The Blame Game

"If we knew the [human heart] as God knows it, and the network of interdependence which spreads the responsibility for every sin, not only among countless people, but over many generations, we should not attempt to untwist the skeins of right and wrong. For us, justice is to forgive and to make reparation ourselves for all sin."
                             --Caryll Houselander, The Passion of the Infant Christ, p. 107


This is one of my favorite quotes. Houselander points out the futility of engaging in the blame game. The blame game has been a pastime of human beings since Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and offered some to Adam. Remember Adam's response when asked why he ate the forbidden fruit? "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it." Score one for the blame game. Then God asks Eve what she has done and she replies, "The serpent deceived me and I ate." Score two for the blame game. Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent. So it is that human beings have been passing the blame around ever since, handing it off like a hot potato in order to avoid guilt and responsibility.

There's plenty of blame being spread around these days. Politicians are particularly good at it. Whose fault is it that the economy is in a quagmire? Who gets the blame? It's not one political party or the other. It's far more complex than that. Everyone wants to take the moral high ground by blaming the other side. But there in no moral high ground here. Everyone is at fault. While some are more at fault than others, no one is faultless. It would be far better to put energy into working toward solutions than continuing the endless cycle of blame.

Politics, however, is not the only arena rife with blame. It can be found in corporations, in families, in communities, and in the church--in short, anywhere and everywhere human beings gather. It's as though the seeds of discord were sown long ago and continue to sprout up in every age. We are tempted to believe that our opponent, our enemy, is the person or group we want to blame, but our opponent is not someone we can see. Our opponent is the evil one, the principalities and powers of this age and of every age. Someone once remarked that if the devil can convince you he does not exist, he has already won. Engaging in the blame game plays right into the evil one's hands. Can you imagine the delight with which he watches as human beings squabble with each other?

What, then, is the way out? Humility, love, and compassion toward ourselves and one another points us in the right direction. No one can know the heart of another. No one can take the moral high ground, because no one is without sin. That's the lesson of the story of the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of John. There is only one who can take the moral high ground and He did not take it. He did not blame. He did not condemn. He forgave.