Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.
-Matthew 7:1-6
“No one ever is to blame”, is a way of saying the same thing Jesus said about not judging. Yet, we constantly judge or blame others. It seems to me that the log in the eye and getting trampled and torn to pieces, is the more common way that we live, than the way of Christ.
There is a better way to live than the way of blaming:
- Start dealing with your own stuff.
- Start taking responsibility.
- Start letting God love you.
- Start being a disciple of Jesus.
- Start living a life of communion with God, 24-7.
- Start letting love rule your heart, mind, thoughts and words.
- Start listening.
Blaming or judging others is not the way to live. There is a better way. In order to get clean, we first have to know we are dirty.
The word ‘bigot’ is a favorite of some people to name call others. But bigotry actually means, “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.”. People who call others ‘bigots’ are actually showing that they themselves are the bigots, because they can not tolerate other’s opinions.
It is a paradox perhaps, that when you call someone a bigot, you have shown yourself to be one. Because, by definition, a bigot is someone who is intolerant of other’s opinions.
Does this mean we should be tolerant of illegal and/or destructive behavior? No. Jesus’ word to not judge does not contradict the law, the moral law of God; like, “do not murder”, and “do not lie”. We can say, “that’s wrong”, or “that hurts”, and not be breaking Jesus’ word.
We can say, “I think that’s wrong”, or “ouch, that hurts”; and the other person may argue or question back. This is very different than judging or blaming. We can dialogue and debate, have questions and answers, without blaming.
We do always have to make evaluations or value judgments, based on the ethics of Christ, but without condemning, which is what blaming is. There may also be a time and a place for verbal rebuke, but that is different than blaming, fault-finding, or judging, that is blind to one’s self and places fault, blame, and condemnation outside or onto the other.
Jesus says that the person who goes around blaming others, without looking at and dealing with their own faults will receive the same treatment.
We do need to discern right and wrong. There are fair and charitable ways of judging. We have the phrase, “fair enough”, that a person uses when a fair or non-condemning judgement is spoken towards them.
“Do not judge” or “stop blaming”, are admonitions to stop being unfair, unkind and uncharitable. Charitable, kind or fair evaluating (I hesitate to use the word judging or blaming) must be done with humility. I always need to ‘go first’ and look in the mirror and humble myself, before I can have any chance of you being interested or in any way responsive to my pointing out your fault.
Blaming, judgmental-ism and fault-finding break Jesus’ ethic of love. There is a better way. We need to be hard on ourselves and generous with others. Love is tolerant while blaming is intolerance.
The hypocrite is blind to their own faults or shortcomings, while being obsessed with the failures of others. That is not love, is not Jesus way and is not the Christian way.
Nothing is accomplished by blaming. Blaming is destructive: it hurts and wounds, and is ungracious and not redemptive or healing. When we are blaming, we step out of communion with God.
Blaming is an elixir where you flatter yourself into believing you are superior to others. Blaming joins in with the work of Satan, who is ‘the accuser of our brothers and sisters’ (Rev. 12:10).
A person who blames, shames, judges or grumbles against others is a person who has not been sanctified or cleansed by God; because once you have been delivered from your own junk, you will not have the temerity to blame others. The person who blames others can not see the ugliness of themselves outside the grace of God, because they are blinded by their hypocritical style that completely lacks grace. In other words, when we are honest with ourselves about what we are like outside of God’s grace in our lives, we will stop looking down, judging or blaming others; but instead we will want to be peacemakers, lovers, bridge builders and ministers of reconciliation.
We need to cultivate an un-blaming style, an uncritical temperament and a tolerant, non-judgmental approach to others we disagree with.
There is a way to disagree with others and do it in love. But Christians often say or write nasty things that are without grace, love, or an eye on redemption.
There is a style that is called ‘the blame game’. In a nut-shell, it means not taking responsibility.
In life and in the world, there is good fortune and the unfortunate. These two things happen in a huge variety of ways. When unfortunate things happen, we can chose how to react; and a bad choice is the blame game.
Another popular manifestation of the blaming style today is what is called ‘victimism’. The way it goes is that when bad things happen to me or I suffer misfortune, then I see myself as a victim and then take on that persona: the ‘victim mentality’, and live a life of blaming, judging, grumbling and being bitter.
The first blamer in the Bible was Adam, who blamed Eve. When we get in trouble, like Adam did, we are also tempted to blame. To blame is to not accept responsibility.
