The Moment You Realize You Are to Blame

One of the most difficult things for anyone to learn in life is that others are not always the blame for your failures or personal shortcomings.

It is so natural for us to scapegoat others rather than to take personal responsibility for our own failures, mistakes, missteps, or inappropriate behaviors.

I finally came to realize that “I” was my own worse enemy. I alone was mainly responsible for much of the crap that has occurred in my life. 

I remember as a young boy blaming my teachers for my poor grades, claiming that the tests they administered were too difficult or too unfair. Well, the truth is they were difficult because I had not prepared for them. I had not studied. My teachers were not the blame for my poor grades in school—I alone was the blame!

You see, this need to scapegoat others starts early in life. It starts in small ways but eventually escalates into a dangerous game of blame casting.

The late literary critic and philospoher René Girard “saw the tendency to scapegoat others as the primary story line of human history in every culture” (Richard Rohr). 

In other words, we humans have been blame casting or scapegoating others for as long as we have lived on earth, often resulting in bloody conflicts between individuals and wars between people groups.

There seems to be no end in sight since we humans tend to rally around an identified scapegoat.

You see scapegoating is a major part of our foundational story in the Bible. We all know the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), who ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. 

Right out of the gate scapegoating became a permanent feature of the human experience. When the Lord found the guilty couple hiding he asked Adam: 

“Have you eaten the forbidden fruit?” 

Adam’s response is classic: 

“But the woman gave me the fruit; she made me eat it!”

So the human practice of scapegoating was kicked into high gear early and has grown into an international practice that threatens the very future of our world. 

It is one thing for a husband to blame his wife for eating some forbidden fruit, but it is quite another matter when a world leader blames whole groups of people for his or her nation’s problems.

It is well documented that Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews, homosexuals, and Gypsies for Germany’s economic and political woes. We all know where such scapegoating led the nation of Germany, don’t we? 

It represents one of the darkest periods of human history; a period known as the “Holocaust!”

Scapegoating whole groups of people is contrary to the Gospel whether it's blaming all Muslims for the terrorist attacks on the United States or blaming all of Mexico for our immigration issues or blaming all immigrants for the loss of jobs or blaming all Evangelicals for supporting a particular political candidate. This kind of scapegoating is dangerous and divisive.

Painting whole groups of people with such broad strokes does none of us any good. It may win votes for politicians but it is contrary to the Spirit of Christ. 

Jesus represents the last and ultimate Scapegoat. Yet even in his death he taught us how to avoid scapegoating. As he hung upon that old rugged cross and looked down upon his accusers all he could do was forgive them.

He could have scapegoated the corrupt religious system and the oppressive Roman government for his death and he would have been right to do so. But he did something quite radical in fact: 

He forgave them all!

From the cross Jesus breaks the cycle of scapegoating. He became the ultimate and last Scapegoat. He cut the legs out from under the practice of blame casting. 

He demonstrated through his own willful suffering that we don’t need a scapegoat but rather a Savior who teaches us to live with grace and humility towards all people.

I wish I had learned this wisdom much earlier in my life; maybe a lot of things would have been different.