PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Have you noticed how many television programs leave the impression that some of us are not responsible for our foolish and destructive conduct? When a person is tried in a court of law for driving under the influence of alcohol and killing someone, that person's lawyer will often argue that the man is not responsible because he was drinking. Who made him drink? I believe it was Aristotle who said that a man who commits a crime under the influence of alcohol deserves double punishment: One time for the crime he committed and the other time for getting drunk. I am reminded of the old adage: "First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man." When a mother kills her child or children, her attorneys say she was suffering from premenstrual syndrome or post-partum depression. And by the way, have you heard of the "Twinkie defense?"

The King James Version of the Bible never uses either the word "responsible" or the word "responsibility." The New American Standard Bible uses the word "responsible" two times in the book of Genesis. I shall read one of those passages. Judah assured his aged father concerning Benjamin: "Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, we as well as you and our little ones. I myself will be surety for him; you may hold me responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame before you forever" (Gen. 43:8-9). The Revised Standard Version uses the word "responsible" one time. Paul told the Ephesian elders: "Therefore I declare unto you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you" (Acts 20:26). Paul then charged those elders: "Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28). In very simple terms, Paul was demanding that the elders take responsibility for their own lives and for the members of the church of Jesus Christ.

Although most translations of the Bible seldom use the word "responsible," there is not the slightest doubt God holds us responsible for our behavior. God appointed the prophet Ezekiel to be "a watchman unto the house of Israel." Ezekiel had the awesome task of warning the Israelites to be faithful to God's law or suffer the consequences. God gave to Ezekiel the message he was to deliver to the Israelite people. "When I say unto the wicked, You shall surely die; and you give him not warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at your hand. Yet if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul. Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die: because you have not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also you have delivered your soul" (Ezek. 3:17-21). There was a proverb among the Jewish people that affirmed: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth have been set on edges." God told the Israelites: "You shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezek. 18:1-4). God further revealed to Ezekiel: "The soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked shall turn from all his sins that he has committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All the transgressions that he has committed they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he has done he shall live" (Ezek. 18:20-22).

You can discern from these passages that all people are responsible to do God's will. It ought to be obvious that God held the prophets responsible for delivering his message to the Jewish people. If the prophets failed to deliver God's word, the people would be lost and God would require their blood at the hands of the prophet. Both the wicked and the righteous were accountable to God for their behavior. The Jews could not play the blame game. The prophet and the people alike were responsible to God for their actions.

The New Testament constantly stresses personal responsibility. Paul does not use the word "responsibility" in the Roman letter, but one cannot read that letter with any understanding and not know that God holds every individual responsible for his conduct. He wrote: "I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be no conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:1-2). Paul next outlines the responsibilities of all the members to use the gifts God had bestowed on them (Rom. 12:3-8). Romans 13: 1-7 demands that Christians obey the laws of the land. Paul also wrote: "We then who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let everyone of you please his neighbor for his good to edification" (Rom. 15: 1-2).

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminded the Christians at Corinth of their individual duty to do the will of God. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Cor. 5: 10). Paul told the Galatians: "For every man shall bear his own burden. Let him who is taught in word communicate unto him that teaches in all things. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap. For he who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of the faith" (Gal. 6:5-10).

There are many other passages I would like to read to you, but let us examine the attitudes and actions of some of our citizens. Many of the leaders in the black community, men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have not urged black people to take responsibility for their lives. Incidentally, you may have noticed that I did not refer to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton by the title "reverend." That has absolutely nothing to do with color. I do not call anyone, except God, "reverend." It seems arrogant to me that ordinary men, and all preachers, including your speaker, are ordinary men, would allow themselves to be called by the exalted title "reverend." What I am telling you about leadership, both in the black community and in the white, is that many of those leaders want their followers to depend on the government for a handout. In that way, the leadership can take credit for the support from the government. Too many Americans look to the government, instead of to themselves, for their welfare. In very plain English, many Americans, especially some of the poor, want someone else to provide for them.

Dr. Shelby Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, is one of the premier black scholars in America. In 2004 President Bush presented Dr. Steele with the National Humanities Medal for his "learned examinations of race relations and cultural issues." Dr. Steele has written several excellent books dealing with race. I shall read brief excerpts from some of his books. In his book, A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1988), Dr. Steele affirms: "To be human is to be responsible.... When welfare or affirmative action robs people of full responsibility, they also impose inferiority" (p. 108). Dr. Steele lists some "timeless American principles"-self-reliance, hard work, moral responsibility, sacrifice, and initiative. He then says: "All (of these) are not stigmatized as demonic principles that 'blame the victim' and cruelly deny the helplessness imposed on them by a heritage of oppression" (p. 124). Dr. Steele's book may be the very best on the evils of affirmative action.

Dr. Steele's second book, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1990), is based on the statement Dr. Martin Luther King made in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, in which he said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Dr. Steele insists that "individual initiative" is "the only thing that finally delivers anyone from poverty" (p. 16). He accuses many black Americans of holding "their race to evade individual responsibility" (p. 28). I have shall read one other statement from Dr. Steele. "Personal responsibility is the brick and mortar of power" (p.33).

