But I didn’t do it:

As a teacher, I often see many students who will shift blame to someone else, or even openly deny the wrongdoing.  I find this incredibly frustrating.  I imagine that many others who are either parents or work with a lot of children, can also find this incredibly frustrating and tiring.  (Or those who have adult relationships that shift blame to others.) I will usually tell my students that I would rather they do something wrong and own up to it, as opposed to lying or shifting blame.  I would be considerably less angry if they own up to the mistakes.  I will be much more willing to extend the gift of grace when they can admit what they did was wrong and apologize.  It is overall less cowardly and wrong.  

I was thinking about this, not because of a certain moment of teaching.  Although I could honestly pick many moments from my teaching experiences. But I started to process this while in church as we have been going through the beginning of Genesis, and today we learned about man’s fall and being caught by God.  The first man and woman created by God were not to eat from the tree of knowledge.  They disobeyed God and ate.  The man and woman, after eating from the fruit of knowledge, knew they were naked and were ashamed.  The man and woman hid, and God went looking for them.  Soon, God asked them how they knew they were naked, and the man and woman instantly started shifting the blame to others and to their situations. 

The first one is the man who blames the woman in Genesis 3:12, “The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’”  The man, Adam, instantly blames the woman, Eve, as the one who first found the fruit, and then gave it to him.  He did admit that he ate the fruit but he gave many different reasons as opposed to taking ownership.  We can also see here that Adam blames God.  God is the one who gave this woman to him.  Adam takes the gift from God and turns it back on him as his main downfall. He never openly acknowledges what he has done wrong and he never openly apologizes.  (At least not in this scene).  

The woman, Eve, is not much better.  She doesn’t blame God, but she doesn’t openly acknowledge her open wrong doing either.  In the second part of Genesis 3:13, “The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”  Eve says that the only reason she ate was because of the serpent.  While this may be true, she still openly denied God’s command, and then she openly persuaded her husband to also fall.  Shifting of the blame would not stop the punishment.  Adam and Eve did not help their situation by denying their involvement, but an instant admission of guilt and ownership would have at least been them throwing themselves as imperfect before a Holy God, asking for forgiveness.  

I think there are many times, when we don’t want to admit, that we can shift the blame to others and situations.  I know that I certainly blame my impatience, for example, on lack of sleep or because of other situations that happened throughout the day.   It is important that I acknowledge I am not perfect, nor will I ever be, but I also shouldn’t shift the blame on other situations as the reason I can lose impatience with someone or be unkind.  That is just my inability to completely control my patience and my behavior.  

The Lord is completely aware that we are imperfect.  He is not surprised when we make mistakes.  He doesn’t want us to sin or get distracted from the good and holy things in life, but he is also going to openly forgive us when things do happen.  In fact from the moment sin first entered the world, we see God instantly start creating a way for man to still be with him, even if they were never going to be completely perfect or holy.  He does punish them, and there will be a physical death, but he still makes a place for them to stay, gives them clothing, and gives them an ability to continuously grow in number.  After that, he will introduce sacrifices for the people to make in order for sins to be forgiven.  Then of course, there was the ultimate sacrifice of giving his son to die on the cross for our sins.  

My challenge this week is to spend time thinking about times when we may want to blame others and/or our life situations when we should be owning our own mistakes.  The Lord loves when we willingly bow down to his feet and admit our wrongdoing.  He doesn’t want us to carry any of the guilt or the shame, but he wants us to admit our sins and grow in love and acceptance from him.