When a situation does not go the way we wanted, one of the first human reactions is to find someone responsible. And we are ready to blame anyone, even God!
In all unfortunate situations, there is rarely just one person responsible. The vast majority of the time, all parties involved in a conflict have their share of responsibility for a failure or an argument. But, as Jesus so aptly described, it is much easier to find the mistakes of others than our blunders. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend: Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye, when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5 NLT).
It is even easier to blame our misery on our governments, the media, or big corporations. “It’s their fault if…” Maybe some decisions they made weren’t in our favor, but pointing accusing fingers doesn’t help us change our situation. Even in our friendships, we may tend to blame others when an evening takes a wrong turn, instead of making efforts to change the direction or simply apologize and leave. That is the real damaging consequence of blaming others: while we point our fingers, accusingly, we place ourselves in the position of victim and make no effort to fix the situation.
Since God is all-powerful and we firmly believe that He has our best interests at heart, we may also tend to blame Him when our plans fail. We think: since He can do anything, it is certainly His fault if we are sick or if we are still single! However, when we blame God, it means that we make ourselves the judge of God! To blame someone is to find fault with them; it is to condemn them for an action or inaction that has been harmful to us, in one way or another. We can be angry with God, but blaming Him for our suffering is going too far.
To avoid blaming God, we must realize that most of our misfortunes are the consequence of our actions. “People ruin their lives by their own stupidity, so why does God always get blamed?” (Proverbs 19:3 MSG). We live in a sinful world, since Adam and Eve, and we can all suffer because of someone’s sin. It is not God’s plan to see us suffer: He even sent His Son to save us. So we can’t blame Him for what’s happening to us. Our difficulties can remind us that sin always brings consequences. Our part now is to search our hearts and follow Christ’s leading to obtaining a different result.
The same is true with our other relationships. Instead of blaming others, or even highlighting only the mistakes of others, we gain by taking our share of responsibility and learning from our mistakes. Few people deliberately choose to harm others. If we are filled with love, then we can calm our anger by remembering 1 Corinthians 13:5, which says that love is not “rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged” (NLT). When we will be married, there will be several conflicts or disappointments. We will be tempted to blame our suffering on our partner. Which will not be edifying for our relationship. So let’s practice right now, with our friendships or even with God, to refuse to blame others. Let us take our responsibilities and use our misfortunes to grow and glorify God.