This weekend I walked into the kitchen to find a bag of pretzels spilled and strewn all across the floor. I called in my son, Derek, and asked him “What happened?” His answer – “Eliot did it.”
I don’t expect my 4 year old to understand this, but my question wasn’t about who was to blame. That would be interesting information, but it wasn’t really my question. The question “What happened?” was meant to draw out a story of how the event happened. How did a bag of pretzels get almost evenly distributed across the entire kitchen floor? I still don’t know for sure.
My little boy highlights how the blame game works though. We all want to assign ‘blame’ somewhere for the various unfortunate events we experience. Here are our options:
- Blame yourself.
“Nobody seemed to understand my message today. I guess I’m not a very good communicator and preacher.”
- Blame someone else.
“The worship leader didn’t do a very good job leading the congregation in worship. If he had, I bet they would have been more receptive to my message.”
- Blame human nature.
“It’s too much to expect people to get something out of my morning messages when they are all so tired and overwhelmed in life.”
- Blame a system.
“My system for preparing Sunday morning messages needs to be adjusted so I have more time to prepare, rehearse, and get feedback before I preach each week.”
It is true that all of the above are sometimes at fault, but only one is worth spending time and energy on. Can you guess which one? If not, perhaps it would be meaningful to read this post and this post today as well.