The blame game
When God visited Adam in the Garden of Eden and wanted him
to define his current situation and standing with Him, He asked Adam, “where
art thou?”
Every
day in the midst of situations and circumstances of life, we are confronted
with this demand to tell God where we are; our location and the choices we have
made. We are confronted to define our standing in our relationship with Him and
the ways we have chosen to live. For Adam, God was not unaware of what Adam had
done. He was only requesting for a response from him. Adam’s answer was the
beginning of the blame game in this world. He acknowledged that he was naked,
afraid and in hiding. He accepted the fact that he had eaten the Forbidden
Fruit but shifted the responsibility for his actions to his wife and God, "The woman
you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate
it." Gen 3:12. When God asked the woman, she shifted the blame to
the Serpent, "The serpent deceived me, and I
ate." Gen 3:13. Read the story in Gen. 3.
The blame game is a game that we
all instinctively play as fallen human beings. We do not want to take
responsibilities for our choices and actions. We want somebody else to carry
the burdens we have created. We do not want to be blamed. We want to enjoy
freedom from blame. Nobody wants to be caught. The unfortunate thing is that
the freedom we seek from blame actually drives us into more serious bondage
and deeper into the cycle of guilt.
Now, in the family, there are
some men that if they abuse their wives, the woman is the cause. If they are
caught in adultery, the wife is the problem. If they are over reacting and
making the atmosphere in the family uncomfortable, their wife is the cause; if
they refuse to join their spouse in devotion, she is the reason because she
made him angry. They never look inward to accept the fact that they are the
architect of their actions and they are responsible for their choices.
It is not only men who fail to
take the responsibility for their actions in the family. There are women that
insult their husbands and refuse to submit to them, yet they claim their
husband is the cause; if they refuse to pray with him, he is to be blamed; if
they shout at him, nag and make the home a mini hell for everybody, their
spouse is to be blamed.
We all shift blames not only to
our spouses, we also blame our leaders, both political and spiritual. We blame
our pastors and our pastors in turn blame the members of congregation. Pastors
blame their bishops and General Overseers, while the bishops come back to blame
the junior pastors. We blame our parents and parents in turn blame their
children. We blame our friends and enemies and the system in place and the
cycle continues.
The zenith of cowardice in the
blame game is reached when we push the responsibility for our actions to
somebody who cannot defend himself in our presence or someone who is absent or
dead, just to make sure we are free from immediate blame. Worst still, when we
are finally trapped by the consequences of our choices and actions, we blame
Satan because we know nobody will invite him to defend himself. Hence for everything,
there is something or someone to blame if we look around for one.
The truth is that in this loop
and cycle of blames, there is someone who is conspicuously missing and
incidentally he is the only one that needs to take responsibility for most of
the blame – YOU. Freedom starts when you are able to say, I am the one.
Solution and the ability to confront our situation come when we break the cycle
of the blame game and take responsibility for our actions. Change can only
occur in us when we quit the blame game and look at the man in the mirror and
tell him, ‘you are responsible for all the choices you have made in life’. We
all have the opportunity to choose our response to a provocation. Whatever we
have done is what we have chosen to do and the way we have chosen to respond is
totally in our control.
Sitting down playing the blame
game is actually a posture and position of abject weakness. When we shift
blames, we deny ourselves the opportunity to change for the better; the
opportunity to receive strength and grace; the opportunity to learn and make
better choices and ultimately the opportunity to really be free. At the end of
the day, if you continue the blame game, one person remains in the prison of
defeat and guilt and that person is you. When next you are confronted with the
question, “where art thou?” will you stand up and take responsibility and say,
‘I am here. This is my current situation’? Or will you keep running from blame?
At the end of the day, when we stand before God, this same question concerning
our standing in our relationship with God will still confront us. Shifting the
blame to anybody will not save us from the consequences of our actions. God’s
response to the blame game Adam and Eve played is very instructive to us today.
None of them escaped the consequences of their actions despite the fact that they
shifted the blame for the bad choices they made to someone else and refused to
own up.
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