I recently read a great blog post by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love”. It was entitled, “Know where you have power, and where you do not have power…”  I truly enjoy Liz’s honest, transparent discussions.  To make her point, she used the illustration of Glenda the good witch in the Wizard of Oz, telling the Wicked Witch of the West, “You have no power here.”  In essence, we have no power over anyone else but ourselves and even that is often difficult.  “We must love each other. We must be kind to each other. We must be generous in act and spirit with each other. But for the sake of grace and sanity. WE MUST LET EACH OTHER BE.”

Liz is absolutely right. We cannot change people or “fix” them. But in response to her post, I ask the question, “What about our personal responsibility to each other?”  Cain asked God this same question when he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  The answer to this question is not as easy as it may seem. If we see our brother running toward a cliff, do we just wave a greeting to them as they go by, without even voicing a warning? Where does responsibility end and meddling begin?

As my children were growing up, I admonished them to always watch out for their friends and each other. I have witnessed them doing this over and over.  By caring in this way, they may very well have saved their friends’ lives.  During one summer, when Garrett was a teen, I came home from work and noticed that he seemed very upset. I asked him several times what was wrong but he kept saying that he couldn’t tell me.  Finally he admitted that a friend had asked him not to say anything about an incident that happened that afternoon. Obviously, he was distraught and eventually told me that he and a young man from our neighborhood had been skate boarding that day. His friend fell backwards, hitting his head on concrete. The blow knocked him out and while he was briefly unconscious, he had a seizure.  When he awoke, he swore Garrett to secrecy since he knew his parents would not let him go on a planned water skiing trip the next day.  Needless to say, alarms went off in my head when I heard this.  I called the friend’s parents to tell them what happened and recommended that he go to the ER to be checked.  Luckily, he had no serious complications but did have a concussion. However, another blow to his head could have been fatal.

I use this real story as an example to say that we must have some personal responsibility for the people around us. No, we can’t change them but we can suggest a different direction when they are involved in risky behavior.  In Garrett’s friend’s situation, his parents took him to the ER. However, if he had been an adult he could have decided to do nothing. That would have been his choice and none of us could have changed that even if, in our opinion, it was a poor choice. Our loved ones can and will make choices that will hurt them. Sometimes that’s the only way a person learns is to experience negative consequences. However, I don’t believe that looking the other way in a situation like this with the excuse that it’s none of my business, is the right thing to do.  I bet the parents of Lauren Spierer, the IU undergrad who has been missing now for over 3 years, wished one of her friends had stopped her when she walked home alone intoxicated. A little interference might have saved her life. We may never know.

I do realize however that there are times that interference is just meddling.  There also are ways to speak the truth to someone who is moving toward the proverbial “cliff” that are productive and there are ways that are simply harmful.  Often, instead of gently trying to move my loved one away from the “cliff”, I find myself tackling them in the process.  I care for them and don’t want to see them hurt. But this approach never works. It only hurts my relationship with that person and generally moves them closer to the “cliff”, not away from it. Kind, loving, grace-filled conversations are much more likely to succeed. The difficult part is letting the person go when they choose to continue toward their “cliff” even after my warning. Maybe true love is helping them pick up the broken pieces after they fall.

I believe God calls us into community to lift each other up but also to hold each other accountable.  I may grumble when I am held accountable but I also am grateful to my friends and family when they have done this difficult task. No, they don’t have the power to change me or fix me but words of wisdom to redirect me have saved me a lot of pain and grief over the years.  Have I always listened?  Certainly not and I have lived with the consequences.

Am I my brother’s keeper?  No.  We are each endowed by God with the free will to choose our thoughts and our actions.  I cannot control these choices in anyone but myself.  However, offering words of wisdom is my responsibility. To do otherwise would be indifferent and uncaring. That’s not the kind of world in which I would choose to live.