Over the next month we'll be learning from an outstanding teaching series from Northpoint Church called Taking Responsibility For Your Life.
In a culture that seems to encourage and at times even reward irresponsibility, it's easy for us to notice others who aren't pulling their weight.
But what about us? Are we taking responsibility for the things we are on the hook for?
We'll be taking in this teaching via DVD and won't be recording it for our podcast like we usually do. However, if you miss a teaching, you can grab the audio or video online directly from Northpoint. Here's how:
Scroll to the right through the message series icons until you come to "Taking Responsibility For Your Life" (about the 9th series).
Double click on that and you'll be shown the 4 diff messages and be given the option to either listen to the audio or watch them on video.
We will be creating and posting our 2nd Helpings Info as we usually do. You can find them as a pdf on our PODCAST SITE or as text below.
2ND HELPINGS:
Scriptures From Sunday: Genesis 1:27-29, 3:8-13
REFLECT/DISCUSS:
Who is the most responsible person you know & why? The least responsible?
Agree/Disagree & Explain: “Our culture is becoming less and less responsible and in some ways rewards & celebrates irresponsibility.”
“Irresponsibility is much easier to see through the window than in the mirror.” Is this true? If so, why do you think this is?
Can you think of a time when someone else’s irresponsibility impacted you? When your failure to live up to your responsibilities affected others?
Do you agree that when we fail to “pick our towels up off of the floor” (i.e. taking care of our responsibilities) we are by default asking someone else to come clean up our mess?
How would things change in your life/family/workplace/church/etc. if each time we saw each other shirking our responsibilities we followed Andy’s lead w/his kids and said, “I want you to ASK me to take care of what you aren’t willing to care of instead of just leaving it for me to do”?
Respond to/discuss this statement: “Christians should be the most responsible people on the planet.”
In the beginning, humans are given huge amounts of responsibility (Gen 1). How do you feel when you shoulder your responsibilities well? When you don’t?
Do you ever find yourself admiring people who are great at blaming others? Why/Not?
Blame and the conflict and shame it produces are deeply rooted in our story (Gen 3). Do you think we can we get past it? How?
Assignments:
1. Listen to the blame conversations in your life- both the ones you have out loud and in your own head. What parts of your life are trying to shift responsibility to others?
2. As you experience relational conflict, ask yourself, “What is in my slice of the pie?”
2 comments:
A few thoughts have crossed my mind about the sermon on responsibility we watched this past Sunday. I'll put them in separately, since I tend to ramble.
* While I fully advocate taking responsibility for one's own actions whenever it applies, I also believe that there is a lot of "scapegoating" in American society, giving rise to simplistic thinking and an overabundance of frivolous lawsuits. When something bad happens, many people want someone specific to blame for it, even when I'd argue that that's not appropriate. Sometimes, there is no one specific to blame (I'm thinking of accidents -- when some are prompted to sue a store for its icy parking lot), and other times, when something happens, it's more appropriate to change the culture that gave rise to the accident than to try to pin the responsibility of it on someone specific. (Consider the fate of Apollo 1. During the mad rush to beat the Soviets to the Moon, three astronauts were killed in a fire during a test of the new Apollo capsule. In retrospect, it was easy to see why the fire happened. They wanted to test the capsule's integrity at pressure in a vacuum, so they overpressurized it to the appropriate amount above sea level pressure. It was also the case that capsule atmospheres were pure oxygen. Pure oxygen at a shade over 20 psi is enough to turn small sparks into conflagrations almost instantly. Under those conditions, things don't burn; they explode. There was -- naturally -- a Congressional inquest, and astronaut Frank Borman was asked what caused the fire. His reply: "A failure of imagination. We've always known there was the possibility of fire in a spacecraft; but the fear was that it would happen in space, when you're 180 miles from terra firma and the nearest fire station. That was the worry. No one ever imagined it could happen on the ground. If anyone had thought of it, the test would've been classified as hazardous -- but it wasn't. We just didn't think of it. Now, whose fault is that? Well, it's North American's(1) fault. It's NASA's fault. It's the fault of every person who ever worked on Apollo. It's my fault. I didn't think the test was hazardous. No one did. I wish to God we had." He recognized that what really needed to change was everyone's attitude toward safety -- a cultural change, not a punishment for an individual or select group.)
(1) North American was the company contracted to build the Apollo capsule for NASA.
* The speaker mentioned something I liked, essentially, "Christians have weird beliefs". You know what? We do. I'm amazed at the number of Christians who seem to think that Christianity is merely an extension of common sense. There are a lot of things we believe that make *no sense whatsoever*; I just think we tend not to examine them or think about them too much, generally.
* The speaker also noted that one tends to feel fulfilled when one is bearing responsibility well. Fair enough. But what recourse does one have when one is *not* bearing responsibility well, is exerting himself well beyond his capacity, and sees no help or options?
* I think we tend to think that irresponsibility will breed happiness because responsibility takes time and effort -- effort that we'd rather spend on slaking our own desires. We also -- and this relates to the question above -- are familiar with people who are very responsible, and they're often stressed, busy, and miserable. It's also the case that one only knows that one is responsible when one is forced to *prove it* -- and that's usually by stepping up to the plate in a very painful situation. We're not big on delayed gratification, as a general rule, and I think that most people simply don't see the rewards of being responsible as being worth the cost. (This is probably why irresponsibility is so infectious.)
* Speaking as a man and painting with broad brushes, I think men are generally confused about responsibility. Who are the people who are revered in our society? The ones who do things that require sacrifice, nobility, integrity, diligence, and intelligence? No -- it's the athletes and the entertainers. While there's nothing wrong with what these people do per se, I think it's a mistake to hold them up as the people we ought to emulate most. There are plenty of other professions where people do much more worthy things, and people who are much more worthy of emulation than someone who happens to throw or hit a ball pretty well. Men tend to like being admired, and are often driven by the search for admiration; as they see who gets the admiration in our society, is it any wonder that they want to play all the time, and confuse being a real man with wearing a jersey identical to their favorite player's and talking tough with the guys?
It's possible that these subjects will be addressed in later installments. All the same, if anyone's interested, maybe this will spark discussion.
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