Quotes about Responsibility

In our spiritual disintegration we may not be able to rule the earth, but we now have the power several times over to ruin it utterly.

Reason functions as a basis of responsibility before God precisely because of its ability to serve in the instigation, nurture, and correction of faith. Because of this ability, we are responsible before God if we do not abide according to its results. To disparage the role of reason in the production and sustenance of faith is to contradict the plain intent of the scriptures, according to which reason provides adequate grounds to support a right worship of God.

God both develops and, for our good, tests our character by leaving us to decide. He calls us to responsible citizenship in his kingdom by saying—in effect or in reality—as often as possible, "My will for you in this case is that you to decide on your own".

To say that "the righteous (or just) shall live by faith" does not mean that they live by blind and irresponsible leaps in total absence, or even in defiance, of knowledge. It does not mean that the "just" live in a state of ignorance or stupidity. They do on occasion act in specific ways beyond what they know, but only within a framework of knowledge that makes such action reasonable.

God wants us to participate in the governance of his kingdom.

Robbed of its reference to a transcendent spiritual being or substance that nonetheless personally engages with humanity while holding them responsible to its specific directives on how to live, this "love" ("God") has no recourse but to become whatever the current ideology says it is. Currently that means not treating people as different, while liberating them and enabling them to do what they want.

But responsibility and initiative are the heart of our relationship with God. We are not robots, and he does not work with robots.

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not.

You cannot choose conditions and reject the consequences. Even a "bill of rights" cannot change that.

We cannot sit still and see the dear Burmans, flesh and blood like ourselves and, like ourselves, possessed of immortal souls that will shine forever in heaven or burn forever in hell — we cannot see them go down to perdition without doing our very utmost to save them. And thanks be to God, our labors are not in vain.

A measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him, but the number of people he serves.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.