A weekly reflection from a memeber of the Hastings clergy Written by Pastor Paris Pasch of The Journey Church in Hastings Is Blame Always necessary? In today’s culture, we see many folks looking …
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A weekly reflection from a memeber of the Hastings clergy
Written by Pastor Paris Pasch of The Journey Church in Hastings
Is Blame Always necessary?
In today’s culture, we see many folks looking for someone to blame for their life circumstances. It’s someone else’s fault I’m sad, It’s their fault I’m so angry, or it’s their fault I’m in the scrape I’m in. In the past we used to blame the perpetrators, the wayward individual or the single individual who caused the harm. We used to call that justice.
When I was a youth, we seldom found fault with a whole city when someone acted out being a bully. We didn’t identify those who had no part in the bullying activity as culpable for an individual’s actions. Maybe that was a more correct approach, rather than condemning a whole community or accusing an entire people group. Maybe the overuse of the word “systemic” has become a catch all for our disappointment in a few.
We’ve even gone as far as to condemn civil servants as a whole, because of what a few have done. We litigate and sue an entire city for the actions of one or two. We find flaws in society for the actions of small groups of people who did the harm. We blame an entire race of people because of a few bad apples, but God says we each will be held responsible for our own actions.
2 Corinthians 5:10 (NIV) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
Maybe we could move further away from a cultural need to affix blame and instead add repentance, forgiveness and mercy to our vocabulary. Maybe we could avoid so much demand on every other person and place demands on ourselves to live kind, courteous and even content.
In light of these truths, one of the things I have taught all my pastoral life is that humanity is one race. Humanity is created in the image of God and there is no room for hatred. The blame game is simply the path to more hatred and we should avoid it at all cost. Written by : Pastor Paris Pasch of The Journey Church in Hastings
