Responsibility

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"
-Romans 3:23
You might read the verse above and think that you haven't sinned. Or you might think that your sin is not your fault. Well, everyone has sinned, whether they like it or not, but that isn't what I wanted to talk about today. Today I want to talk about responsibility. Recently I have been reading a book by John Stott titled "The Cross of Christ." One interesting section discussed guilt and responsibility. Who or what is to blame for our sin? Many people will admit that they have sinned but then will accuse something else for causing that sin. For example, people will often blame their sinful nature, people, or the circumstances they are in. While these do all play a part in us sinning, we cannot place the responsibility on them. Those things do influence us but do not tell us what to do. They can affect how we act but cannot control how we act. Ultimately the responsibility falls on us. This leads me to another important aspect of responsibility- choice. We have the ability to choose what we do as humans. When we make decisions, we have to take responsibility for them. If we make a wrong choice, we are accountable for that choice; not the circumstance or anything else. This leads me to an important distinction between consequence and responsibility. Every choice that we make has a consequence, but it also has a responsibility. What's the difference? The result of our choice is the consequence. If somebody murders someone, the consequence is the loss of life of an individual and going to jail. The responsibility is who is accountable for the action. The man or woman who murders is responsible for the murder because they did the action of killing. A consequence won't necessarily get someone into jail, but the responsibility will. A person who is deemed incapable of acting with judgement or self-control (someone who is "impaired") will often have a different sentence than someone who is in their right mind. Why? Because the person that is in their right mind has to take responsibility for their actions because they willfully committed it. C.S Lewis wrote that the law should not sentence people based on deterring others but on giving what that person deserves. You cannot deserve anything unless you are responsible for you actions. This is not only negative however. When someone takes an action to do good, such as Martin Luther King Jr., they are praised for their actions. People recognize that he took an action to do good and he was responsible. You might ask, why do we have to take responsibility? I believe that responsibility is one of the things that make humans different. If a tree falls over and kills someone, you cannot hold the tree responsible because the tree did not choose to kill that person. The freedom of choice is limited by the burden of responsibility. Taking away our responsibility takes away our humanity.
-Smart