Blaming God – Why We Blame God When Things Go Wrong
Have you ever blamed God for problems? Perhaps you’ve asked: “Why did this bad thing happen?” Or “Who is responsible for all the problems in our world?”
It’s obvious no one wants to take the blame. In our world, admitting fault is looked at like a weakness so it’s no wonder “I’m sorry” is so hard to say, because somewhere intrinsically, we don’t want to be blamed. So we blame the man on top. And who better to blame than God.
As we dive deep into this kind of thinking, this video will open your eyes and rock your world! Let’s start by listening to a blame-shifting conversation between God, Adam, and Eve when God asked Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman— the one that you put here with me —she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:11-12).
Notice how Adam first tried to put the blame on God. Let me paraphrase Adam, “Well God, if you hadn’t put that woman here with me….” Now notice the pause in the sentence when God must have looked at Adam as if to say, “Really??? You want to blame me?” Almost immediately after that pause, Adam shifted blame to say, “Well, that woman, she’s the one to blame.”
Then God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” and of course we know that she in turn blamed the serpent when she said, “The serpent deceived me.” First blame God, then blame each other, and then blame Satan. No apologies were given. No remorse was present, and there was no mention of “I’m sorry.” Isn’t that what we often do to each other?
Consider how war criminals even claim their innocence. They say, “Don’t blame me. I was just following orders.” Then, as we go up the ranks, we hear the same excuse all the way to the top. If we follow that logic, we ultimately can blame Hitler, Stalin and Mao for 120 million deaths as we logically conclude that the man at the top is responsible.
But who do you think the Hitler’s of the world ultimately blamed? Don’t they somehow think they were justified and following orders too? Crazy as it sounds, I’ll bet they blamed God. After all, God is on top, and SOMEONE ELSE MUST BE TO BLAME. Someone, other than ourselves, must pay the price.
It sure is a sobering thought. Whenever we have a broken relationship, you’ll notice that the heart of it is laced with blame and unforgiveness. This is because forgiveness ALWAYS has a cost. If I’m a guest at your house and accidentally break your lamp either I pay to fix or replace it, or you do. If you decide to not fix it, you’ve lost your lamp. No matter what, someone pays. The bottom line is that forgiving is NEVER free.
And here is where all this gets interesting. God knows that no matter how many bad decisions we make, or how bad we are, there will always be people who blame him. He also knows no matter how good we try to be – we fall short and cannot possibly pay what we owe for our sins. It’s a dilemma. Because someone ALWAYS has to pay, yet we can barely say, “I’m sorry.”
It’s hard to know what to do, especially when Satan tells us two big lies that he winds together. His first lie is that you are totally un-redeemable for all the sins and problems in your life. Satan reminds you that you are indeed bad. Bad to the bone…. That you are a sinner and there is no way you can possibly pay for your sins. He says, you might as well just give up, stop trying, and realize what a loser you are…. Loser! The second lie is that our sins, selfishness, and problems are God’s fault. Either way, Satan wants you to suffer with guilt, or he wants you to blame God. Both ways his goal is to separate us from God.
But this is where the miracle is. Because God knew there was no way we can ever pay the huge debt that we owe, so God decided in advance, before he created us, that he would pay the full price for our sins.
To understand this, think of a husband and wife deciding to have children. They know in advance that their kids will cost them with time, money and mistakes but they want to share their love with their children, so they decide to cover those future costs themselves, before their children are even born.
In our case, we can know that Jesus loves us so much that he voluntarily chose to pay for our sins. That’s why the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son to save us.” (John 3:16). He took the full penalty and paid our debts in full, so we are forgiven!
We are forgiven and so we are free! Is there any wonder that Jesus explained so many times how we too, need to forgive each other. Truly, there is no time to waste in blame and unforgiveness. Jesus paid such a big price for you to live in his abundance and wants you to get what he paid for!
We hope you’ll choose one of the next articles so you can live deeper in Jesus abundance. We’ll see you there.
