7 Myths Women Believe & the Biblical Truths Behind Themنموونە

The Myth: “I Don’t Need To Get Involved – Someone Else Will Do It”

I used to think I didn’t need to get involved. “Someone else will do it,” I told myself whenever I saw a situation and wondered if I should step in. “Who am I to tell someone else how to live his or her life?” I reassured myself, feeling justified simply to pray for the individual if I thought of it.

So, I looked the other way whenever we came up short closing the register at work. I knew who was stealing the money, but why should I say anything? After all, that was someone else’s place—someone who earned the big bucks as the manager.

I turned a blind eye when I saw my neighbor’s teenage daughter hanging out at the local park (often during school hours) with a man clearly much older than she was. They were kissing and causing quite a spectacle, so I was sure someone else would tell her mom. After all, I don’t know this neighbor that well. I wasn’t sure how she’d take the news coming from me.

I also pretended not to see my old friend from high school, Tiffany, at church on Sunday mornings. I looked right through her if I couldn’t avoid her any other way. Not rudely, just as if I were focused on someone else. Somewhere else. Anywhere but looking into her eyes and seeing her raw pain up close. I’d heard the rumors—driving for hours by herself, drunk and lost. I’d even smelled the alcohol on her at our kids’ baseball games. But what could I do to help her? After all, we’re really not friends anymore. And I wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

Then a crisis occurred in our family. It was a time when I really needed someone to enter into my daughter’s life. She needed to hear the truth from someone other than me. But no one else thought they needed to get involved. After all, everyone thought someone else would do it.

The Truth

We have a responsibility to our sisters and brothers in Christ. God instructs us to love each other above ourselves, even saying we ought to be willing to lay down our lives for others, yet we don’t think we have a right to speak up when we see them in trouble. Too often we’re content to stay uninvolved (other than carefully disguising gossip about them as “prayer requests”). We convince ourselves that we’re being respectful of their privacy, waiting until we have more facts or depending on the paid professionals (church staff and counselors) to do something about it. Truthfully, as long as our own lives are comfortable, we tend to be more like the priest and Levite in Jesus’ parable who ignored their neighbor’s plight (see Luke 10:25–37). When we’re slack in upholding our responsibility to look out for those within our church, then ignoring moral decay on the job, in our neighborhoods and in our nation is even easier.

The trickle-down effects of a “to each her own” philosophy we see in Judges 17:6 are obvious in our culture. We isolate ourselves in our own little worlds, living life as if it were a drive-through coffee shop that never required us to exit our cars.

Yes, getting involved in others’ lives is messy. Yes, it demands your time. Yes, it makes you uncomfortable at times. Yes, it forces you to grow. But yes, it’s the right thing to do. This is how God intends for you to live—to cry with those who cry, to celebrate with those who celebrate (see Romans 12:15). This is how Jesus lived his life—sharing people’s messy lives, encouraging those who were faltering, picking the weak up off the ground and living out his love in action and in truth (see 1 John 3:18).

Get involved!