The Blame Game

Recently I wrote a blog about judging one another and I got several responses that simply said, “Guilty as Charged!” I was impressed because it is a rare thing for a person to take responsibility for anything!

When my siblings and I were young, there was one of us that upon making a mess or a mistake would look at whoever was in the room (usually me) and say, “Look what you made me do!” That is more the response we would all be used to hearing when any and every thing goes wrong!

This placing guilt on someone else started, with sin, in the Garden when God caught Adam and Eve in their disobedience. Genesis 3:11-13 God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?” The Man said, “The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it. “God said to the Woman, “What is this that you’ve done?” “The serpent seduced me,” she said, “and I ate.”

God asked Adam and instead of “manning up” he blamed God and the woman who God gave to him. And then when God questioned Eve she blamed the serpent for seducing her! Can anyone say “the blame game” started here?

Look at the way Aaron put blame for the golden calf on the people! Exodus 32:22-24 Aaron said, “Master, don’t be angry. You know this people and how set on evil they are. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will lead us. This Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him.’ “So I said, ‘Who has gold?’ And they took off their jewelry and gave it to me. I threw it in the fire and out came this calf.” What a pitiful excuse for a man, and did you see how the gold became the calf all by itself? That was as big a “miracle” as God parting the Red Sea, wasn’t it?

James 1:14-15, “Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.”

We all want to blame someone else for our downfall the old “the devil made me do it” routine however we must take personal responsibility for our own actions.

You want to blame the preacher that turned out to be a shyster, a sex maniac or a hypocrite for not wanting to go to church! If that person can keep you out of church, they are closer to God than you are, because you let them come between you and Him. I like to say, “When I would do good, evil is ever-present” then point to the person beside me!

When Jesus rose from the grave and presented Himself to the disciples, Peter was ashamed, afraid to face Him. What did Jesus do? He said, “Peter, do you love me?” He then instructed him to feed His sheep. He asked him two more times and Peter was very upset, He said, “Lord You KNOW I love You“, Jesus answered him and said “Feed My lambs”. He didn’t blame Peter for denying Him and He didn’t revile him, His kindness toward Peter made him more ashamed than he already was!

If you are guilty, admit it, don’t blame anyone else, and never say, “Look what YOU made me do!”