It’s Not My Fault! The Eternal Blame Game And How To Fix It

She made me do it!
God reveals,
“And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
Genesis 3:11-13
From the beginning, we have never taken personal responsibility for our actions. Everything that we have done, contrary to God’s desires, has always been someone else’s fault. Adam implies, not so subtly, that He sinned because God gave him Eve who tempted Him. Eve, says she sinned because the serpent tempted her. Lucifer seems to be the only one who had no one else to blame.
Playing the blame game
This mantra of shifting blame onto other people is endemic in our society. Everything is always someone else’s fault. Rarely, do we accept personal responsibility for our mistakes and the evil that results from them.
Instead of accepting responsibility we play the blame game. Nothing that ever happens to us is our fault and we play the eternal victims of forces beyond our control. There are, of course, true victims that, through no fault of their own, experience bad things. I am not talking about those situations. However, more often than not, it is our own sin that leads us into temptation and our suffering is purely of our own doing.
Judgment comes whether or not we take responsibility
Judgement, in all its many forms, comes to us whether or not we accept personal responsibility for our actions. The only difference between those who realize their error and those who shift the blame is that one has the possibility of correcting the source of their mistakes and the other does not. When we blame others for our own errors we cannot fix them because we do not own them. Until these mythical people stop doing the things that harm us we continue to be victimized by them. However, when we stop playing the blame game and take personal responsibility for what we do, then we have to power to change our ways and make our lives better.
We sin because we choose to sin
Adam chose to sin, plain and simple. Adam did not have to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first man was not even deceived into thinking the forbidden fruit was good to make one wise. As God confronted Adam he did not own his sin but shifted the blame to Eve and ultimately to God for creating her. Adam’s decedents have been doing this same maneuver ever since. We partake of sin yet we shift the responsibility for our sin to others. We blame everyone else but ourselves for the consequences of our sin. Thus we never make the changes necessary to stop sinning.
Confess your sins
Confessions and repentance are the antidote for the “blame game.” As we confess our sins we take responsibility for them. When we accept responsibility for our sin we can then repent and turn away from it. God, who is full of grace, forgives our sin and cleanses us so that we can go and sin no more.
Have you ever heard the saying, “If your in a hole stop digging.” Confession and repentance does not necessarily get us out of our hole but it does cause us to stop digging it deeper. The effects of our sin may linger in our lives but at least, when we repent, we stop doing the things that got us there in the first place. As we turn away from sin our lives begin to turn around and we gradually we see the light of day.
Stop playing the blame game
In conclusion, let’s stop blaming others for what we do. Allow God to show us who we really are and why we face difficulties. Until we look in the mirror and actually remember who we are we cannot change for the better. Amen.