Not Your Responsibility

There’s a common misconception, especially amongst Christians, that it is our responsibility to make sure our family and loved ones change for the better. That is not your responsibility; the two most important things for us to do as humans is to love God and love people. Obviously, if you’re not a Christian you will automatically think that this doesn’t apply to you, but bear with me.

Unless you are living under a rock we are all aware of what’s going on both in our country and around the world. We might not know all the details of every situation happening, but we can see chaos left and right. Have you noticed what’s missing? Love.

The love for people has gone down the trash and some might say, “well I can’t love this person or that person because they are horrible individuals,” and I agree that some people lack respect, lack love, and don’t seem worthy of our genuine friendship, but have you ever seen someone’s character change and realize that they truly are someone worth befriending?

We all want to see change, we all want to see things get better, but in order for that to happen is for us to stop trying to take responsibility in making other people change and start to change things internally. Let’s work on our character, let’s work on our respect, let’s work on our love and just watch how the people around you begin to react. It’s easier said than done, yes, I understand that, but if we want to leave a legacy for our children and our younger family members to live in a more caring and loving society, we have to fix ourselves first.

It is not your responsibility to change your neighbor, it is not your responsibility to change your family, but it is your responsibility to seek God and love people. Let’s have a conversation, even if you disagree with me or others, let’s work on understanding why instead of simply giving the cold shoulder.

I Respectfully Disagree…

That’s a phrase I haven’t really heard in a while. For these past couple weeks I’ve wanted to blast my opinion on my page and leave it here for anyone who would stumble upon it to see, but I wanted to hold off until I processed everything, I wanted to look at how everything has been playing out and all I kept seeing is CHAOS!

I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts about 8 months ago, I was getting frustrated at how much of a distraction it was becoming as well as getting frustrated at things people would post. I would agree with some things and disagree with others, occasionally I would voice my opinion but I would cease to do so if it went from being a friendly disagreement to an outright attack. Since I’ve been off those platforms, I’ve regained peace. The only platforms I currently use are Snapchat and Twitter, which I still try to avoid but as everyone knows, it’s easy to get caught up scrolling and retweeting.

I can still tell people are throwing jabs and punches from both sides of the aisle, and it’s sometimes heartbreaking. We see the abortion debates, immigration debates, gun debates, and all these other issues going back and forth. As a conservative (yes, I’m a conservative but please continue reading), it would be easy for me to say that conservatives know how to keep their cool and those on the extreme left are blowing things out of proportion, but in reality at this point I have to take a step back and look at the big picture. Some conservatives know how to keep their cool, as I’m sure some liberals know how to do so as well, but it has reached a point where evil is overflowing from our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 already tells us that the heart is deceitful, and with so much access to social media these days it becomes that much easier to see what comes out of our hearts. I don’t want to end this post by being negative and pointing out all the bad that is going on, but rather to focus on becoming better individuals. I will always stand firm and say that God is the one who can transform our lives and how we respond to the world, but if you don’t believe in God (or even if you do) I will ask this, what good comes from the anger you hold against someone you disagree with? Don’t get me wrong, we will definitely disagree with people throughout our life, but what’s the point of staying angry or even attacking someone verbally/physically because you disagree on an issue? We gain absolutely nothing. Let’s work on learning to disagree; it’s ok if someone doesn’t believe what you believe. Your goal should not be to convince people to believe as you do, share your view and let others share theirs, if you disagree then do so in kindness.

Lastly, some Christians will probably come at me and say, “but Lin, we’re supposed to go make disciples and share the word of God so how can you say our goal shouldn’t be to convince people about God?” Guess what, we’re not supposed to convince anybody to believe in our faith, first we are to live it out and we are to share it, we are not responsible for changing people, that’s what God is in charge of. So again, it’s ok to disagree but don’t build up anger if people don’t see how you see.

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