I Am Responsible For My Self Image!

Does anyone remember what the old Latin saying "Caveat Emptor" means?

My mum used to drum it into me, especially when we went shopping and I was beginning to succumb to the temptations lined up in order to catch my line of sight. It means "let the buyer beware".

In our current society we have all sorts of legislation and expectations that we can just wander through life as a consumer and be protected without any need to do our homework, checks, research or even thinking before engaging in a transaction. Many times now we can take something back to the store simply because we changed our mind.

This kind of "consumer protection" thinking has flowed on to many aspects of society with more and more social and legal control on "providers" and less and less onus of responsibility on "consumers" or "clients". Even in education nowadays it is not for us students to respect our teachers and lecturers and learn from them but it is up to them as "education service providers" to teach us. How absurd! But isn't that just the way of the world?

The point I am going to make now is that if that is the  way of the world then what place, if any, does it have in the church or in the life of the Christian believer? More and more I see people sitting on their bums enjoying the "performance" of the Pastor and the rest of the church production and if they don't like it enough they go somewhere else. It is all someone else's fault if I don't grow in God. Someone says something that doesn't make me feel good about myself then I get upset. It is those nasty people who said that who are bad people and I proceed to judge them for judging me and fail to see that it is I being more judgemental that those who I am accusing. This is crazy!!!

I am responsible for how I feel about myself. The Bible says that the minister has been put there to watch over my soul and that I am to give him/her double honour. How can he/she do that if we walk out the instant they challenge our thinking or our lifestyle. Not only do I need to allow those I submit to to speak into my life but I need to actively take responsibility in how I respond and react to the words spoken over me and not to buy in to anything that doesn't line up with God's plan for my life. Buyer beware.

PS. Garth Clarkson

7/5/2014.