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"Habits of Highly Effective Christians: Being Response-ABLE"

January 18, 2004 The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Sometimes when I read the Scriptures and I see what God wants me to do, I get a little bit intimidated.  Like the Scripture today, that I'll read to you in just a minute, tells us we ought to "bless those who persecute us, and not curse." Well, I have a hard enough time not cursing the guy who cuts me off on the freeway, much much less blessing someone who gives me a hard time all the time.  Or to "love my enemies."  I have a hard enough time loving my wife, or my kids, much less my enemies.  So how do I become a better person?

This is broadly the subject I would like to talk about over the next few weeks.  I'm going to start a new series of sermons today.  Loosely based--because sometimes preachers are thieves, if you will (we get ideas from other people)--using Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  And I say "loosely" because I like a lot of the things he says, but some of the things I don't, so I'll take what's good and use it and, of course, what the Scripture says.

Today I want to talk about the habit called "responsibility."  Let us read God's Word.  It is first taken from the Old Testament, a story we're all familiar with, probably, the story of Adam and Eve.  And this is the scene where God has come into the garden after Adam and Eve have sinned.  Listen to the Word of God.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" 

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." 

And God said, "Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 

The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 

Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" 

And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

And from the New Testament, Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 9.

Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.  Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.  Honor one another above yourselves.  Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.  Share with God's people who are in need.  Practice hospitality. 

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.  Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.  Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.  Do not be conceited. 

Do not repay anyone evil for evil.  Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.  On the contrary:

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;

      if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. 

In doing this, you will heap burning

      coals on his head." 

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

We human beings are wonderful at making excuses.  Often you find things in books or on the internet, and I ran across a few excuses that were made by students to actual school teachers, and some of them went like this:

"Please excuse Mary for being absent.  She was sick and I had her shot."

"Please excuse Jimmy for being.  It was his father's fault."

"Please excuse my son's tardiness.  I forgot to wake him up and I did not find him until I started making the beds."

"Ann did not do her homework because I didn't understand it."

"Sally won't be in school two weeks from Friday.  We have to attend a funeral."

Or, a list of excuses from people who made claims on their insurance companies:

"I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way."

"I was backing out of a parking space and by the time I had backed out far enough to see if anything was coming, it was already there."

"A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."

"The telephone pole was approaching fast.  I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end."

"An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle, and vanished."

"Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have."

Or, my favorite one:  "I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment."  I love to tell that one when my mother-in-law is here.

We are good at excuses.  It really began at the beginning, didn't it?  We see that in Adam and Eve.  One of the first consequences of sin, if you will, is blaming the other guy.  That's a great scene, isn't it? 

"Adam, who told you you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree?"

"It was the woman, Lord."

Now, guys, haven't we done that?  Those of you who are married--I mean, you have to admit it.  You've thought it, haven't you?  "It was the woman you gave me, Lord."  Or vice versa, of course.  And, of course, Eve immediately blamed someone else herself:  "It was the devil."  How many of you remember Flip Wilson?  He used to dress up like Geraldine, you know--"The devil made me do it!"  I can't do it like he did it.  But we're always finding someone else. 

I think we live in an interesting time, really.  We have such an emphasis on personal freedom.  Everybody's got rights!  We have rights for patients.  We have rights of children.  We have rights of women.  We have animal rights.  We have even rights for Al-Qaida or Saddam Hussein.  Everybody emphasizes their rights and their freedom.  And how dare you tell anyone that you can't do something!

At the same time, we are engaged in almost a systematic plan of removing responsibility.  There are people doing research to find out if genes cause obesity.  Or alcoholism.  Or homosexuality.  Or almost anything.  In our day and age, it's almost as though you have really three kinds of things.  Either your grandparents made you do it--your ancestors.  If you're Scandinavian, you're liable to be depressed all the time.  Or if you're Irish, you're surely going to start drinking.  Or whatever it happens to be, whatever prejudice there is out there.  Or excuse:  "I was born that way.  I can't help it." 

Or, your parents did it to you.  They didn't potty-train you well enough.  Or they didn't read to you.  Or they didn't do this or they didn't do that.  Your parents did it to you. 

Or, the environment did it to you.  "I was poor."  "I wasn't educated." You know, I don't know if Michael Jackson is guilty or not.  I really hope not.  But we're certainly going to hear how he was raised by an abusive father.  Now, don't get me wrong.  These things are very powerful influences in our lives.  I'm not saying they aren't.  They really are. 

I remember going out to visit my brother.  My brother is eight years older than me.  We hardly see each other, but we were sitting at the dinner table and I laughed in a certain way.  His son looked at me and just laughed himself and said, "My father laughs exactly like that!"  And, of course, my father laughed like that.  And I find myself becoming more like my father every day, in good ways and some not so good.  You know, we all say that:  "I'll never do what my parents did."  But we always wind up doing it.  They are powerful things.

