What is the meaning of responsibility? To whom are we responsible and why?
To define responsibility Frankl coined the term response-ability. It connotes the ability and also demand to respond to a call that addresses us.
We’re called from within and from without. The call from within originates in the consciousness of our uniqueness and elicits a commitment that wells up in response to the urge to be our authentic self.
The call from without originates in the challenges life sends us and elicits a readiness and willingness to serve with our uniqueness.
These two aspects of responsibility can be conceived as the basic human condition in relation to God. In one sense we are a spark of the divine. We long to be attached to our Source. This identity of the divine within us, or this higher sense of being human creates a relationship of love for God and all of God’s creation. We experience feelings of affinity and bonding. We are stirred and motivated towards acts of kindness and goodness because we are essentially good.
At the same time we are not God. There is an unbridgeable gap between us and the power that created heaven and earth. God is pure spirituality and we are material beings. We are often fallible and we are ignorant. This identity creates a relationship of fear of God. We recoil from that which would sever the relationship. We accept what is beyond our control. We awesomely take upon ourselves tasks that have been given us to do, sometimes even thrust forcefully upon us.
The call from within is a commitment that wells up from the depth of our being to be who we are, to be genuine, to reach out to a world we feel connected to. It is the call that brings people to choose a career suited to their talents even despite what everyone else thinks they should be doing.
The call from without. urges us to take up life’s challenges, to overcome the barriers and transcend our fallibility. It is the call that brings people to risk their lives to save another person’s life, knowing that they are in a unique position to do so.
Love and fear are usually conceived as two alternative ways of relating to God. They are viewed as a matter of preference wherein one societal group favors one kind of relationship and another group the other.
This conception is a fallacy.
When the quality of love lacks fear it is not the same as love that incorporates fear. Love lacking in fear is an immature love. It’s the love of a spoiled child who is assured of parental love and acceptance to the extent that he can do no wrong and is not accountable for any wrongdoing. Furthermore there is no gratitude but everything is coming to him as entitlement.
When the quality of fear lacks love it is not the same as fear that incorporates love. Fear lacking in love is the feeling of a punitive God who makes unreasonable demands and does not have your interest in mind.
In the mature, authentic person love and fear merge and take on a new integrated quality.
Such a person does not say ‘God loves me and therefore I can do no wrong.’ There is an awareness of something greater than yourself and with this comes a sublime humility. You have disdain for wrongdoing. Rather than blaming others you take responsibility for the consequences of your actions and desire to make amends, and also desire to repair damage caused by others.
There is a passion to serve and show gratitude for life’s gifts. You’ve been invested in and entrusted with tasks. You are aware that not everything is in your control, but in certain areas of life you’ve been lovingly commissioned to make right choices.
The tug from within is a voice calling you to realize your potential and become whom you’ve been created to be. The tug from without is the same voice. We may feel the two calls as coming from two directions but the more we’re in touch with the still small voice implanted within us and the guidance we’re given through life’s signs, challenges and invitations to meaning the more we realize they are one and the same.
You want to reach out and connect and join from a place of closeness and you want to serve from a place of distance. Closeness and distance are both true at one and the same time.
When Frankl said that logotherapy can be seen as an “education in responsibility” this can be understood as an education in refining the capacity to act upon the call from within and from without with one harmonious response.