Rights vs. Responsibilities
One of the few lessons that ‘worked’ was the lesson about when and where it is safe to smoke. This was obviously a long time ago.
Is it OK to smoke alone in a cardboard box on a beach where this no one around for 5 kilometres? Alright, well how about we ditch the cardboard box… still OK…? Now what if there was someone else on the beach who was 50 metres away… still OK?
Always there was someone who came up with the real aim of the lesson and would quip … “Yes, but if I choose to smoke, if I choose to put gunk into my lungs, if I choose to pay eye-wateringly high amounts of tax for these addictive drugs, then that’s my right. It is my right to do A, B, C and 3.5 as often as I like and where I like”. Or the flip side “It’s my right not to do Q.2 and by-law z if I don’t feel like it”. And that's when the real discussion began. Responsibilities versus my rights. ‘Responsibilities’ always look outwards to others, while ‘rights’ look inward to oneself.
The awkwardness of this COVID age is that it is so heinously easy to be consumed with my rights and what I want, that my responsibilities to others evaporates.
A classic example is when I take communion to our shut-ins. It isn’t my right to do this, it is my responsibility. And when my focus is right, this little task along with all my other responsibilities are continuously suffused with joy. Let’s have the patience and foresight to think about what are our responsibilities to others. This is always our primary mission.