Dr. Steele's latest book has title, White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006). Dr. Steele says: "Since the sixties, black leaders have made one overriding argument: that blacks cannot achieve equality without white America taking primary responsibility for it. ... The best way to make a black leader mad is to say to him that black Americans are capable of being fully responsible for their own advancement" (p. 60). Over and over, Dr. Steele encourages blacks and all others to take "full responsibility" for every phase of their lives (p. 64). He affirms that many blacks "define full black responsibility as an intolerable injustice" (p. 68).

I do not mean to overwhelm you with books dealing with individual responsibility, but I want you to know that many prominent scholars, especially black scholars, believe that one of the main reasons men and women are poor and disenfranchised is because they have not exercised personal responsibility. They want to blame their situation on someone else. Most you have probably seen Juan Williams on the Fox News Channel or elsewhere. Juan Williams is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and a news analyst on Fox News Channel. He worked for the Washington Post for twenty-one years. If you know anything about National Public Radio and the Washington Post, you know Juan Williams is not a conservative. He is not a radical liberal like Alan Colmes, but he is not a conservative.

Juan Williams's book, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America-and What We Can Do About It (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), is filled with extremely valuable information. The book deals principally with the speeches Bill Cosby has made over the past several years. I wish I had counted every time Juan Williams uses the word "responsibility" in his book. I shall take time to read a few examples from his book. Bill Cosby has addressed many of his remarks to the black leaders. He called some of the black leaders "poverty pimps" because they are making money from the poor (p. 92). He challenged parents to take "personal responsibility" to save themselves and their children (p. 94). "Cosby's fire was aimed at negligent black parents." He told parents: "We are letting TV sets raise our children" (p. 97). Cosby is especially critical of young men "who fathered children without taking responsibility" (p. 197). Juan Williams tells of a debate between Michael Dyson, a strong critic of Bill Cosby, and Dr. Shelby Steele. Dyson was critical of Dr. Cosby because of Bill's emphasis on personal and individual responsibility. Dr. Steele responded: "The point remains ... you cannot get out of poverty unless you take an enormous amount of personal responsibility for doing so.... Being the victim does not spare you from responsibility.... Responsibility is power" (p. 209). Juan Williams' book is very valuable-both for blacks and for whites.

I have a question for you to consider. What are the chances that a poor black child who grew up in Pinpoint, Georgia, could ever amount to anything? You probably have guessed that I am speaking of Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the United Supreme Court. Justice Thomas's new book, My Grandfather's Son (New York: HarperCollinsPublisher, 2007), is a very inspiring book. He tells how his grandfather whom he called "daddy" demanded obedience and diligence from his grandson. He would not accept any excuse for failure. He told Clarence: "Old man Can't is dead-I helped bury him" (p. 13). The grandfather warned Clarence and his brother that "if we died, he'd take our bodies to school for three days to make sure we weren't faking, and we figured he meant it" (p. 15). Justice Thomas said his grandfather had been right all along. "The only hope I had of changing the world was to change myself” (p. 60). Is that not the very essence of personal responsibility?

I have a number of other books by black scholars I would like to mention, but time will not allow it. There is one other book, however, I must discuss briefly before our time expires. Dr. Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist, have written a very challenging book, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007). As I prepare this study today, I have read about half of the book, but there is so much in the book that helps us to understand the need for exercising personal responsibility. In the Introduction to the book, Dr. Cosby says: "We can change things we have control over if we accept personal responsibility and embrace self-help" (p. xviii of the Introduction).

As our time draws to a close, I want to make some applications of what we have studied with you today. If you are not a Christian, you have the responsibility to turn to God for the forgiveness of sins. Nobody-not God nor anyone else-can believe or repent or confess or be baptized for you. The commandments of the scriptures are addressed to individuals. So all of us individually must take upon ourselves the responsibility of obeying our Lord. Please notice the Great Commission according to Mark. "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned" (Mk. 16: 16).

When you have obeyed the gospel, you have the responsibility of serving the Lord. That includes worshipping regularly with God's people. "And let us consider one another to provoke to love and good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much more as you see the day approaching" (Heb. 10:24-25). We also have the responsibility of giving as the Lord has prospered us (1 Cor. 16: 1-2). We must use our time and talent in reaching the lost for Christ. We cannot shift our personal obligations to the elders or to the preacher or to anyone else. God will hold each of us accountable for fulfilling our obligations to him.

If you are a father or a mother, you have sacred responsibilities to your children. Every concerned American knows the difficulties that our young people face. They are tempted to use drugs, to drink alcohol, to engage in sexual promiscuity and to engage in other immoral and dangerous behavior. We parents must do all we can to teach our children right and wrong. If we fail to do that, many of them will land in prison or in their graves. Juan Williams writes: "Cosby tied the high rate of black inmates to what he described as criminally bad parenting, mothers and fathers failing to spend time with their children, especially men who don't stay around after they get a woman pregnant" (p. 108). If men and women do not intend to take care of their children, they ought not to have any.

Neither Bill Cosby nor any of the other authors whom I have quoted today are seeking to relieve young people of their personal responsibilities. But they are urging parents, teachers and religious leaders to use their influence to improve the moral and spiritual situation in our nation. I plead with everyone in my audience today to be responsible for your own life and for the atmosphere of our country. Are we not supposed to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Mt. 5:13-16)?

Winford Claiborne

The International Gospel Hour

P.O. Box 118

Fayetteville, TN 37334