“The Lame Blame Game”
“Blame must be assigned, and it wasn’t me.” (A 12-step friend about how his family handled wrong-doing.)
“The woman, whom you gave to be with me, she gave it to me! (And I ate it.)” (Genesis 3:12: Adam, the first man, when God confronted him about his disobedience.)
Blaming others is our national sport right now. Perhaps it always was. We see it (and do it) daily. It is practiced by small children and old people, by men and women, by religious people and by irreligious.
But in reality, blame is really lame. By using the word “lame,” I mean this: Just like a person who can’t use his legs, blame can’t go anywhere.
Don’t get me wrong. Acknowledging the role of others and ourselves in creating problems can be helpful. Confronting others and ourselves when they/we’ve done wrong can be healthy. Cleaning house is not done by merely throwing things in the closet or shoving them under the bed.
However, blame doesn’t simply acknowledge or confront wrong. Blame contents itself with continuing to talk about the wrong of others or of self. Yet, at the same time, blame refuses to do anything to change what’s wrong.
Of course, it’s easy to see the stupidity and uselessness of other people blaming other people (or circumstances or God) for why things aren’t the way we think they ought to be. Seeing that we ourselves are playing the blame game is not so easy. No! Of course, we aren’t blaming. We’re telling the truth about why things are as they are.
Really?
Even blaming ourselves isn’t wise or helpful. That is a truth that I struggle with every day. When I’ve done something wrong—or not done something that I should have done—I tend to go on and on about my failures. But here is the deal: I’ve discovered that continually blaming myself is so much easier than doing something positive to make my own life and the life of others better. But blame is still lame.
In twelve-step programs, steps 10 and 11 seem to me to flow rather naturally.
Step 10: “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
Step 11: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a power greater than ourselves, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.”
The antidote to the lame blame game is to acknowledge our wrongdoing, and then turn to God and seek to discern God’s will for us. And then, we do God’s will. It’s as simple as that. It is also as difficult as that.
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