10/6/19 Do you embrace responsibility? Why or why not?

If someone had asked me this a few years ago, I would have answered affirmatively—but I would have been wrong. Until relatively recently, my understanding of responsibility was colored by the secular idealization of self-sufficiency and independence. I knew how to take care of my grades, my finances, my spiritual life. I was organized and deliberate, but on the whole, I was selfish. 

Happily, my reluctance both to “depend” on others and, more importantly, to take on the responsibilities of friendship (which can be demanding and hard to control) slowly dissolved through the sterling example of friends whose sense of interpersonal and communal responsibility seemed to reflect the Great Commandment of Christ.

I still find myself tempted toward an isolating independence, but I now know that life, especially a Christian life, cannot be lived in a vacuum. Christ’s positive law of love—look no further than the corporal and spiritual works of mercy—is a law of responsibility for which there is no upper limit. But unless we recognize that those whom we are called to love have a claim on our capacity to act for their good, we will not even satisfy the minimum.

Owen Toepfer

KU Alum, Class of 2019