In
life we have all met them. Oh yea you know what I am talking about. I mean
those who are always pointing accusing finger at others, those who apportion
blames, yes those who always find fault with others. It is always their fault
and never mine. They are always wrong and I am always right. It all started
with our first parents, Adam and Eve. Read Genesis 3:8-13: “When they heard the
sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day,
the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the
garden. The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?” He
answered, “I heard you in the garden: but I was afraid, because I was naked, so
I hid myself.” Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? You have
eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat! The man
replied, “The woman whom you put here with me – she gave me fruit from the
tree, so I ate it.” The Lord God then asked the woman, “Why did you do such a
thing?” The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
There
you have it! It is not your fault; it is the fault of Adam and Eve. You are
justified indeed not to take blames for anything. You have a false sense of
entitlement which makes it easy for you to be right at all times. It is not
your fault that you cannot accept that you are ever wrong. It is not your fault
that you have become a judge rather than a fellow pilgrim on this journey
called life.
But
can you stop and think just for a brief moment? Check back and look at your
finger when you point it at others. You see, life has taught us a lesson of how
wrong we may possibly be not to have observed that when you point one finger
(Index finger) at someone, the thumb sometimes looks up (or points) to God
while the other three are pointing directly at you. The thumb seems to agree
with Ps. 130:3,4, “If you, Lord, mark our sins, Lord, who can stand? But with
you is forgiveness and so you are revered.” The three fingers pointing at you,
on the hand, are telling you take a look at yourself and your actions: is it
really true that you are always blameless in every situation and at all times?
Why not ask yourself this simple question: what did I do to provoke such
reaction from the other person? Was I perhaps responsible for the reaction I
got from that person? Did I behave as a true brother/sister to this person or
that person in that situation? It is always good to be introspective, to really
look at the man/woman in the mirror to see if I am really blameless.
David
was a close friend of God. He sinned terribly against God and humanity up to
the point that he did not recognize himself in the story portraying his
sinfulness. When Nathan confronted him, David acknowledged his sins. In verse
13 of the second book of Samuel chapter 12, David said, “I have sinned against
the Lord”. Please read the whole story in 2 Samuel 11:1-12:1-15. In his
remorse, David wrote Psalm 51. In verses 5-7, David wrote, “For I know my
offense; my sin is always before me. Against you alone have I sinned; I have
done such evil in your sight that you are just in your sentence, blameless when
you condemn. True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived
me.” It is only a person who examines his life daily who can admit that he/she
is wrong at times. Socrates, the Greek philosopher stated clearly that, “The
unexamined life is not worth living.” That is to say that we should be engaged
constantly on self-examination and seek to compare ourselves to God rather than
human beings. When we compare ourselves to God we discover that we are
constantly in need of change and improvement; but when we compare ourselves to
others, we will always be tempted to think that we are better than every other
person. We find fault with everyone else because we are better than them.
Jesus
Christ has strong words for us for thinking this way. Listen to him, “Stop
judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you
notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but not perceive the wooden beam in
your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter
from your eye, while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the
wooden beam from your eye first, then you will see clearly to remove the
splinter from your brother’s eye’” Mt. 7:1-5. In his universal epistle, James
4:11-12 exhorts us in these words, “Do not speak evil of one another, brothers.
Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law
and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a
judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who
then are you to judge your neighbor?
There
you are. Before you engage yourself in that blame game you love to play so very
much, ask yourself: ‘am I really that better than everyone else?’ Don’t you
think you should show some love to your brothers and sisters rather than sit in
judgment over them? The golden rule puts it thus: “Do to others whatever you
would have them do to you”, Mt. 7:12. As you would not want people to point
accusing finger at you, do not point accusing finger at others. The world would
be a better place if we could observe this simple rule.