For the past 6 months I have became passionate about accepting responsibility for our actions and those of our ancestors. Responsibility is one of those words I have come to have huge respect for and on a daily basis I see people avoiding the very nature of it to the “enth” degree. This, in the past, has often infuriated me but on one level it is actually quite sad. People are generally wanting to blame someone else for their personal level of discomfort which was the reason for the fall of man way back in the garden of Eden; so it shouldn’t come as any shock to realize people haven’t moved away from this very basic behaviour.
Behaving at this basic level is certainly an indicator of being deeply wounded and dealing with people who are so acutely in pain needs to be dealt with sensitively. Sometimes the best thing to do on an individual level is actually withdraw from them because the more you immerse yourself in their pain the more complicated things actually appear. This might seem a harsh way of dealing with the problem but if we withdraw in a way that gives clear reasons then you are placing responsibility back where it belongs, with the other person.
When we deal with this same problem on a national or even international level things have to be taken to a more considered approach. It is then that our need to be bold, vulnerable and passionate comes into its own. These words from John Dawson made me sit up and think how much the world in which we live needs us to be all of the above and more.
Paradoxically, the greatest wounds in human history….have not happened through the acts of some individual perpetrator; rather through institutions , systems, philosophies, cultures, religions and governments of humankind. Because of this, we as individuals are tempted to absolve ourselves of all individual responsibility. However, unless someone chooses to identify themselves with corporate entities, such as the nation of our citizenship, or the subculture of our ancestors, the act of honest confession will never take place. This leaves us in a world of injury and offence in which no corporate sin is ever acknowledged, reconciliation never begins and old hatreds deepen.
Lets become bold for the world in which we live, lets become vulnerable so that those around us can trust and feel for the first time. Lets pray and become God for the person never likely to enter a church or open a bible. Let Him use us in a unique and amazing way.
Everyman 