CHAPTER 1 –Commitment

“Are you committed, contemplating, or just caught up in something cultural?”

“Today’s culture desensitizes words and makes statements like “commitment” mere meaningless comments.”

In biblical times and before the 21st century, marriages thrived due to a solid understanding of the principles surrounding covenants and commitment. I’ve coined the present era as “Generation YAP,” where there seems to be more talk than action. In this time, we’ve adopted a nonchalant attitude toward our own words, and consequently, so have others. Frequently, without careful thought, we throw around assurances like “sure, I’ll do it,” “I got you,” or “I’m on it” without considering our schedules, resources, families, or, most importantly, consulting with God.

Post making a commitment, a concerning trend emerges. We often find ourselves back at the negotiation table, introducing a new player in the form of our “lawyer,” Mrs. “IF We.” Our commitment seems contingent on various conditions:

IF I REMAIN happy

IF we continue to see eye to eye

IF we are going in the same direction

IF I perceive you’re faithful

IF you take out the garbage, cook, clean, love me like I want, speak to me as I expect.

We go BACK to the negotiation table AFTER the commitment.

These conditional commitments reflect a departure from the steadfast commitments of the past. Motivations for our commitments vary and can be attributed to convenience, fear, social acceptance, manipulation, tradition, religion, or sometimes, sheer ignorance.

I once managed an employee that violated a written procedure that I had trained him on the day before. When I expressed disappointment with him, he seized the opportunity to rant about how I’ve recently taken money out of his pocket by reducing his hours and changing his shifts. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t see a correlation between my lack of confidence in his performance and his schedule/responsibilities. I was puzzled how he never once thought about the specific instructions he received and how it took less than 24 hours for him to forget or ignore them. He forgot or ignored the fact that he was getting paid to perform the assignment. He forgot that he endorsed the written instructions (with pictures and examples), indicating that he read and understood them. There was a high level of entitlement and a blind spot to integrity, pride in one’s workmanship, and commitment to what he endorsed. Entitlement is a form of egotistic spoiling that says, “I deserve what I didn’t work for nor commit to.” Brattish behavior such as this can only come from a place of immaturity and a lack of human reality as to how life and relationships work. It’s simple mental math: “No deposit, no return or reward.”

There was once a time when what you endorsed was a reflection of you and your word. Your signature was your brand. If your signature was on it, it meant that you backed and supported it. Your brand is a symbol of who you are and what you stand for; it is your promise—what one could reasonably expect when choosing or depending upon you. When a rancher brands livestock, ownership is established, and anybody who encounters that brand knows (if they are familiar with it) what promises come with it.

“The best way to get a man to abort his vision
is to give him another one.”
~Stephenson Duncanson

Before we explore the intricacies of dating pitfalls, the missteps of