Change and Responsibility

Donald Miller, in Through Painted Deserts, writes "I could not have know then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way."

"I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning."

"It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave."

I have to change or I will die. The temptation to slip into mediocrity, or to be OK with the mundane, or to be satisfied with average... is a strong one. But I must resist. I must continue to change, and change I will.

We seem to construct responsibilities, whether they are self-imposed, culture imposed, legitimate, or superficial. We then go on to convince ourselves that it is what life is about. But we should only feel responsible to responsibilities when they are fulfilling their responsibility.

School exists to prepare us to live a meaningful life, but what if leaving school fulfilled that in a greater way?

Work exists to give us a way to contribute to society and honor God, but what if leaving our career fulfilled that in a greater way?

Friendship exists to model the love of Christ and for ministry, but what if leaving those friends allows us to model His love and do ministry in a greater way?

Marriage exists to assist us in the ministry of Christ and model God's love relationship here, but what if staying single allows us to do it better for the time being?

Have we merely slipped into doing school, work, friendships, marriage, family and all other things in life simply because it is what we are "supposed to do"? I don't like doing what I am "supposed to do". Or maybe I should put it this way: I question whether or not all of this stuff, and by stuff I mean what our culture and even Christian culture expects us to do to be a responsible person, is what I am really "supposed to do". Let's be willing to be radical for the Gospel; not radical for radicals sake, but because we are called to follow a homeless, poor, rejected, unpredictable, controversial, and "unresponsible" man named Jesus.