Sunday Class @ 9am; Worship @ 10am & 5pm
Articles
The Responsible Thing to Do
A foster parent was recently convicted of the aggravated rape of two foster daughters. Being a foster parent myself, I always cringe when I see foster parents make the news for such reasons. Maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe he shouldn’t have been convicted. No one involved denies that he had some kind of sexual contact with them, but possibly it wasn’t his fault. The man convicted put most of the blame for what happened on the girls. His wife said the girls provoked him, and so she blamed them for what happened. Shame on those girls for doing such a thing! That poor foster parent.
At this point you are probably wondering what is wrong with me. How can I excuse what a grown man did to two girls? If I truly felt the man should not be convicted for what he did, then you would be right to question me. He made the choice to act as he did and should be punished for his actions. But be honest with yourself: do you ever reason in your own life in a way similar to this man and his wife?
Consider the foster parent and what he did to his foster daughters. Let’s assume they did make advances toward him. He’s not the first man to face such a situation. Joseph also did. After being sold into slavery, his master’s wife “looked with desire at” him and told him to lie with her (Genesis 39:7). He could have given in to her advances and blamed her and/or given other excuses for doing so – under stress as a slave, far from home, etc. Instead, he did the responsible thing and said, “…How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?” (:9). He continued to be responsible by not listening to her and whenever possible avoiding her, even leaving his garment in her hand to flee outside from her (:10-12).
Abigail serves as a great example of someone who did the responsible thing. When her husband Nabal refused to give provisions to David and his men – even though they had guarded his possessions in the wilderness – David decided to kill every male in their household (1 Samuel 25:22, 34). How did Abigail respond? She could have yelled at her husband for such a foolish reaction to David’s men. She could have accused David of overreacting to the situation. Instead, she acted in a more positive way. She took provisions and headed to meet David (:18). Then she humbled herself before him and accepted the blame for her husband’s reaction (:23-24, 28). She made such an impact on David that he not only spared her household (:32-35), he also later sent for her to be his wife (:39).
We all face situations in which we can look for excuses and blame others or work toward solutions by accepting responsibility.
Some things with the church here could be better. So why aren’t they? Should the elders do a better job leading? Could the members be more involved with one another away from the building? Do they all need to show more concern for the lost? Even if all these things are true, the place I need to start answering the question of why the church isn’t what it could be is with myself. What is it that I could be doing to make the church better? What changes do I need to make in my life? I am a joint that needs to be supplying something, a part of the body with work to do, with the potential to cause “the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16). If I will do the responsible thing and what I can do to make the church better, then maybe others will follow – and together we can make a big improvement.
I have a choice in how I respond when I get home from the office. I can yell at my wife and kids for the condition of the house, or I can do the responsible thing by helping them restore a sense of order. Did I cause the mess? No (OK, maybe part of it somewhere in the house.). Can I help with it? Yes. I can love my wife (Ephesians 5:23) by helping her deal with an overwhelming load of things to do. I can bring up my children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4) by modeling responsibility to them while I assist them in being responsible. Doing the responsible thing turns what could be a negative and unproductive occasion into a positive one with much productivity.
God would have been justified in telling us that we got ourselves into the mess of sin and that He was going to let us suffer the consequences. Instead, He did the responsible thing by sending His Son to die for us so that we may be saved from our sin. Jesus could have called for “more than twelve legions of angels” to deliver Him from the pain and agony that surrounded His death, but He did the responsible thing by enduring it all to fulfill the Scriptures that said how it must happen (Matthew 26:53-54) – and as a result provided a way of salvation for all.
You can always find an excuse and/or someone to blame for not doing the right thing or not avoiding the wrong. One author wrote, “Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover this: all the excuses made by the mediocre fellow could be but aren’t made by the successful person.” Which one will hear the Lord say “Well done” in the end? The Lord did the responsible thing for you. Now it is time to do the responsible thing for Him.
