Is chaos inevitable? We like to think that bad things are mostly avoidable. Maybe they actually are, but we still say things like, “Oh well, accidents happen.”
I’m reminded of our final month with Elijah when I was fussing about how often he would break our drinking glasses. After breaking his fifth glass in a week, I asked him to stop using our nice drinking glasses for his tea. He said, “Dad, it’s not my fault. It was an accident.” I responded by saying something like, “It’s only an accident because you weren’t paying attention!”
The next day he was holding in his hands yet another drinking glass while talking to me. As we spoke, the glass simply fell from his hand and crashed to the floor. We looked at each other in silence, and after a few seconds we both laughed out loud at the irony of the moment.
It’s certainly true that ‘accidents happen’, but we often like to think they’re avoidable. We even like to figure out why tragedy happens by identifying the apparent causes. If we can identify the causes, we can suggest that things might have turned out differently.
But there is a big difference between learning from our mistakes and pointing the finger at those responsible. When we say that things ‘could have‘ been done differently, we enter a learning opportunity. When we say that things ‘should have’ been done differently, we enter the blame game. From my experience, most of us are more interested in finding out who do we blame when tragedy strikes.
The blame game is as old as Adam and Eve. When God confronted Adam about eating the forbidden fruit, Adam said, “The woman you put here with me–she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12). My favorite example of the blame game is when Jesus shows up late to the funeral of his beloved friend, Lazarus.
By the time that Jesus arrived at the funeral, Lazarus had been dead for four days. His sisters Martha and Mary had urgently requested for Jesus to come while Lazarus was ill. Now they were both visibly irritated. Mary didn’t even want to go out to meet Jesus on the road with her sister Martha. But each said to Jesus the exact same thing when they individually spoke with him. They each said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21, 32).
They didn’t know if Jesus ‘could have’ been there, but they certainly believed he ‘should have’ been there. They knew that Jesus ‘could have’ healed Lazarus, if only he had shown up on time. Tragedy had struck hard. Lazarus had died, and they were still deep in mourning. In their minds, Jesus should have come sooner to prevent the tragedy. It’s his fault this happened.
Of course, Jesus delayed his arrival to the tomb in order to demonstrate the glory of God. To everyone’s surprise he called Lazarus forth from the tomb, alive. You will read where many people believed in him after that miracle. But I cannot find it written that anyone apologized to Jesus for blaming him.
When things go well, we happily direct our focus to the future. When tragedy strikes, we more easily direct our focus to the past and play the blame game. It isn’t constructive, and it rarely benefits anyone. That’s true in our relationships with each other. It’s especially true when we play the blame game with God.
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-Ken Buchanan