But often we try to make excuses.  So what does that mean for the habit of responsibility?  To me, the world is almost diabolical.  We emphasize freedom, and yet lack of responsibility.  How, as Christians, do we react to that?  Well, we certainly believe in freedom, but we also believe in responsibility.  How do we grow as Christians in being more responsible, in the habit of responsibility?  Well, I think you have to break it down into two other things. 

Responsibility, I think, begins also with the habit of confession.  You know, our habit, if you will, is often to blame other people.  And we are engaged often in confessing the sins of others.  If something is wrong at work, or in the home.  You didn't clean up your underwear on the floor.  Or you come home and find that it's a mess.  So what are you doing?  You begin confessing the sins of others. 

I do marriage counseling very often and it's very interesting when one spouse comes in how often that spouse says, "I need to fix my husband!"  "I need to fix my wife!"  I had a good friend of mine a few years ago come in "We've got to fix my wife!"  Well, yeah, he was right.  His wife was not much fun, to some degree.  But I always (and I'm kind of giving away my secrets) I always start with the person who comes to me first.  And there is some real truth to that for each of us.  We can't change the world by confessing other peoples' sins or cursing their darkness.  I have found in my life that I can't make anyone do anything.  The only person I can work on--and I have trouble with myself--is myself.  And so part of what we need to do in order to build the habit of responsibility is first look at ourselves and confess where we have gone wrong.  Now, it may be true in any given situation it may be 20 percent you and 80 percent somebody else, or whatever the percentage is.  But the first place we must look is ourselves.

Now, I'm not talking about beating ourselves up.  A lot of us have probably read the Harry Potter books.  In one of the books, there is a little elf character named Dobby.  And when Dobby appears, he is always doing something wrong and yet he feels guilty about it.  So every time he does something wrong, he beats his head against the wall and goes, "Bad Dobby!  Bad Dobby!  Bad Dobby!"  I find a lot of Christians are kind of like that.  We beat ourselves up.  We feel unworthy to be in God's presence.  And there's a certain goodness about that except that I think often we feel so unworthy we don't think God would pay attention to us, or love us, or anything like that.  I'm not talking about that kind of confession.

And yet, at the same time, honesty is the first step to healing.  Many of us have known folks who are alcoholic.  I have in my own family people who have been alcoholic, some who never really admitted to it and never got healed, never even started the path to healing.  The first step is to admit you've got a problem.  And that's true for all of us.  So we begin to work on ourselves.

And the second "C," if you will--and as you get used to me, you'll see I will make sort of lists of things, but I want to be careful about lists because my intent is never, ever to say, "If you do these five things, you'll be perfect" or "all your problems will be solved."  I usually use lists just as kind of a memory tool because my memory is not very good.  And so the first "C" of responsibility is confession.

And the second "C" is choice.  And this is where Stephen Covey kind of comes in.  He calls responsibility "proactivity."  And his idea is that when something happens, a "stimulus," if you will, we are not animals in that we automatically give a response.  You know, there are people like that--who have come up with these psychological theories that we're no better than dogs and if we have a stimulus, we will always have a certain response and we can't help it.  And that's just not true.  We have, because we're made in God's image, the ability to choose what kind of response we will have.

Now, often we do respond in rather scripted ways, don't we?  If someone does something to us, we often want to do it to them, and I think that's what Paul is talking about when he says, "Don't take revenge."  You know, when Jesus says, "Turn the other cheek," He is not saying, "Stand there and get beat up."  He's saying we're not allowed to take revenge.  So we need to stand up to bad things, even among ourselves.  When someone is abusive in their language, or if someone is attacking another country, sometimes we need to stand up to it and deal with evil.  But we're not allowed to take revenge because we just don't know what justice looks like sometimes.  But if you're like me, if someone slaps you on the cheek, I want to slap him back.  But I want to do a little bit more than that.  You slap me on the cheek, man, I'm going to take care of you!  Or if you say a bad word to me, I'm very likely to say a few more, just to make sure!  That's, at least, what I feel like.  But we can defeat that by making a choice.  And what I like about Covey is that he says being proactive means we are "response-able."  We are able to choose our response to whatever bad is going on, according to the principles that we believe in.  And here's the key:  We choose to react according to the principles that we believe in:  Of love.  Of justice.  Of goodness. 

That's what's so curious to me when Paul makes all these lists of things we're supposed to do:  "Bless your enemy, and do not curse."  "Love your neighbor."  "Practice hospitality."   Do this and do that.  And he's saying, "We need to make the choice to break the cycle of the evil that's out there by doing something different."

