A New Year’s Resolution for Everyone

January 1, 2009, 12:52 pm by dc-agape.

I call everyone to make a powerful New Year’s Resolution.  That resolution is personal responsibility.  Make the decision to take personal responsibility for your own actions.  We have seen the complete lack of personal responsibility in the US.  Some examples are:  our President Bush, our Vice President, a recent drunk driver, and of course the car and financial industries.  Most of these cases of personal responsibility are not clear cut. Is that due to the facts or to the desire to point the finger at someone else?

Christians have the hardest time with this concept of taking personal responsibility for their actions.  Many believe that all good acts are due to the influence of YHWH.  Many more believe that all bad acts are due to the influence of Satan.  This leaves only the strength of each faction’s influence causing our actions.  But if we cannot do good without YHWH and we cannot do evil without Satan, then we have no personal responsibility for our actions.  Freewill is considered as choosing whether to follow YHWH or Satan.  But that is not taking personal responsibility; this is blaming supernatural beings for our actions.

We must change our view point.  Instead of believing that YHWH is responsible for the good things that happen, we should recognize that everything that happens to us is due to earlier actions set in motion.  Think about it, every action has a cause and an effect, no action is perfectly isolated.  Positive outcomes and negative outcomes are both due to previous actions.  For YHWH or Satan to affect an outcome they would have to interfere before the cause!  And the cause is our own actions.  But in the end how we respond to these outcomes of our actions is our personal responsibility.  “God made me do it” and “Satan makes me do it” are only valid for those who have psychological imbalances. 

Another area that we must begin to take personal responsibility for is the environment.  Whether you believe that global warming is true or not, there are facts that must be addressed.  I will leave most of these for the environmentalist, such as pollination issues, ice-cap melt, and storage of nuclear waste.  One topic that is a personal responsibility is waste.  No matter how you feel about the environment, we must eliminate the pile up of waste.  We are slowly learning that the earth is not big enough to contain our waste.  The oceans are not big enough, the landfills are not big enough, and even outer space is not big enough!

This year I ask everyone to make a special New Year’s Resolution.  Let’s all take personal responsibility.  We need personal responsibility in our business and government.  We need personal responsibility in our individual actions.  We need personal responsibility in the environment.  We need personal responsibility to be the most important social change to occur this year.

Posted in Personal Responsibility, State of Mind | Print | No Comments »