Who Do We Answer To? / Responsibility and a Life Worth Living

To whom are we responsible for the shape of our lives?

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Matt Croasmun challenges us to consider: to whom are we responsible for the shape of our lives?

There are at least three different types of responsibility: First, there’s your responsibility—the responsibility for your life that you have just because you’re you. Second, there’s what you’re responsible for. Third, there’s to whom we’re responsible.

Senior Lecturer at Yale College and Life Worth Living Director, Matthew Croasmun outlines three kinds of responsibility in this this chapter-by-chapter video curriculum series based on his bestselling book (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf), Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

Transcript

We all have a lot of responsibilities. Things we have to get done. Things we have to keep an eye on. People we need to take care of. We have so many different responsibilities, it can be hard to keep track of them all.

But there are at least three different types of responsibility that are worth keeping straight. You can find all three in Smokey the Bear’s classic line: Only you can prevent forest fires. Hear me out.

First, there’s the “Only you” responsibility. Smokey doesn’t mean that you alone can prevent forest fires; he means that you have a responsibility as you for your part that no one else has. That’s true in terms of your life as a whole: there’s a responsibility for your life that you have just because you’re you.

Second, there’s the forest. This is what you’re responsible for. There’s a huge question here: What is my forest? How big should my sphere of concern be?

The third kind of responsibility is probably the one we’re most likely to forget. That’s the kind represented by Smokey himself. The Bear pointing his paw at you. The one to whom we’re responsible.

Many philosophies, cultures, and religions are convinced that there’s someone or something we answer to for the entire shape of our lives. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s community—all those who came before us and will come after us. Maybe it’s the Truth with a capital-T. Or maybe each of us is our own Bear. Maybe the one we answer to is just the truest version of ourselves.Whatever we answer, it makes a big difference for the shape of our lives. So we need to ask—each one of us: Who do we answer to?