1533) In the time I was raised, the church seemed to adopt the notion that if you were a committed Christian; you needed to be responsible. Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, you need to keep watching your boundaries, choices and attitudes because you want to be faithful to God. I wholeheartedly agree with this. I do want to keep watch, so I can be a responsible follower of God but, sometimes I go overboard. How?

Whenever I make a poor choice, have a bad attitude, feel begrudgingly toward others, I spend a lot of time chastising myself, literally making myself curl in. My reasoning is, since I made a wrong choice, I need to punish myself so I won’t do it again. This is not an example of what Paul tells us in Romans 8:1.

Here, Paul tells us there is no condemnation for those of us who belong to Christ. When we are God’s children and we make a poor choice, we can come to him, asking him to forgive us and God will. He does not condemn us to suffering and hopelessness, as those who do not choose to be his child. When God forgives, he forgets.

Does this mean there are no consequences for our choices? Of course not, but being a responsible child of God doesn’t involve being a so-called priest and telling ourselves what we must do for penance. Beating ourselves up will not help us in the long-run. After all, can we give ourselves what we ultimately want?

Salvation comes only because of the goodness and graciousness of God. We do not need to be God’s punisher. He has taken the punishment himself. Perhaps remembering Jesus’ words, Go and sin no more, would be more helpful.