The Blame Game

Today we come to the third “big lie” from our book, but before we look at it I want to open the floor for any lingering questions over the first two subjects of “Performance” and “Approval”. Let’s start by remembering the first two “big lies”.

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

· I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

Let’s begin the actual lesson with a real life situation. This week a mannequin dressed as Sarah Palin with a noose around its neck was hung by a Mr. Morisette from the roof of his West Hollywood home. What should be done about this? (Collect thoughts)

Let’s remember what we came up with as we move to today’s big lie:

· THOSE WHO FAIL ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE AND DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED.

There are no “wrong” answers to my opening question; in fact you may have more than one thought on this. The question is, what does this “big lie” mean to you? (Open) Here are some of my answers:

· That guy really messed up; he’s probably going to lose his job.
· She deserves to get what coming after treating my friend like that.
· I hope he catches something for sleeping around so much.
· Miserable drug addict, she has always been a loser.
· It’s not my fault; they should of………….
· If only they had not done that, I would think more highly of them.

Having considered our collective answers does your answer to how to how to deal with Mr. Morisette change?

What is going on here? Why do we indulge in finger pointing, blaming others and self-condemnation? Why are we so willing to punish other people, seek revenge or beat ourselves up? Why do we in our daily walk believe this new “big lie”?

The answer to this can be traced back through our motivations to how we were originally designed, which is where I’ll start looking at the why question. Let’s consider Adam and Eve, do you think they knew right from wrong? They did, although some may say they didn’t because they originally did not have knowledge of good and evil. Let’s not get this mixed up, wrong is not the same as evil. When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit they knew that it was wrong, but it was a colossal mistake not an evil action. The ability to recognize a transgression of the boundaries for living a godly life were therefore in the soul of each of them, they were designed in, and they are to be found in all of us. Don’t believe it? Let’s look at the book that contains a lot of theology, turn to Rom 2:14-16:

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. NASU

Paul here is speaking about the people we used to be, unsaved Gentiles or non-Jews. He is stating quite clearly that they have the work of the law, and therefore the actual law, written on their hearts. It is important to remember that Paul’s perspective on the heart was that it was synonymous with the mind or will, that inside our soul all three were connected and worked in unison. This means to us that all people have God’s law, the Jews have it written on their hearts and in their Torah, non-Jews have it written on their hearts only. Christian non-Jews, since they believe, have the law both in their hearts and in the Bible. No matter whom we are talking about, we will all be judged according to this thing we call the law.

Since we all have the law on our hearts, we also have the capacity to know right, matching the standard of the law, from wrong, failing to meet the standard, and the knowledge that there is a consequence of failure! This is where we add in a little corruption of the mind, which is usually called a fallen nature and we can start to see how all the blaming, revenge and self-condemnation can be understood.

Starting with the fact that we all have the knowledge of right and wrong inside our soul, after the fall we added a deceived and misguided view of everything, the source of which is our self-centeredness. Let’s see this from scripture, look up Jer 17:9 and Pr 21:12:

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? NASU

Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts. NASU

Now I have a gem of a question for you. What happens when someone knows the rules but is self-centered with the ability to pass and execute judgments? They become the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all at once; they disallow a defendant any right to present their case or a defending attorney to help them. They become the moral police, dispensing instant justice. That is us; and it all comes from our self-serving hearts.

Now you know where the blame game originates. Let’s look at a few of the major self-centered reasons we want to blame others or ourselves. First I’m going to list them:

· To distance ourselves.
· To feel superior.
· Because we feel unworthy.
· Because we reject forgiveness.
· Because we feel threatened.
· We want to play Judge.
· We want to hang on to resentments.
· We fear punishment.
· We want to avoid dealing with feelings.

Now I’m going to say a few words about each of these, please feel free to jump in whenever you want to discuss one more thoroughly.

To distance ourselves – We often want to remove ourselves from the being close to a person who has failed or an event where failure occurred. That way we are not blamed or tarnished by them or it, at least in our own eyes. An example could be where parents allow their 18 year old to throw a party, but leave for the night. When the kids get drunk they say, “We were out, we didn’t have anything to do with them getting drunk”. One of our neighbors actually did this.

To feel superior – We often point the finger at others so that we can feel good at how much better we are than them. Have you ever said, “I would never do that”? What is unsaid here is the end of the sentence, which is, “because I’m superior in my behavior to them”. The actual real basis for actions of this type is our own low self esteem, we try to drag people down to below our level, and condemnation is one way we do it.

Because we feel unworthy – When we fail or make mistakes we can often feel unworthy of being loved or held in high esteem. We link our not “doing” well with our not “being” well. This is when that belief that you are a human doing instead of a human being kicks in. We talked about this in lesson 2 – The Performance Trap”. An example is when a high school boy really wants to be on the team, but he is not talented enough compared to those around him. What might he feel? He certainly could feel a sense of failure, and if his parents have really been pushing him to get on the team, he might feel that he is not worthy of their love. Does anybody have an “unworthy feeling” story?

