept responsibility
- To think
- To do work
- To do what is right
- To be expected to do what is right
- To be corrected or criticized
- To be told what to do
- To be held accountable
- To be punished or shamed
- To bear the consequences of one’s own choices
Please understand that I don’t think this is all that the world needs. Rather, these things have to do with one’s own self-view and how he thinks his internal attitude and disposition should be managed. I had suggested that it is both complicated and simple, and what I meant by that is this: Ponder the list and see how items 2-9 all flow from item #1.
A person who is responsible for himself can sustainably embrace all the rest of these, too. It takes work (which is on the list, too), but he can do it.
If it is true, as I believe, that God created us and put us in this world to learn to live in his image and to walk in his way, and to give an account for ourselves at the end of our time on Earth, then being responsible for ourselves seems quite the thing to be learned and embraced. But for many, responsibility may be a love/hate relationship at best, and they never learn to be comfortable when wearing the yoke. Here’s what I’m’ talking about when I bring up the yoke:
Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
To some, the idea that man should wear the yoke of God—or any other—is foolishness. And it neither seems right nor feels right to him that he should be expected to behave in any certain way. He may not mind there being a Creator, but he does not want to be the Creature who belongs to that Creator, and who is accountable to live as the Creator sees fit. He resents it. And I think that there are a great many people like this, even among those in the churches.
We are set here to live a few decades (in most cases), so as to have ample opportunity to learn to wear that yoke and to carry that burden. And even so, many will come to disagree with Jesus’ assessment, thinking the wearing of any such “yoke” to be an unsustainable way of life. They think they know better than Jesus, who says the yoke is “easy”—meaning that it is well-fitted to the one wearing it. And he says that the burden is “light”—meaning that he will not overload anyone with more than they can bear. But many will refuse to give it a chance—to see for themselves. They are not willing to try it.
In 1998 or so, I was wrestling with this notion of surrendering myself more fully to God than I had before, and trying to figure out whether I could navigate the transition. I wrote this short poem them:
Humility fits me funny—
Like a suit I would not have
Picked out for myself.
But I trust my tailor.
When we decide to be responsible for ourselves, then we can start getting good at correcting ourselves when we are in the wrong. (See my Self-Correction Ethic meme shown here.)
And until we get good at taking charge of ourselves, we’ll never be very good at loving others, for it is with ourselves that we do that. The undisciplined, immature self is simply not going to be good at loving. It just doesn’t work that way. Sadly, though, a great many Christians will enthusiastically promote love without promoting personal maturity and righteousness. And as a result, the love they get is not of the quality that Jesus taught.
Jesus said these two commandments (Mark 12:29-30) were the most important:
- Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
- Love your neighbor as yourself.’
But how can we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, if we will not go to the trouble to get our internal selves into good shape? At best, it would be an immature love—undisciplined, uncommitted, and dull.
And what good is it to “love your neighbor as yourself” when you don’t even love yourself enough to take responsibility for it? To love one’s neighbor is to take responsibility for the neighbor—at least in some way and to some extent—but who can do well at that who does not even take responsibility for himself?
So that’s why I think it’s a mistake to try to focus on love without also focusing on self-responsibility—because loving others is an outcropping of the quality of one’s own self.
The question, then, seems to be whether we’re willing to be God’s Creatures, diligently using the minds and bodies he has given us to embrace things such as we have been considering here.
- To accept responsibility
- To think
- To do work
- To do what is right
- To be expected to do what is right
- To be corrected or criticized
- To be told what to do
- To be held accountable
- To be punished or shamed
- To bear the consequences of one’s own choices
We will all see for ourselves someday whether there’s really a Creator and whether we are really his Creatures—and whether the Bible has got the facts straight or not. And I imagine we will be able to get a better view of ourselves than we can generally get in the here-and-now. But even the end-of-life process that we see so often here, it is difficult to imagine many on their deathbeds saying, “If only I had been less responsible!”.
Surely, these things are worth considering.
