Misplaced Misery

Week 10, Friday

Teresa Brown

Then the man said [to Creator God], “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12 (nkjv)

Blame is the action of placing the responsibility for one’s misery as far away from its rightful owner as possible. Adam blamed Eve for giving him fruit from the forbidden tree. Then he blamed God for giving him Eve. Likewise, Eve shifted blame for her disobedience onto the Serpent and declared that the Devil made her do it. Only the Serpent did not offer an excuse or defer blame to someone else. For him it was simply mission accomplished. He wants the credit when people fall. He lives for that buzz.

Over the years I have discovered that human beings learn the art of blaming early and use it often. It begins as soon as a baby develops the ability to point. Ask a toddler, “Who spilled the milk?” and she will point to Fido. Question a five-year-old about who flushed a bag of LEGOs down the toilet, and he will blame it on the monster under his bed or the kid next door.

Sisters blame brothers, wives blame husbands, bosses blame employees. But rarely does anyone accept personal responsibility for wrongdoing, even though guilty. Consciously or subconsciously we mistakenly believe, as did Adam and Eve, that if we do not take responsibility for our actions we cannot be held accountable for them. But the gospel shows that reasoning is faulty: “For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17, nkjv). The day is coming, the Bible says, “when God will judge the secrets of men” (Romans 2:16, nkjv).

Are you accustomed to saying, “It’s not my fault,” when it really is? Wayne Dyer wrote,

The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty of something by blaming him, but just like Eve, you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.[i]

Lord, I admit it. I’m guilty of pinning my mistakes to the coattails of others. I’m a hit-and-run blamer and I’m sorry. Forgive me and teach me to stand on my own two feet without dragging others down. Amen.

[i] Wayne Dyer, Your Erroneous Zone, quoted in “Waste of Time,” http://bible.org/illustration/waste-time, accessed December 13, 2010.