Personal Responsibility Without False Guilt

stephaniearje
17 minutes ago
4 min read

Reflections from Ezekiel 18

I’m still processing the recent exposure of another church leader and the resulting fracture within a church community—another reminder of how devastating leadership failure can be. In moments like this, blame spreads quickly—not only toward the abuser, but toward those who enabled, protected, or remained silent. The result is often a confusing moral fog where responsibility is blurred and truth feels negotiable.

The other day, I found myself reading Ezekiel 18, and I already knew I would be there for a day or two. The chapter is sobering, steady, and unavoidably personal, cutting through that kind of circular, blame-shifting thinking with a call to personal responsibility rooted in truth rather than guilt.

For someone who has lived under emotional abuse—what we now recognize as gaslighting—this subject is complicated.

Taking responsibility is not the same as accepting blame—especially for those who have lived under abuse.

That distinction matters, because when blame has been a constant companion, responsibility can feel dangerously close to surrendering to the same false narrative used to control and silence.

Over time, I’ve come to see this pattern as something more generational than situational. In my family line, blame was often passed downward rather than examined honestly. My grandmother blamed my mother. My mother, in turn, blamed her own mother for the wounds that shaped their relationship—and our relationship as well.

Responsibility was consistently externalized, while accountability remained elusive. Pain was named, but rarely owned. And without ownership, there was little room for healing.

What I began to recognize—slowly and sometimes painfully—was how easily those patterns can be inherited. Blame, when left unchallenged, becomes an emotional legacy. It functions as a shield for the one who wields it. When responsibility is continually shifted outward, self-examination is avoided, and healing is delayed.

And yet, even then, there were signs of awareness. When I was pregnant with my second child, my mother was deeply afraid that I might unknowingly repeat the same patterns. In response, she gave me a book about the powerful and often unseen ways mother-daughter relationships shape identity, behavior, and emotional inheritance—an attempt, in her own way, to help break the cycle.

That moment has stayed with me. It reminds me that patterns are often recognized before they are healed. Awareness can precede freedom. But recognition alone is not enough.

Ezekiel 18 confronts this inherited way of thinking directly. It refuses the familiar proverb—

“The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”—

and replaces it with a truth that is both sobering and liberating:

"The one who sins is the one who will die"

In other words, guilt is not transferable. Responsibility is not inherited. And repentance is not collective.

There is such a thing as true responsibility—and it is not the same as false guilt.

True responsibility asks a different set of questions.

We are responsible if we surrender ourselves to abuse.

We are responsible if we accept depression and defeat as permanent identities.

We are responsible to establish boundaries.

We are responsible to pursue healing.

We are responsible to move from survival into overcoming.

That process does not happen overnight. Healing is rarely immediate, and growth is almost never linear. We surrender to God’s work, and over time, He retrains us—how we respond, how we react, how we remain present in situations that once overwhelmed us.

After my divorce and separation, I entered the workforce and encountered a series of abusive, bullying supervisors. I remember being genuinely confused—unable to understand how God would allow this pattern to continue. But in time, I came to see these situations not as punishment, but as further opportunities for healing, growth, and the retraining of long-standing survival responses.

After three successive abusive work environments—and after the final supervisor fired me—I sought legal advice.

I worked in an open office. Everyone heard the berating. I wasn’t the only one cussed out, shamed, or demeaned. In that sense, he was an equal-opportunity harasser. But there was a difference: I was the one who was fired.

The attorney told me exactly what to do during our free consultation.

I reported the termination to the EEOC. I wrote a letter to the company’s corporate office requesting severance pay and my bonus. I documented the abuse. I noted that I had been fired shortly after my 55th birthday and replaced by a significantly younger woman. I implied age discrimination.

Corporate HR knew this man’s reputation. They advised him to back off. And they paid what I requested.

That moment was monumental for me.

It marked a shift—owning my responsibility to protect myself, to stand up for myself, and to no longer confuse passivity with faithfulness.

As believers, we have often misunderstood Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek. Too often, they’ve been interpreted as a call to tolerate abuse. That is not what Jesus modeled.

The Holy Spirit trains us to discern when to remain silent and when to speak. When to yield—and when to stand. Even as we pray for those who persecute or bully us, we are turning the other cheek—not by remaining in harm’s way, but by offering intercession.

We entrust them to the love of God our Father.

And that is enough.

We are not required to stand in the presence of emotional or physical harm.

Jesus already stood there—for us.