The urge to blame has reached epidemic proportions in the Western world, and I’m probably infected as much as anyone. In a world where I think I’m a good person and right about everything someone else is always wrong – it isn’t my fault. Whatever is broken in the world is someone else’s doing, and if the world isn’t the way I think it should be, I look for someone to accuse. By blaming someone for perceived problems and injustices, I make myself feel and look better – or think I do. I am the wronged. I am the victim, and someone’s got to pay.
Some people are so on the edge of blame that they’re looking for the first opportunity to take out their anger on somebody, so that when it comes there’s a massive case of over-kill, and one person can be the recipient of wrath which has been stored up for months or years.
In a world where we feel like we’re being pressured from all sides we’re quick to accuse another instead of examining our own actions and motives. We’re constantly on the defense and refuse to admit we may be at fault in any way. Instead, those of us professing faith should be the first to examine ourselves, and to ask God to reveal our own faults. Are we in the wrong? Should we be the first to apologize? Am I at least partly to blame?
Self-examination should be done through prayer and reflective Bible reading. Scripture is there primarily to reveal God to us, but also to shine a light on our own condition. If we aren’t applying what we read to our own spirits – or worse, if we aren’t reading it at all – we aren’t growing, and we may be self – deceived. We’re in danger of being self – righteous and hypocritical. This is the condition in which we’re quick to blame others but never take a good look at ourselves.
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
GANGING UP. On a larger scale the present-day culture of victimhood gives us the chance to feel that we belong to an oppressed minority. The minority group is sometimes created for political ends. The sense of being a victim of mass oppression sometimes extends to diverse groups of people who fit under one umbrella, so that when they’ve all convinced themselves that they’re under attack from one over-arching source there can be a pseudo-unity between those groups, all pointing a finger in the same direction. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and without that one perpetrator, we think, we would all have a perfect society. We would live in Utopia and everyone would be happy and unoffended… until, that is, we have dispensed with the offender and find that we still have problems. Then the finger must be pointed at someone else.
VICTIMS. Victimhood excuses us from a host of our own shortcomings. I’m poor because someone is rich; I’m grossly overweight only in the hateful perception and bias of others. I’m in a low-paid job because my boss is a tyrant. I’m the wrong gender because hateful people mis-identified me. I’m in the wrong country living on stolen land because the people who stole it put me here – I’m just taking care of it for now. My skin is the wrong color because of the people who birthed me. My parents made me the way I am. One color is guilty of racism, so that one should be punished.
GOLDSTEIN REBORN. In politics and the culture war victims and tyrants are sometimes invented as means for a political end. A scapegoat is the perfect target to pour venom and aggression onto. Currently the greatest cause of all our troubles in many eyes is Donald Trump. He’s been accused of just about everything you can think of since the moment he announced he would run for office. Thanks to profoundly corrupt politicians and media giants he’s equally hated and blamed across the Western world for all our ills. If you spilled your tea in England, it’s Trump’s fault. If the bank bounced your cheque in France and charged you a fee it’s Trump’s fault. If the penguins in Antarctica have less ice to sit on it’s Trumps fault. If the economy fails ten years after he leaves office it’s Trump’s fault. Trump is the Goldstein of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, except we’ve exchanged the “two-minute hate” railed against Goldstein daily for a ten-years-and-counting hate. And oh, let’s not forget all those people who voted him into office. Were it not for them we would live in a blissful democracy or in one where we could get our way. Everyone on the planet would live as one in peace and harmony for ever and ever, just like the great prophet John Lennon promised.
UNITY? In a diverse society unity comes in a thousand fragile pieces which will never really fit together, in the hope of having a perfect world if only that person, that group of people over there would go away or be forced to see it my way. It provides the “over the rainbow” belief that one day my own individuality and my cause will shine above all others and be recognized and appreciated. In this case everyone is clamouring for the moral high ground by pointing fingers at the scapegoat – without which the infighting would flare – making it that much harder to achieve real unity. Once the term “hate speech” is used, freedom and unity are at an end, and someone’s rights and feelings will inevitably be trampled on, if not everyone’s.
THE SEARCH FOR SIGNIFICANCE. Throughout time humans have searched for significance, but billions of people have lived and died without leaving so much as a tombstone. I was not appreciated in my school decades ago any more than the thousand other kids who were there – even though I was a white heterosexual male from a Christian home. I craved for affection and attention without getting it, but I didn’t demand it by law or propaganda or by rioting and stamping my feet. I didn’t blame past generations or my parents for making me white or my teachers for not putting me on a pedestal at the front of the class. Now that God has been dispensed with in public life, meaning is found by promoting self and metaphorically shouting, “ME! ME! ME! Meaning and purpose are found by joining a cause such as the green agenda or Hamas sympathisers and pointing a finger at someone because it’s easy to identify a guilty party – or to invent one.
THE DENIAL OF REALITY. Children naturally crave attention and affirmation, and some people never grow out of that craving. They remain children – self-centred and self-seeking, unable to think about or see the grand scheme of things. Extreme adult selfishness is detached from reality and imagines such things as that men can have babies, and when society as a whole doesn’t indulge such thinking some people get very angry. This is a self-inflicted mental illness, and any nation which affirms it is on the road to destruction.
THREE LETTER WORD. Blame is the inversion of personal accountability and responsibility. It’s the opposite of humility. Even in the Church it’s someone else’s fault. As “sin” is now the unutterable three-letter word nothing is my fault: it’s someone else’s. The pastor doesn’t want to drive anyone away so doesn’t draw attention to sin and the admonition throughout Biblical Scripture to turn from sin and seek righteousness and holiness. There is no or little self-analysis. Many Christians don’t look into Scripture to find out how they need to change to become more Christ-like. Instead they look at other people and decide what’s wrong with them. Perhaps I’m doing it myself at this moment.
THE ACCUSER IN CHIEF. Interestingly, Satan is described in Revelation as, “…the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). We find this to be true at the other end of the Bible also, where we see the serpent accusing God of depriving Eve of something good. Satan is named by Jesus as “the father of lies”, and God saw fit to warn against bearing false witness in one of His ten commandments. The principle seems to be then that blame, accusation and false representation come from a prideful heart, and ultimately come from the enemy of our God. They are, however, passed and exercised through willing minds and lips because of our own corruption.
Without doubt, other people do get things wrong. The problem is that to them, we are the other people. We all need to look at our own faults and stop serving the devil. Forgiveness, longsuffering, patience and introspection are all the counsel of our God.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 