Two people can be in the same situation, where misfortune befalls them and one blames, while the other takes responsibility. Blame blocks growth, forgiveness and reconciliation. Authentic love and prosperity take a back seat and are stifled or frozen out by blaming.
Stop blaming and start loving. No one is to blame. Start taking responsibility, being a minister of reconciliation and authentically loving.
Even though the verse that I started with says, “do not judge”, and doesn’t say, “do not blame”; what I am getting at is that when we blame, we are judging unrighteously. “No one is to blame”, means “don’t blame”, or “blaming does not lead to growth”. Instead of blaming, which is making an unrighteous judgement, we ought to take responsibility, reconcile and authentically love.
Taking responsibility is when you take it for what happened, if you were at fault, and take it for going forward. If you were 99% or 1% responsible, take responsibility for that. If you feel you could have done something or more of something that might have helped and you did not, and you were passive, take responsibility for that. There is no shame in taking responsibility, but it exercises your humbling yourself, from which you open the way to grace.
Reconciliation is when two different people, with different points of view, and different hurts about the same thing come together and touch. If I live in the land of ‘blaming you’, I can not reconcile with you. If I wait for you to admit fault first, I am blaming you and can not reconcile with you.
When we have someone who has hurt us or offended us or failed us, but they won’t see it and won’t admit it, we still must not blame them and hold blame against them, because that is standing in judgement and being unforgiving and unloving. Remember that love does not say sin is ok, abuse is ok; or that sloppy, selfish relating is ok; but love loves without condition. Love keeps no records of wrongs.
Authentic love is when I know God loves me, so I love myself, and then I love you, without condition. Authentic love starts with God’s love, which is unconditional. God loves sinners, of which I am, and I love me, and I love you, with and through God. It is still me loving, but God has been transforming my heart, to love the way He loves.
When I live in blame or make judgments about people, I block grace from entering, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
There is a time and place to assign blame, that seeks a judgement, but is not sinfully judgmental. When there is an auto accident, for example, the authorities or insurance adjusters want to assign blame. There is an ruling that does not assign blame personally that is just called an accident. When the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up after launch, in 1986, they needed to investigate why, and who or what was responsible.
And when someone hurts us or bumps us, we can say, “ouch”, and that is not judging or blaming or grumbling. But constantly complaining about everything and anything, especially when it is in bitterness, anger, and judgmental-ism, is called grumbling, which is sinful and destructive.
The ‘blame game’ is when we do not take responsibility. If you do not take responsibility, you are not honest, and I never get to know you and love your authentic self. Being the ‘blamer’ or the ‘victim’ or the ‘recipient of dramatic sufferings’ is a persona and not the real you, so when that is your presentation to others, others end up knowing or loving your persona, while never knowing and loving the authentic you.
Blaming sometime works like this. Something has happened and now we must figure it out, so we can fix it, and part of the problem-solving that we are engaged in gives rise to blaming. Rather than looking at ourselves and being loved and being loving, we instead blame.
Blaming is just like what Jesus said about unrighteous judging, having impaired vision, while trying to fix the other people’s vision. Jesus called the Pharisees ‘blind guides’, because their vision was so bad. They blamed and judged all over the place.
Blaming, psychologically, is a defense mechanism. We project our communal blame onto others in a scapegoat fashion. We deny responsibility for our part in the fiasco, often feigning disgust, and we displace our feelings of loss into another compartment, area or issue rather than working our problem.
Blaming is the opposite of ‘The Serenity Prayer’ life-style, where we humbly pray for God to help us accept the things (and the people) we can not change and to have the courage to change the things (my self with God’s help) that we can and to know the difference.
Blaming is a destructive conflict resolution method. Who wins when we blame? No one.
Love actually covers sin. Love actually overlooks a fault. Love says, “let’s talk”. Love listens. Love wants to know people who are different.
Blaming is judgmental, arrogant and proud. Blaming prosecutes, persecutes and is unmerciful. Blaming is hopeless and looks down on the miserable ‘low life’s’ below it.
When we blame, we are playing God. The blaming person is not complete in their own godliness, yet they take it upon themselves to fix, solve, categorize and punish others. The temptation from Adam and Eve to today has always been to play God, be a law unto yourself and then blame the other person when something goes wrong.
