Avoiding The Blame Game Series

Mark it down. If you’re married and you’re playing the blame game, your marriage will not get better. As one husband writes, “After six months of marriage, I thought I had married the wrong person, however as I pursued a better relationship with my wife, I was amazed to see that I was the primary source of irritation to the marriage…The fact is, each person in a marital relationship holds a great deal of power to put a halt to much of the conflict that is in their marriage…the ones that ‘get it’ are the ones that stop playing the blame game, and take that same energy and work on their own stuff.”

Two passages come to mind. Matthew 7:4 says, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” And, as much as Jonah got wrong, he was right to admit that it was his wrong that was causing trouble for the sailors in Jonah 1:12: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

What is your fault? Own it and then accept responsibility to make your marriage better.

4. Be a good example as a parent. How do your kids see that you handle injustices? Do they observe you accepting responsibility or do they hear you blame your boss or coworkers when you come home? Just yesterday morning, while I was working on this sermon, I came upstairs to see Beth and Megan and I immediately started complaining and blaming. Some kind of example I am. Here’s the deal, parents. We are the primary role models for our children. If we play the blame game, they will become experts at it. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up raising mini-victims who go through life blaming teachers and bosses and friends and spouses and then their own children and grandchildren. The old ‘do as I say, not as I do’ doesn’t cut it because complaining is contagious.

This is not easy to do, is it? I read about how a blame game took place in a coffee shop when a husband and wife were there with their little boy. When he started to pick his nose, the mother looked at the father and said with a sneer, “Who taught him to pick his nose in public?” To which the husband said, “You know what happens when we leave him with your parents.”

Many of us have memorized or are familiar with 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” While this verse has application to so many areas of life, the context in verse 10 has to do with grumbling. God can keep us from grumbling if we’ll take the way out. We can’t just tell our kids to stop blaming; they must see that we’ve stopped.

A few weeks ago I shared with our older daughters that someone had brought up some things to me that were hard to hear. They felt bad for me but because this individual was right I said something like, “You know, I needed to hear what he said because it was true.” I think I surprised them, and I know I surprised myself because my default setting is to get defensive and look for someone or something to blame. It would be great to hear someone say, “I sinned. It was my choice. Nobody forced me to do it. I did it because I wanted to.” Actually, I shouldn’t wait to hear someone else say this. I need to stop making excuses and refuse to play the blame game by owning by name what I’ve done.