Although every person feels responsible towards someone or something, the religious person is conscious of standing before a divine authority. He is presented with a task as an assignment from the Divine. (p. 59)
I sense there is something missing from this formulation. Why should I accept the assignment? What causes a person to take responsibility?
If I am suffering in some way, whether it’s an experience of illness or loss or trauma, my first reaction will be “Why?” Why did this have to happen to me? Similarly, if I have to do something I don’t want to do I will ask, “Why me?” I recall an incident where I said to myself, “Why do I have to be the one to give this guy a jump on his car? This is not what I feel like doing right now. I’m tired and hungry and I just want to get home.”
You take responsibility when you make the paradigm shift from “Why?” to “What for?” When you stop and realize the preciousness of the value you hold dear, you take the focus away from self and on to the ‘other.’ It’s no longer about you. It’s about what you love and what you deeply care about.
The question that remains is: What difference does it make if my responsibility is towards either another person, my own conscience, or an abstract value, or rather towards an ‘other’ with a capital “O”?