Blame Game
Whose fault was it? We reflexively assign blame. In “Lost and Space,” every problem was caused by Dr. Zachary Smith. We blame someone for everything we don’t like.
Is blaming others a sin? It feels like it: We all seem to have certain “go to’’ people to regularly blame for our woes. At work, we blame an unjust boss, subordinate, customer or client for our grief. Ditto at home (a spouse, parents, an in-law and everyone’s ex).
The great challenge of Christianity? We’re supposed to love first. Pray for our enemies, which is hard in a world where we are constantly taught to love our own and blame someone else.
Life is so much simpler (as black and white as the original “Lost in Space’’) when everything is someone else’s fault….
“Why don’t they just get rid of Dr. Smith?” I wondered after so many “Lost in Space” episodes. He was always the problem.
Don West and John Robinson got mad but, they kept turning the other cheek, always keeping him around though he had absolutely nothing good to contribute.
In today’s “employment at will,’’ world where the lowest and most agreeable bidder always wins, Dr. Smith would just be blamed then probably fired, replaced or banished. Blaming is rampant.
Politics and “news porn’’ channels are all about Blaming
Politics is almost exclusively about blaming our adversary while making excuses for our political heroes and allies.We still need to find a way to blame our adversary — our Dr. Smith — for everything.
News Porn? Pornography is the distortion of love — a simplified, twisted cartoon version of love going straight to the hyped up fantasy version of the “action.”
We similarly create “food porn’’ posts on Instagram (because they look so great) and fall for “news porn’’ in widely clicked “news’’ posts (because they make us feel better).
We see this exact same “porn-ification” of news all over cable and social media (outrage over the bad guy, support for ourselves and the other good folks on our side). It follows us into our real life.
Everyone wants to change the world but no one wants to change themselves.
BLAME EVERYWHERE: Turn on the news or review your Facebook or Twitter and there is a never ending river of complaints about someone or something. The porn version of how we see our lives? We’re fine, blame someone else for our troubles.
Numbers are tumbling at work? Some managers will consistently blame a subordinate until that staffer is fired or pushed out. Then another and another. The trouble with this strategy, besides it’s cruelty, is people eventually figure out “Maybe it wasn’t their fault. Maybe it was yours.”
Whoever exalts himself…
The Gospel focuses on this same blame game:
“Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.
“Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself,
‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’
But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’
I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18: 9–14).
Bishop Robert Barron explains: “The entire point of religion is to make us humble before God and to open us to the path of love. Everything else is more or less a footnote. Liturgy, prayer, the precepts of the Church, the Commandments, sacraments, sacramentals — all of it — are finally meant to conform us to the way of love. When they instead turn us away from that path, they have been undermined….
Laws as weapons. “This is precisely why Paul speaks of the dangers of the Law. He knew that people often use the Law as a weapon of aggression: since I know what is right and wrong in some detail, then I am uniquely positioned to point out your flaws. And when I point out your flaws, I elevate myself. In short, the Law, which is a gift from God, has been co-opted for the purposes of the ego.”
Blaming and belittling “the other…”
Pope Francis said people have always considered themselves superior to others and “made other people feel rejected” by “considering them backward and of little worth… They despise their traditions, erase their history, occupy their lands and usurp their goods.”
Read those words again: A conservative can read those words and blame the invaders attacking our history and traditions. Liberals would note the context of where Francis said those words (the Amazon) and blame evil capitalists for taking advantage of the local poor.
Dr. Smith wasn’t real. Life would be simple if everything was always the other person’s fault. But they’d still be who they are.
Barack Obama was universally praised for this response to “blame game” or “woke” crowd:
“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly. I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, that the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that’s enough. Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because: ‘Man, did you see how woke I was? I called you out.
The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you.”
Instead of demanding the other change (which rarely happens) we can first consider how we can change ourselves to overcome these struggles, removing the log in our own eye rather than worrying so much about what the other is getting away with.
