Accept Responsibility

As I mentioned last week, there's a study at my church beginning in September called "Biblical Manhood" and I'm picking apart the four major points of it between now and the time it starts.

This week's principle is that a real man accepts responsibility.  I thought of some examples for what this might mean.

If I were to get a dog, you might say that he would be my responsibility (also, that he is adorable).  We could also, then, say that it would then be my responsibility to tell my apartment complex that I got a dog and to pay the appropriate pet deposits and fees.   It would also be my responsibility to feed him and to take him to the vet and pick up his messes whenever I took him for walks outside.  All three are different kinds of responsibility: object, obligation, action.

But I don't think that these are the kind of responsibility that Biblical Manhood is referring to.

I think that being "responsible" is a lot like being sober.  For one thing, there's no gray-area for sobriety.  It's pretty much a switch with two positions, and you're either on or you're off.  You don't just kinda use and you're never almost sober.  You either are or you are not.

But I've also come to realize that no matter how long you stay sober, there's never really any point where you stop being an addict.  You may stop acting out of your addictive patterns, but there's always a propensity for you to go back to using and even the most devoted 12-steppers will tell you that you're never really "cured" of it.  You may be sober now, you may be sober 25 years from now, but can't ever take for granted that you'll always be sober.  Sobriety is a choice that you have to make, every single day, for the rest of your life.

In a very similar way, responsibility is not an over-arching condition of your whole person, it's a present state of being.  I can't tally up the total days I've been productive and done the right thing and deem myself "responsible" if the good outweighs the bad.  I'm "responsible" in this moment to do the best I can at whatever's in front of me with whatever resources I have at my disposal.

To put it in practical terms, I first have to accept that I can never get back all the days I've lost to drinking, drugs and pornography and then be willing to do whatever I'm able to move ahead from wherever I happen to be as a result of it all.  

Shame and self-loathing tell me I'm a worthless waste of space and I can never rise above my circumstances.  

The gospel grace of Jesus Christ says that I don't have to live there and I can do different with my life.

Responsibility is learning how to ignore my feelings, accept the truth and leverage that freedom to take action in another direction.

So I guess I should stop asking myself whether or not I am a responsible person and start asking myself whether or not I'm ready to be responsible, where I'm at, right now.