It is true, we have been blame shifting ever since sin first entered the world. As we know Adam shifted the blame of his sin on Eve when God confronted him on eating of the forbidden fruit. Adam said that "the woman that you gave to me, she gave me the forbidden fruit."
So we see that men blameshift. Then we also see that women blameshift as well for Eve when God turned His attention to her blamed it on Satan. And Satan was never given the chance to shift any blame but one has to wonder if he would have tried.
( The account of the fall is found in Genesis 3).
So we can see from the history of man and sin that blameshifting has been around for since the beginning of sin.
So you are all probably wondering how we have gotten "sophisticated" in our blameshifting?
Well we learn from the account of the Fall that Adam and Eve shifted their blame on other people ( or in Eve's case on a fallen angel...Satan.)
And it is true we still do that today, we often say after we have sinned "Well if you had not done___" or "Well you did____ and that is why I ___" and you fill in the blank. This form of blameshifiting is all too common place. In fact believe it or not but I have actually caught myself not only giving this excuse to people but I have caught myself telling God this as well. After I have sinned it has been my practice to pray and confess it to God and ask His forgiveness ( either after or before confessing and asking forgiveness from the humans I have wronged).
And I must be totally honest because there have been times where I have actually begun to say to God "Forgive me Father for doing such and such, or for saying such and such, but if they had not done such and such..." and that is when the Holy spirit works in me and tugs at my heart letting me know that blameshifiting is a sin, and then I have to not only confess the first sin I commited but also the second sin of blameshifting. I am no better than Adam and Eve, for this is exactly what they did, they blameshifted right in front of the face of God. No we can't talk to God face to face as Adam and Eve did, but we do pray and sometimes in my praying I find myself shifting the blame of my sin on other people.
I have forgotten Ecclesiasties 5:2
" Do not be quick with your mouth,
do not be hasty in your heart
to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
and you are on earth,
so let your words be few." I have too easily forgotten to whom I am speaking with!!
So you are probably thinking by now "okay Bethany so you so far have showed us nothing more sophisticated in the area of blameshifting" but may I say "just hold your horses I am getting there."
So we know that blameshifting has been here since the fall and that we have even been using blameshifting with God.
But the way we have become more sophisticated in our blameshifting is in the fact that we not only shift the blame of our sin on other people around us but now we also shift the blame of our sin onto our circumstances!
We do not see Adam nor Eve blaming their sin on circumstances, but only on other people.
But shifting the blame on circumstances is all too common place today! It is seen in times when we get angry. Take me for instance, when I get angry and fly off the handle I say "Well I am just stressed." And what is stress?? It is caused by circumstances. Or better yet I say "I got angry because I had a bad day at work... or I am working on very little sleep right now."
And again sometimes I even try to use these when I confess my sin to God.
You see as time has gone on the curse and really sin has only gotten worse and worse. As time has gone on we have become more sophisticated and more deeply entrenched in sin, to where often times we have become numb to it. This is why praying for a heart like David, who in the Psalms when speaking of his sin said that the thoughts of it made his bones dry up. We must pray for a sensitivity to sin, to see it, and to have the courage to not blameshift but to rather call and see sin as what God calls and sees it as.
Blameshifting is the attempt to either convice yourself or others or even God ( or all three in many cases) that the sin that you commited was somehow out of your control. In other words you are trying to get others to think and see that the sin that you commited was totally out of your power to stop.
When we shift the blame to people we want others to think that it was someone elses fault, when we shift the blame to circumstances we want people to think that it was because we did not get enough sleep, or that it was inbred into our genes or because of our culture that we are living in.
Another way that we have become sophisticated in the area of blameshifting is in the area of emotions or feelings. We often hear speakers say that love is a choice and rightly so because love truly is a choice. But have you ever thought of why we as humans would ever want to think that love is a feeling?? Because it makes things easier for us ( as all blameshifting does). When love is dismissed as a feeling suddenly the blame for not loving someone is no longer in existance because most people see emotions and feelings as out of our control.
