Each person has got to live his or her own life. It is a gift and a personal responsibility.No one else can live your life for you, and that is both a blessing and a curse.On the one hand you get to decide all by yourself what you will and won't do, but on the other hand you are stuck with the fact that you choose to do this or that. When you wake up in the morning, you can get up and go exercise to start off your day or you can also just fall back in the bed and close your eyes. When you get angry, you can say provocative and hurtful things to other people, even people you love, even if the little voice inside says to you, “Don't say that!”But you can choose to either say it or not say it. Blessings and cursings. There is a benefit to being able to choose, but there is a burden in actually making a choice. Furthermore, it is not that anyone can escape this kind of responsibility, because to not make a choice is to make a choice. There is no third road down which we all get to escape. Thus, I am morally responsible for what I do, I am spiritually responsible for believing or not believing God, I am interpersonally responsible for relating to people as persons instead of as things that I can use for my own purposes. In addition, I am personally responsible for the choice I make to see my experience as largely my own creation, or to blame others for what I am experiencing. More blessings and cursings.When God met the Israelites in the wilderness after they left Egypt, He gave them the law, what people popularly call the Ten Commandments. It was constructed following the form of a suzerain-vassal treaty, which was a common diplomatic document of the time, known to the Semitic peoples of the area.According to Wikipedia, ancient Israel related the Hittite suzerain-vassal relationship in their covenant to their relationship with God. Each suzerain-vassal treaty would typically begin by identifying the suzerain (see Exodus 20:2), followed by a historical prologue describing the relationship between the suzerain and the vassal state. Following the historical prologue would come the stipulations (see Exodus 20:3-20:17). These would include tributes, obligations, and other forms of subordination that would be imposed on the vassal, and these were included in the covenant and applied to the Israelites. According to the Hittite form, after the stipulations were offered to the vassal, it was necessary to include a request to have copies of the treaty that would be read throughout the kingdom periodically. What followed that was an addition of authority and further security of the treaty being carried out. The treaty would have divine and earthly witnesses purporting the treaty's validity, trustworthiness, and efficacy. This also tied into the blessings that would come from following the treaty and the curses from breaching it. For disobedience curses would be given to those who had not remained steadfast in carrying out the stipulations of the treaty (see Exodus 20:5-6; Exodus 20:12).Meredith Kline of Westminster Theological Seminary described in lectures how the book of Deuteronomy reflected the suzerain-vassal treaty form (www.fivesolas.com/suzerain.htm). This entire book of Moses is saturated with Suzerain Treaty language and structure. It is not properly the treaty document itself, but it is based upon such a treaty, making reference to it often. Below are some examples:· Historical prologue language and structure (4:32-40);· Stipulations (4:44 — 5:21);· Blessings and curses (6:4-25);· Reflects all the sections of a suzerain treaty (8), (11);· Reflects the relationship of a vassal king to the Suzerain (17:14-20);· Reflects the language and structure of wartime arrangements between a Suzerain and his people (20);· Curses and blessings (27-28);· Covenant renewal (29);· Classic presentation of Ancient Near East Treaties (30:11-19).I believe that God's use of such a well-known form by which to establish the basis upon which He intended to interact with the new nation of Israel is an example of “accommodation of revelation”. In accommodation of revelation a more complex and “higher” entity “stoops” to use the lesser's frame of reference in order to increase the likelihood of being understood. The supreme example of this is where the New Testament asserts that although Jesus existed in the form of God, He did not regard it necessary to retain the prerogatives of divinity, but “emptied Himself”, and took on the form of humanity. He did so in order to more fully communicate with human beings.So, what did God communicate through the law in the form of the suzerain-vassal treaty document? There are benefits to walking in concert with Him through life, and there are disadvantages or hindrances associated with ignoring Him. Blessings and cursings.We are responsible in life, and we are responsible for what we make of life. This is the basic idea in an approach to psychotherapy called reality therapy. William Glasser, the founder of reality therapy, focused on what he called the three Rs: realism, responsibility, and right and wrong. I especially like the title that was given to his approach, because it brings to mind the colloquialism, “Get real!” Indeed. We all have the capacity to fool ourselves, and in my practice I meet people regularly who are fooling themselves. They have yet to “get real” about what is going on in their lives. In reality, they are making choices that have consequences, but they are acting as if the consequences are catastrophes that befall them out of bad luck, fate, or because of someone else; that they are victims and that they themselves have no part in the cursed experience they are enduring. That is just not the way it works. That is not reality.Not only the direction I take in any given decision, but also the meaning I make out of my experience, which colours my experience as being good for me or bad for me, is related to me living my own life. This freedom in so many ways is filled with both blessings and cursings.