Finger Pointing

Finger Pointing

Finger pointing, the act of pointing out others faults or to place blame on someone else. This is nothing new to our society, and started out in the Garden of Eden, where Eve blamed the snake for tricking her, then Adam blamed God for giving her the woman who caused him to disobey God. Finger pointing goes by another term that I learned from my mother…it is also known as the “blame game.” I remember this term when I tried to blame someone else for something I clearly did, but she told me that we are not going to play the blame game here. At the time I was not thinking that it was a game, because for me it was life or death, because my mom did not play.

As I mentioned before, the blame game started back at the beginning of time and to date we have all played it, admittedly some of us play it a lot more than others. Some of us do it or did it for personal deflection…to save your own skin, and some do it or did it for fun, just to get someone else in trouble. The point is that it involves blaming everything and everyone else for what is transpiring in your own life.

Now God has a very interesting perspective on all of this in His Word, because He makes it very clear to us – that He doesn’t like finger pointing, and He does not deal with the blame game because He just promises to hold every single one of us accountable for our own life choices and decisions.

The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, “What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying: The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge’? "As I live,” says the Lord God, “you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel." “Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father As well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die."

Ezekiel 18:1-4

The Word of God is so interesting, that it covers everything under the sun, including that of the blame game, which He likens to that of sour grapes.

Ezekiel is a prophet; someone Who hears from God and is then responsible to relay that message to a person or persons God directs him to. In our scripture Ezekiel makes it clear that this is a message from God directed to the Children of Israel and us.

In this message God points out a proverb that was used and is still being used today, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge’?

This is what they were saying, “Our parents and our forefathers have done wrong and now we are the ones who are made to pay. Its everyone else’s fault, everyone else has done this to me. Life just isn’t fair and why should I be made to pay for someone else’s mistakes!” This is finger pointing at its best, the blame game played right. Someone else has done wrong – and now I am made to suffer for it! God knew exactly what the people were trying to say, and He wasn’t having any part of it! We know this because He said that you were no longer going to use that proverb. Now that did not mean that they could not say it again…what it meant was that God will not accept it for our own ill behavior, because they were merely trying to shed all accountability for their own actions and deflect all burden of responsibility onto others. “Lord it was them – not me!” “Hey, we didn’t cause all this hardship in our lives – they did!” “Our Fathers are the ones who ate sour grapes, and now our teeth are set on edge!” “It’s not fair that we have been left with this sour taste in our mouths.”

Because I am a helpful kind of guy, I’m going to hip you folks on ways to eliminate finger pointing and bowing out of the blame game, because God is going to hit home several very hard truths, and these truths we need to know and understand all the same. So, here is the first truth.

Truth #1: Take Responsibility for your Actions!

Have you ever met someone with this kind of mentality? “I am not responsible for my life because they are the ones who have done this to me, I mean clearly it is everybody else’s fault and the blame should be levelled at them accordingly.”

Often, people who see things this way have a very warped and twisted view of reality. For example: (tell story of hostages or kidnappers)