Because we reject forgiveness – This is a big one. Some of us blame or condemn others so that we can avoid giving forgiveness to them. Not only do we carry around an unforgiving heart, but also we will often exaggerate the offense to make it worse and therefore less excusable and forgivable. This further justifies our lack of forgiveness, in our own heart and mind! In this we are wholly disobedient to God. Some of us even beat up on ourselves about failure, believing we have committed unforgivable sins, thereby actually committing the sin of unbelief, unbelief that God will forgive all our sins. This is a good time to remember what God says about this subject of forgiveness; turn to 1 Jn 1:9, and also to Eph 4:32:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. NASU

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. NASU

When someone has done something that affects you negatively, and you want to blame him or her, it is always wise to see if unforgiveness is lurking in your own heart first.

Because we feel threatened – When you are out with your spouse at a social event and they say something off-color, demeaning or embarrassing, in your opinion, you can feel threatened. It is not that your physical safety is at risk; it is your personal self-worth. You get worried about what people think of you because of what your spouse has said. Then you condemn them; sometimes you might even tear them down right then and there. This is so that you feel better by separating yourself as much as possible from your spouse and what they said. That act, ladies and gentlemen, is an act of self-centeredness and is also an act of disobedience to the command we just read in Eph 4:32. That command is to be kind to one another. At the core of dealing with this problem is that we must make a discerning judgment about whether the offense was a mistake or a sin. Sins do have to be addressed, but mistakes can be dealt with in loving kindness, sometimes by being immediately excused and forgiven.

We want to play Judge – another big one! Some of us try to do the convicting work of the Holy Spirit under our own power. The problem is our clumsy attempts at being the moral police actually result in condemnation of others who we are attempting to correct. While it is normal to be intolerant of injustice or other sinful actions, we haven’t been given a license from God to be His “Godly Punishers” or His “Sin Seekers”; God reserves that role for Himself. Did anybody ever see the “church lady” on Saturday Night Live? I always enjoyed watching that character, she is a great example of what not to be like of course, but that character showed us what we look like to the world. Even the world recognizes what hypocrites we, in the church, can often be in our judgments and condemnation of others.

In John chapter 8 we see the story of the woman caught in adultery, let’s read the very end of it, verses 10 and 11:

Straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more." NASU

In this story Jesus points out the truth, all have sinned and therefore all are condemned by the law. We are all under condemnation. It is the gracious and merciful act of God that saves us by Him choosing, as in this story, to say, “I don’t condemn you”. Notice that he ends by saying, “Go, and sin no more”. Shouldn’t we follow His example, don’t deny the sin of someone we are tempted to condemn, instead encourage them to change to a more godly way of life.

We want to hang on to resentments – When we indulge in blaming and condemnation of people who are close to us we usually develop things called resentments. These are hard feelings of anger towards other people that we hang on to as it gives us a sense of power and control over them. The problem is resentments don’t work that way. If the person we resent knows about a resentment, they either ignore it or move emotionally away, since we have become unsafe. If they don’t know, then the resentment is nothing to them. When we blame others for stuff and develop a resentment, we have laid an emotional cancer within us. Just like physical cancer, emotional cancer can slowly kill us if it is not dealt with. Scripture speaks to this in Job 5:2, let’s look at how both the NASU and NIV translate it:

For anger slays the foolish man, and jealousy kills the simple. NASU

Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple. NIV

I think you might agree that hanging on to resentments generated by our desire to condemn others for our own selfish reasons is not smart.

We fear punishment – This is very straightforward. Often we blame others so that we won’t get punished. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Did anybody take the fear of punishment test on page 82 of the book? (Discuss)

We want to avoid feelings – Living a lifestyle of blaming and condemning others can allow us to not feel the pain or hurt caused by the actions of people or events. We focus on the object of our condemnation, which helps us to deny what we are feeling. The problem is that the feelings are there to tell us something. I can’t say what that might be, since all people and situations are unique. I can say that it is hard but smart to embrace the pain in a situation and do one’s best to learn what it is telling us. If the pain is deep or lasts a long time, get help from accountability partners or a formal counselor. Avoiding feelings never works, emotions must either get resolved or we will “stuff” them and they will come out later in ways and at times that we don’t expect. (Discuss)

The final thing I want to say today is this. Let us not appointment ourselves as the divine corrector and punisher in other people’s lives. There are three reasons to avoid this:

· We victimize people when we do this, attempting to exercise our own power and control over them.
· We have not been equipped or empowered by God to do this job for Him.
· It is a path of personal destruction for us. While we are attempting to straighten others out, we are actually hastening our own physical death and destroying our relational life.

That is it from me for today. Next week we will cover God’s answer to this big lie, propitiation.