Jesus Followers

Yet another lawsuit settled. This lawsuit involved the wrongful death of a man due to smoking. Now brace yourself; the settlement was for $23.6 billion (not million but billion).

So, let’s lay a few things on the table. I am not a defender of the tobacco industry; far from it. I cannot stand cigarettes and everything that they destroy in people. They are simply a tool of death. On the flip side, I appreciate the plight of the person addicted to cigarettes, or addicted to anything else for that matter. Breaking a habit is difficult business.

For me, the outcome of the lawsuit does not address whether or not smoking is bad or a person’s right or a company’s responsibility. Let’s set that off to the side for a moment. What frustrates me is the lack of responsibility that people take for their own behaviors. That’s it. Good or bad. Healthy or deadly. At what point does personal responsibility surface? When do people stand up and own what they create?

After I wrote the above three paragraphs, I turned that on myself and asked the same questions of me. As a follower of Jesus, do I own the responsibility that God entrusts in me? All that He wants to do if my life would simply be submitted to Him for real. Or better yet, let’s not speak with such grandiose ideas about my life. How about this? Do I simply own the calling to live like a follower of Jesus? Nothing more than that for this discussion.

Here is the Apostle Paul’s description. “But that is not the way you learned Christ! – assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:20-24, ESV).

Did you notice it? The key word to it all. Go back and read that Scripture again. Right at the beginning is the word “learn.” Paul says, “that is not the way you learned Christ.” We often don’t think of faith in those kinds of terms. We might think of faith with words like “experience” or “knowledge” or “tradition” or “service.” Paul says that we are “learning Christ.” We are learning to walk where and how He wants us to walk. While we are “learning Christ,” we are also “unlearning” many things that are counter to him.

Own the calling. Own the responsibility. Own the privilege. Be a Jesus follower.