People can make anything that happens to them someone else’s fault. Why would someone blame themself for something they can blame on another?
Another way of communicating this concept is: “A person can take anything that is wrong in his or her life and make it someone else’s fault.” Usually it isn’t much of a stretch for a person to say, “It’s not my fault,” even if the final act in the chain of sequence was entirely under the control of the person making the statement.
How many times in any given day do you think the words “it’s not my fault” are spoken? Do you ever speak them? Are you speaking these words now about some area of your life? Ouch…
Let me provide you some examples of the message here. A person is arrested for breaking into another’s property and stealing the others’ belongings. The one arrested says, “It’s not my fault; I never had a father around; it was the home I grew up in.” A person is fired for not getting to work on time. She says, “It’s not my fault; I am held up because I always have problems getting my children ready for school.”
Let’s try a few more. A marriage ends because of a breakdown in communication, and one spouse says, “It’s not my fault; my spouse doesn’t want to talk to me.” A person with bad health says, “It’s not my fault; smoking is the only way I can deal with stress” or “It’s not my fault, I come from an obese family.”
Playing the blame game has been around since God first created man.
In chapter 3 of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In verse 6 Adam was disobedient to God by eating the apple from the forbidden tree. After committing the first sin, Adam tried to hide from God. God finds Adam and asks him in verse 11, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
Adam’s response in verse 12 is “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Clearly, God knew what Adam had done before he asked him the question. Adam would have been better served to have simply responded, “Yes, I ate from the forbidden tree.” Instead, in his response he places the blame on God and on Eve, the only two he could find in an effort to keep it from being his fault.
Adam chose this occasion to remind God that He was the one who put that woman here with him…as if it was God’s fault that Adam ate the apple. Adam then places blame on Eve… as if she forced him to eat the apple.
Read Genesis 3:14-24 and you can see the severe consequences of Adam’s sin. But the point is Adam’s first response when asked about his disobedience was to blame it on the only other two he could find, God, and then Eve.
We should fear the sin within us over the sin outside us. We should spend more time examining our own hearts and controlling what is within us rather than seeking to justify our acts by pointing outwards at others and blaming them. Again, I think there is always someone else we can find to blame.
I’m not saying there aren’t circumstances where we’re doing the right thing and another (or others) are fully responsible for an action that happens to us. What I’m saying is that there are times when, even though a sequence of events occurs out of a person’s control, the person adds to it a bad act and then doesn’t take ownership over the fact that his or her action in the sequence caused the poor result.
In the five examples I made up above, the fault is with the absentee father, the uncooperative children, the spouse who won’t talk, the stress a person experiences, or the fat cells that were inherited. Wouldn’t the world look different if the thief said, “It was my fault that I stole his belongings.” What if the mother said, “It’s my fault I get to work late; I should begin getting my children ready for school earlier?” What if the spouse says, “I’m responsible for our poor communication; I’ll work on my own communication skills to encourage my spouse to talk?” What if the unhealthy person says, “It is my fault; I’m the one who has chosen to smoke,” or “It’s my fault I look like I do; I control what I put in my mouth?”
It’s always easier to look outward into others’ lives than to look inward into our own.
There are also some on this planet who are more concerned about proving fault than moving forward. After all, if something bad happens, it must be someone’s fault. Right? Not necessarily. Sometimes things happen just because they happen. They are no one’s fault. They just occur.
How much time do some people spend trying to prove fault when it really doesn’t matter. I share sometimes that in a marriage relationship, one spouse could consistently win argument after argument, but with each victory, the couple moves farther and farther apart. One spouse wins the battles, and both spouses lose the marriage.
My challenge to you is to not seek to justify your actions or failure to act because of the acts of others. It’s so easy to go through this world, pointing at someone else to try to keep from being accountable ourselves.
I share in some of my talks that sometimes all I can control in this world is myself and a three-foot circle around me. I can decide where I move my body, what time I go to bed, what my body communicates, and so on. My job is to do the best within myself with what comes from within me. If I do this, I may have a positive impact on those I interact with.
Next time you’re tempted to say, “God, it isn’t my fault,” stop and think. Is that really the case, or is it truly your fault and you’re just trying to pawn it off on someone else? It’s always easier to point at others rather than to examine yourself.
Just a thought…
Rick Kraft is a local attorney, a syndicated columnist for 26 years and the Executive Director of the Leadership Roswell Program for 34 years. To submit comments, contributions or ideas, e-mail rkraft@kraftlawfirm.org or write to P.O. Box 850, Roswell, NM, 88202-0850. The views expressed in this column are those of the author.
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