When I Was…

anuary 24, 2023

When I was a Union Rep, I remember hearing a lot of complaining about both the Company Management and the Union. But rarely did anyone step forward to help solve the problems.

Isn’t that a troublesome quandary permeating every facet of our lives? We like to place blame. We don’t like to accept it. Neither do we want to solve. Too much work, ya know… Not enough spare time… Maybe that is because blame is so convenient to apply.

The Blame Game is as ancient as Mankind. It exists within the smallest group all the way up to the largest. Siblings blame each other for whatever their little spats are about. Marriages can become a hotbed of blame. Accusations abound in neighborhoods, villages, cities, and between nations. People seem to be periodically warring with each other on a continuous timeline. Oh, there are tons of reasons why and incremental degrees of conflict, but my point is that people tend not to accept any responsibility for any conflict but rather accuse the other — whoever or whatever that “other” might be.

The Blame Game — the most pervasive, continual, and malignant of the Original Sins.

Here’s a little light on the subject from www.wonderopolis.org : “At a site known as Cemetery 117, archeologists have uncovered a large group of bodies with arrowheads lodged in their bones, which leads experts to believe they were the victims of a large battle. The remains have been dated to the Mesolithic era, over 13,000 years ago.”

The reason I am citing this little fact is that there are many many people who ask God like I did, “Why do you allow wars?” When no answer pours forth out of the sky, some table the question, some make it a complaint, and others take it to extremes, pouring forth vitriol, bile , and bitterness with extreme tension and rancor, anger, and hostility — and they do so with a scattergun approach blaming God, Jesus, the Bible, and anyone associated with them.

God did not create or instigate all these conflicts — whether personal, philosophical, or worldwide wars. God gave us one and all free wills, and as individuals and as groups we choose, We exercise this power as we choose to exercise this power. And we don’t have to look very far to see the results. Or am I just blowing smoke?

The Bible describes human nature, from Galatians 5:20 : greed, pharmakeia, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy. (“pharmakeia” is a Greek word in the Greek Bible texts which means exactly what it looks like — “drugs.”)

These seem to me to be the basic rules of the Blame Game as played today.

Can we see our way out of playing this game?

What comes to mind is the United Nations — impotent, divisive, and an abundance of infinite disputes.

The answer is obvious to me, and I bet it is to everyone, but that path has already been rejected, because it requires quitting the Blame Game.