The opposite of blaming is interceding. The person who intercedes gets between the problem, the failure, the brokenness or sin and the person or people. I broke someone’s window once, and my dad interceded for me and fixed it with no blaming and no shaming.
We live in a world and in a society where blaming is the norm. People who embrace the blaming style end up hurting others, but their biggest loss is towards their own self. This is because blaming blocks healing, reconciliation and deliverance. Blaming is a pure work of the flesh and puts a stop sign to spiritual growth in the blamer’s life.
Stop blaming. No one ever is to blame.
- Start dealing with your own stuff.
- Start taking responsibility.
- Start letting God love you.
- Start being a disciple of Jesus.
- Start living a life of communion with God, 24-7.
- Start letting love rule your heart, mind, thoughts and words.
- Start listening.
When we blame, we wall ourselves off from our own healing. Not only does blaming hurt the ones you blame and is a form of cursing, but blaming says, “I don’t need you and I don’t need God”.
The blamer sees God as on their side. They are self-righteous. Their indignant tone is not centered in the living Christ, but in their self-righteousness.
The blamer, if they are a Christian, thinks they are working with, for, and in God. They may even believe that their blaming tirades are prophetic messages. They treat and talk about their brothers and sisters in Christ as if they are the enemy, but your brother or sister is never your enemy.
Self-righteousness will delude a person into killing others who do not share their ideology. Today, some of the people in some of the ideological camps demand complete tolerance to their practices, while at the same time being the least tolerant and even violently intolerant of different practices, beliefs, view-points or ways of life.
There has only been one man who was righteous, only one man who did not need to grow up, and only one man who did not need to repent and be open to inner and outer healing. The rest of us are all in process, in need of growth and in need of healing.
Spiritual grown is a process. Changing our ways is a process. The way of self-righteousness is always a temptation and a pit fall.
Humility is the way of Christ. There is a way to disagree in humility. We ought to be weeping over our discord, disunity and disagreements, rather than blaming, shaming, rebuking, judging, demonizing, being in fear of, psychoanalyzing and dis-fellow-shipping or shunning our brothers and sisters.
Can we forgive each other? Can we listen to each other, to others who hold a different view or opinion than ours? Can we as Christians make it our goal to love, rather than being right?
When I choose not to blame, but rather forgive, extending grace and love, weeping with you and for you; I want to be in God’s image and be in Christ, as a bridge to God. Jesus did not come to teach us the right way to get saved so much as He came to save us. We are saved in His person.
We have Christians today who bear Christ’s name, but not his character and his love, nor his wisdom. They act as if being a Christian is about getting it (the gospel, the Bible, theology, ecclesiology, epistemology or politics) right. But, Jesus told his disciples, “love one another as I have loved you, and then the whole world will know you are my disciples”.
Will we die to our selves and selfishness and live in Christ? Will we take up our crosses instead of taking up our rightness and our correctness and our bossiness over others?
If you stop blaming, it will begin in your heart, then your mind and then in your words, written and spoken. People who stop blaming are no longer defensive, and begin to take responsibility and admit failure.
Blaming comes from low self-esteem, whether you blame others or take on the blame yourself. Healthy self-esteem does not blame or shame or judge.
No one ever is to blame, so stop blaming.
- Start dealing with your own stuff.
- Start taking responsibility.
- Start letting God love you.
- Start being a disciple of Jesus.
- Start living a life of communion with God, 24-7.
- Start letting love rule your heart, mind, thoughts and words.
- Start listening.
What if every word was mediated through Christ, his cross; his death, burial and resurrection? What if what I say to and about people comes from my heart and soul that is filled with the Spirit of God? What if I lived as a Christian?
There is a place for rebuke, but it is not the main thing. The cross of Christ is the biggest rebuke to sin, carnality, and every wicked spirit. We have Christ’s love and His love shown on the cross, as our primary weapon for saving the world from sin and darkness.
As we live and walk with Christ ourselves, we are in the process of having our eyes made clear, to see as he sees with his eyes through his heart. When we are walking with and in him, the time comes and it happens often, that we help remove specks from each others eyes, in love; as one’s who love much because they have been forgiven much. And we become more than willing to lay down our lives for one another in generous humility. When the trouble happens or discord erupts, when misunderstanding or disagreement comes up between us, the soul living in Christ, always says, “No one is to blame.”
In-between 