Lately, I’ve been learning a lot about my understanding of responsibility. Specifically, I’ve been struggling to understand what kinds of things are my responsibilities and what kinds of things are not. I recently realized that I have an unhealthy tendency to feel responsible for so many things that I can’t control. Over the past week or so, I’ve been gradually teaching myself to let go of those things and give them to God instead.

There are many things that I often find myself feeling responsible for. I feel responsible for how people see me and what they think about me. I feel responsible for earning the approval of others. This applies particularly to people who I care about, but it also often includes complete strangers. I feel responsible for pleasing my family and friends and for meeting their expectations. To be honest, I often feel responsible to exceed their expectations. I feel compelled to be as close to perfect as I can be.

I also often feel responsible for what other people think about God, specifically my close friends and family members. Some part of my brain tells me that I may very well be the only person who can show them the light, and that it is therefore my duty to say or do just the right thing to reach them. I take on the impossible and fully expect myself to achieve it. When I don’t, I feel a huge sense of anxiety and emotional pain over my helplessness to change their minds.

Another thing that I feel responsible for is fixing people. This obviously ties in with the problem I just mentioned, but it goes beyond that. When I see somebody in pain or struggling or suffering with an unmet need, I feel compelled to fix it. It’s not just that I want to help or offer comfort, either. I literally want to make the problem go away, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing to want, it is bad when I feel as if I actually must do so. Because the fact is, I can never make a person’s problems go away completely. And when I realize that there is nothing I can do to fix it, I feel distressed, upset, and helpless. I end up doing nothing, instead pushing the person out of my mind because that is the only way that I can move on with my life.

The truth of the matter is that none of these things are my responsibilities. I cannot please everybody, I cannot force people to love God and live in a way that pleases Him, and I cannot fix people’s problems. Even God cannot or chooses not to be responsible any of these things! He doesn’t try to please everybody, because He knows that being true to His nature is way more important than making people happy. He doesn’t force people to believe in Him, to love Him, or to follow Him, either. In many cases, He doesn’t even bother trying to convince people to do those things! Why not? Because God, in His infinite wisdom, understands that it is not His responsibility to change or control how people behave. He lets people be responsible for their own actions, beliefs, and decisions. Of course, I know that if what I feel is even a fraction of what God feels for those people, then it must break His heart every day that He watches them make those choices. Yet He still doesn’t change His mind. God lets people remain responsible for themselves, because He loves them enough to respect their free will. I have to learn how to do the same.

Do you know what else God doesn’t do? He doesn’t fix all of people’s problems! That is a huge sticking point for some people who don’t believe in Him or follow Him. After all, if God loves us so much, then why doesn’t He just make everything perfect and end our suffering? People have come up with many great answers to that question, but I think it all comes down to this; God lets us take responsibility for the mess that we’ve made in our lives and our world. Originally, he did give us a perfect world! But humanity decided to mess it up, and it’s only gotten worse since then. It’s our choice to make bad decisions and do bad things, and He respects our right to make those choices.

It doesn’t end there, though. God doesn’t just leave us in our mess and say “Best of luck to you, suckers!” The Bible tells us that His heart breaks for the suffering of His people. He loves us, and He hates to see us struggle! Which is exactly why He made a way for things to be different. He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us and pay the price for all of our mistakes and bad choices. It is through Jesus that we can find hope for a better way. It is through Jesus that we can have a relationship with the God of the universe, and have hope for today and for the future.

Even those who love God still have problems, though. The difference is that when people who love God have problems, there is a limit to what they can lose. As a Christian, I know that no matter what happens to me in life, nobody can ever take away my relationship with God. Nobody can ever take away my eternal future in Heaven. Nobody can ever take away God’s love for me, and when it really comes down to it, that’s all I need. Because of that, I know that I’ll always be okay. Of course, that doesn’t mean life will always be a piece of cake.

Thinking about all of these things, I think that I might finally understand that I’m really not responsible for all of the things that I put on my own shoulders. And if I follow Jesus’ example, then I can start to understand what I am responsible for. Like Jesus, I am responsible for my own actions. I am responsible for loving God and loving others to the best of my ability. I am responsible for doing my best to live in a way that pleases God, which includes sharing His message with others and helping people in whatever ways that I can. And because of Jesus, I am covered 100% and completely when I make mistakes. Because of Jesus, I am not responsible for being perfect. That, my friends, is called freedom, and Jesus took full responsibility for it a long, long time ago.