Who's To Blame

We tend to put blame in the wrong place. Many times the wrong place is other people or circumstances. We don’t like taking blame upon ourselves. To do so would be admitting we did wrong. And admitting we did wrong brings a responsibility of doing something to correct the wrong. So we take the easy path and blame anything but ourselves. We think we can hide behind blaming others or our circumstances. However, the truth of our wrongs are visible to others, and to God. The blame game started many years ago in the Garden of Eden (See Genesis 3:1-13). Today, the blame game is still being played.

There are several reasons we engage in the blame game. Protecting our ego, emotional regulation, avoiding vulnerability, maintaining control, cognitive biases, and learned behavior are some reasons we push blame anywhere but to ourselves. In Luke 6:42, Jesus says, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” This is a wonderful explanation of the blame game. We ignore our responsibility while pointing out things others are doing or done. We seek to deflect our responsibility for our own wrongs. Guess what! We are the only one’s buy it. Others see our wrongs. In fact, they are probably pointing our wrongs out in order to avoid responsibility for their own.

We are busy trying to get others to accept responsibility for menial things, while ignoring a much bigger issue of our own. What if we were to spend as much time accepting and correcting (removing the plank from our own eye) our own wrongs as we do pointing the wrongs of other people. How much better life would be if we just took responsibility for our actions? No more spending time defending ourselves. Taking responsibility opens the prison doors and provides freedom. We no longer have to hide our wrongs. We can’t fix what we deny or hide. The only way to make things right is to take responsibility. So, instead of blaming others or our circumstances, we need to accept our role and responsibility. We are responsible for the decisions we make. In the end we will have to give an account of our lives before God, and He already knows we are responsible. Blaming others doesn’t take away the plank from our own eyes. Taking responsibility does.