I don't want to be simplistic, but I almost think that that's just what's going on in the Middle East and all over the place is that we have this cycle of revenge.  And it's one thing after another building.  And somebody needs to say, "Stop!"  But we also need to do that in our families, in our work, and choose to love.

Covey tells a story about how someone came up to him and said, "You know, I like what you're saying, but it just doesn't apply in every case."  (And, of course, it doesn't.) 

But he said, "My wife and I are having a lot of problems, and the problem is we just don't love each other any more.  And the thing is, we're worried about our three children.  What would you suggest?"

And Covey looked at him and said, "Love her."

The man said, "You don't understand.  The feelings just aren't there any more and I don't know what to do."

And he just said again, "Love her."

He said, "Well, maybe you didn't hear me right.  The feelings aren't there.  How do you love someone when the feelings aren't there?"

And he went on to say to the fellow--and I've said this many times myself, "Love is a verb."  So if you don't have the feelings for your wife or your husband, love them.  Do good to them.  Sacrifice for them.  Serve them.  Cherish them.  Because feelings are a fruit of the action, and I believe that.

I have a friend back in Houston--one of my best friends.  And suddenly he was going to divorce his wife.  It's still going on.  And he began to believe the Hollywood idea of love--that it's all about you and it's all about feelings.  And he says, "I just don't feel for her any more."  It's kind of like the Righteous Brothers, "You've lost that loving feeling . . . it's gone, gone, gone"--so I'm gone. 

But the principle of love in the Bible is to do good, even to your enemies.  Even to your wife or your husband.  And there's no guarantee that they'll come around, but the miracle is that often if we do what is right in a situation, sometimes it will come around.  Sometimes they will come around.  It's the principle of living according to them, the choice that we can make in the midst of bad situations.  How we respond to a situation is what determines whether we're hurt or not.  There have been people who have had cancer, who have been put in prison camps, and done all kinds of things who have, through the power of making a choice to love and to do good, have been able to make it through, even though everybody else was determining who they were and what they were doing.

But I do want to say this.  What I don't like about Covey and these other types of books (and I think they go so far), is that often they say that if you just try hard enough, you can just make these things happen.  It's like The Little Engine that Could:  "I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can."  And that just isn't true. 

What is true is that God helps us in our need.  And it's not by accident that I chose these two "C"s, because the "C" of confession is related to worship.  And I think we change in our hearts the more we come in contact with God.  We can't change ourselves--only maybe to a point.  Some people do it better than others.  But with God, we can.  And so my encouragement to you is that we all need to practice the habits of confession/worship.  To be here on Sunday mornings.  To pray in our personal lives.  To read the Scriptures.

And the other habit we need to develop in order to be response-able is to learn about God's principles.  My friend in Houston is a relatively new Christian and he just really hasn't studied the Scriptures.  He thinks that God is leading him to divorce his wife because God wants him to simply be happy.  Well, God does want us to be happy, but not that way.  He just hasn't learned. 

It's kind of like if you were going into the hospital to have brain surgery.  When you got there you discovered that your regular doctor, who is a great physician, who knew how to do this procedure, had gotten sick and couldn't do the surgery.  His replacement was there, so you begin to quiz his replacement and you ask him, "Well, do you know how to do this surgery?"

He said, "Well, I kind of do."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The truth is, I just got out of medical school.  I learned about all this in the book and you're my first case, but I'm sincerely going to try as hard as I can."

What would you want to do in that situation?  Scream!  And so many Christians think that if I'm only sincere, and I try to do what is right, it's good enough.  But it isn't if we don't know what we're doing.

So not only must we, in order to be responsible, enter into worship, and confession, and being honest.  We must also train ourselves, and read the Scriptures, and learn about what God's principles really are.  To learn what love is all about.  To learn some alternatives to revenge.  To be able to find friends who can help us--who can help us do what is right when we're tempted to do what is wrong.

I have several verses that really keep me going.  Things like when Jesus says, "Without me, you can do nothing."  I don't take that as a negative.  I take that as a positive--that with the Lord, as Paul says, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

And last, but not least, "He who began a good work in me, and you, will bring it to completion on the day of Christ."  Because, the truth is, we are in God's hands.  And we are to try to be better.  But God is the one who is responsible for making it happen, and that gives me hope.  It helps me not be intimidated when I read these things in the Scripture about what I'm supposed to do and be, because God is helping me do these things and He will help you, too.

Let us pray together.  Father, thank you for being our God who is closer than we can imagine, who brings us to confession, and helps us make the choices we need to make.  Help us to be responsible, to be response-able, that we may serve you, and love you, and love those around us.  We pray these things in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Senior Pastor

Faith Presbyterian Church

Minnetonka, Minnesota

[Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship service on January 18, 2004.]