Whenever someone says that they "don't feel like loving someone" then suddenly they are not blamed for wrong actions toward that "someone" because we have all believed the lie that emotions and feelings are out of our control. You see blameshifting is a great thing to us fallen humans because it makes things seem like they are out of our control, which seems like a good thing. But as with every good thing Satan always has a counterfeit, and the counterfeit does exactly what a counterfeit should do. It acts and looks like the same as the "real deal" but then when you go and try to use it, suddenly it does not work and does not give the same results as the "real deal" does. For every good from God
(good virtues, commands that He gives) there is a counterfeit ( sin) that Satan will try to luer us with much the same way as a fishermen leurs a fish with a fake leur.
When we dismiss love as the counterfeit, just a feeling, then it never works as love should work.
Love in the real sense of the word is a choice, and when we admit that it is a choice suddenly "loving others" becomes a little easier because it is no longer out of our control like the counterfeit of love as a feeling. Suddenly we learn that we can choose to love someone whether they are worthy of it or not ( which really they are according to Romans 13:8 which states that we owe every person on the planet LOVE) or whether we think that they are worthy of it or not.
Yes it becomes harder when we do not love someone because then we see that it is totally our fault because we chose not to love that someone. But as with everything there is a hard and an easy side to love when seen as a choice!
Okay so we have seen that we blameshift in the area of love, but we also do it in the area of Joy or happiness. We have probably all heard speakers say that Joy, or happiness is a choice, and RIGHTLY so because that is exactly what joy and happiness is. It is choice, you can choose to be happy.
But again have we ever thought through why we as humans would want happiness to be a feeling??
And again we have the same answer because it makes things seem easier. If you say that you do not "feel happy" then suddenly we do not blame you at all because as I stated before we have come to see emotions as out of our control ( which sometimes they may just be).
So we don't blame you.
But that is only because we have accepted Satan's luer or counterfeit as it were. We have come to see happiness as an emotion and therefore out of anyone's control.
But when we ackowledge and see joy (happiness) as what it truly is, a choice suddenly things become easier and we find that we can have happiness no matter what is going on around us, and no matter what we are going through!
Suddenly things get brighter, and start to look up when we neglect Satan's counterfeit and embrace God's "real deal."
That must be why James said in James 1, that we can consider it a joy when we face trials, because James saw happiness not as a feeling, not as dependent upon how we feel or how our circumstances or people make us feel, but rather as a choice.
So here is a question, what do love and joy have in common ( other than the fact that we wrongly call them both a feeling.)?????
The answer is that they are both fruits of the spirit! And they are both to be seen in the life of the Christian because Christ said that everyone will know we are Christians by the fruits that we display. But how could we as Christians display love and joy ( fruits of the spirit) if they are out of our control to display? How could we display something that we have no control over?? You see things get harder and more complicated when we accept Satan's counterfeit. Oh sure at first they seem easier in that we don't have to take the blame for not being happy or loving, but then when you really work that out we suddenly realize that the displaying the fruit of the spirit is no longer in our control. This is why we must never dismiss Joy and Love as just mere feelings. We must call them what God calls them: a choice!
Funny how we only do this to two of the fruits of the spirit. You never hear" well I just did not feel like having paitence" or I just "did not feel like pursuing peace with that person"
Gal. 5:16-18
"So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. "
You see we are always at war with our sinful nature. It is our sinful nature that wants to call Love and happiness a mere feeling. It is our sinful nature that wants to shift the blame of our sin onto people and to shift the blame of our choices on feelings.
But we must be led by the spirit! The sinful nature is contrary to the Spirit, as seen in the stark difference of love as a choice versus a mere feeling!
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Gal. 5:22-23
So we have indeed become more sophisticated in our blameshifting! But let's not continue in this! Lets call sin and emotions what God calls them ( sin= wrong and emotions=choice)
Let's put on the fruit of the spirit and choose to have paitence love happiness, kindness etc.
Let us accect God's REAL DEAL versus Satan's counterfeit!
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