On Knowing Your Responsibilities
And turning things over to God
One of my character flaws is that I tend toward hyper-responsibility. This manifests as a overwhelming and inordinate burden to take care of responsibilities that are not my own. Thankfully, it doesn’t affect every area of my life, only some. But it still is bothersome because it is inordinate. It burdens me with guilt, condemnation, anxiety, and worry over things that are not my responsibility. On the other hand, like everyone in the world, there are other areas of my life where I don’t fulfill my true responsibilities well. I don’t always put my dishes in the dishwasher. I don’t always answer emails promptly. I’m not always as present as I could be during family time, and so on. It seems to me that all of us live in a balance between knowing what is our responsibility in life, and knowing what is outside our responsibility and what we must give up to God. Ultimately, we must give it all up to God, even the parts that are our responsibility. But somethings we must only give up to God, we must surrender and stop trying to act on because we are helpless. Knowing what is my responsibility to act on and what is my responsibility to hand over to God is a supreme matter of prudence and spiritual wisdom. And the failure to cultivate these virtues leads to tremendous personal suffering and pride.
As with many things, we are tempted to lean in one of two directions when it comes to responsibility: hyper-responsibility or irresponsibility. And as I mentioned in the introduction, the reality can be complex. Within the same person you can find both temptations mixed in different spheres of life. You may be hyper-responsible when it comes to finances but irresponsible when it comes to personal relationships. Or you may be hyper-responsible in all areas of your life or irresponsible in all areas. And there may be reasons for your tendency. Traumatic events may incline you to be highly cautious about the world, or highly on guard, or overly responsible for other people and their feelings and experiences. Or parents with poor boundaries may have inclined you to be irresponsible. Or overwhelming anxiety or depression may make responsibilities in life seem trivial and so you treat them in an irresponsible way. There are all kinds of possibilities, all kinds of reasons why someone would be inclined to take on more responsibility than they should, or deny responsibilities that they really have.
And yet the reality remains the same: there are things we are responsible for in this life, and it is right and good for us to fulfill those responsibilities. As James 4:17 says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” The problem is the hyper-responsible person thinks that things are “right” which are not really his or her responsibility. He or she knows or sees falsely, and so acts falsely. And the irresponsible person denies the “right thing to do” altogether. Let’s consider these one at a time.
For the hyper-responsible person, they perceive something that God or someone else is responsible for, and they put it on their own shoulders. Instead of taking up their own cross, they try to take up Christ’s cross, or someone else’s cross. They have failed to perceive reality rightly in some way. They have stretched “the right thing to do” to mean “whatever I can possibly do regardless of my moral, familial, social, legal, and ecclesial obligations and regardless of who is rightly responsible for this situation.” And no human can bear that burden. We all must live within our finitude. In the end, the hyper-responsible person fails to trust that God can take care of his creation, that he can providentially govern the cosmos without their intervention. The hyper-responsible person wants to take a little bit of God for themselves, just to be safe, just to make sure the world will be okay. And that is not how the world works. That is not how God works. We have to learn to trust that God is in control and he will work all things together for his good. So our only duty is to look realistically at what is our responsibility and do that and then prayerfully leave the rest up to God.
For the irresponsible person, they perceive something that is rightfully their responsibility and they shy away, they deny it, they put it on someone else’s shoulders. The fear may be that if they take up this task they may fail and harm or disappoint someone. What if I try to do this duty and I end up publicly disgracing myself? In that case it may be a failure of the virtue of courage. Or it might be something more selfish at work, a belief that your only responsibility is to look out for yourself, and you deny every other duty. Or it may be a failure of the virtue of prudence, of seeing reality rightly, of recognizing that you do indeed have a responsibility in a specific area. Or it may be sloth, which seems to be the main target of James 4:17, someone who knows what is right but is spiritually lethargic and chooses not to act on that wisdom. Whatever the cause may be, it comes down to a failure to accept that in this life we have duties. We are not our own but belong to God, and as such we have duties and responsibilities to God and our neighbour and creation and even ourselves that we must fulfill. To be a habitually irresponsible person is to deny your creatureliness, to deny your reliance upon God. When you do act responsibly, you are still choosing to rest in God’s providence, because only he can work his good through your actions, but you’re acting on your responsibility instead of only turning it over to God.
So how do you know what is right? How do you know what is your obligation or responsibility? I think we begin with a posture of humility and prayer. In a posture of humility before God, we ask him for wisdom to know what is our responsibility in any particular situation. He promises to give wisdom to all who ask, so ask (James 1:5). And then, look to Scripture for wisdom. What does the Word have to say about this situation? And then, consider your contextual obligations, the rules, laws, and norms binding you. And then seek wise counsel. And then deliberate, decide, and act resolutely.
I’m not suggesting this process for every decision, or that each step is necessary, but I think these are helpful guides for particularly challenging ethical dilemmas. But it all begins and ends with that first step: humility and prayer. If you don’t come with a heart of humility and turn to God in prayer, you aren’t going to be willing to receive wisdom and hear and see your responsibility. You aren’t going to be willing to acknowledge that something isn’t your responsibility.
We live with awesome responsibility as human agents. How we shepherd that responsibility can be overwhelming, if we allow it to be. It is only if we accept that all our efforts to act responsibly are held in the hands of a loving Father that we can act boldly and courageously. We are not gods, and we cannot play gods. Nor can we shirk our responsibilities to be humans. But we can walk boldly in the good works which God has prepared for us beforehand (Ephesians 2:10).
On an unrelated note, my speaking schedule for 2026 is still relatively open. If you’d like to have me come out and speak, contact me here and let’s talk.