Who’s to blame? Sorry, not interested

Darlene and I have a dear friend, a retired psychology professor from Oregon. He makes regular trips to Alaska on a very special mission. He travels to rural Alaska villages and makes need assessments for children who have learning disabilities. Most of the children with whom he works are the victims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He helps teachers bring children to their highest potentials.

Our friend is very aware that the learning capacity of hundreds of rural children in Alaska has been affected by mothers who drank alcoholic beverages while pregnant with their children. I have never heard our friend speak a single condemning word about the tragedy of the drinking mother. His total focus is on the learning needs of the children he serves.

The good doctor reminds me of a story about another friend, Jesus from Nazareth. Here is a part of the story as found in the ninth chapter of John’s Gospel as translated by Eugene Peterson.

“Walking down the street one day, Jesus saw a man who had been blind from his birth. One of his disciples asked Jesus, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?’”

“Jesus said, ‘You are asking the wrong question. You are looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be working energetically for the one who sent us here. We need to work while there is still daylight.’”

Jesus gave the man his eyesight. But that is not the end of the story. Jesus had broken a clear religious law. Jesus did something unforgivable. He had healed the man on the wrong day. The critics of Jesus called him, and the former blind man, trash names and ran the healed man out of his town.

The world has no shortage of people who would rather be critics than doers of good. The blame game is very attractive to us all. I do not always escape the temptation. I see what appears to me to be a wrong. My instinct is to place blame and start thinking of the penalties that ought to be assigned the offender. It is then that the Jesus on my shoulder whispers in my ear. “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults — unless of course, you want the same treatment. The critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.”

As a pastor of churches, I sometimes felt that I had heard every possible story multiple times. However, I never believed that I ever heard the full story. Life stories are a tangle. Transgressions go in every direction. There are no innocent parties. Every person is in some way a victim. Every person is a transgressor. All are culpable. All are in desperate need of grace and forgiveness. All, when placed in the right situation, are capable of great kindness and love. They all at times do good deeds.

Being a minister is a fascinating profession. I had responsibility to those in my parish, but I also had responsibility to the larger community. I had responsibilities for the rich and the poor, for the sick and the healthy, the bright and the not so bright, for the upright and the not so upright.

Along the way, I have given significant time to visiting the residents of prisons. I have often come home from prison and shared with my wife my experience of someone who was incarcerated.

Her temptation was to ask, “What did he/she do?” Seldom did I know. In one particular prison I held weekly Bible/discussion groups. I had people who were regular in attendance. I came to know people quite well. As I became acquainted with them I realized that they were no different from the people in worship on Sunday morning.

In summary, people both on the inside and the outside of life’s fences are mixed bags of successes and failures. The person who thinks he or she can sort through the tangle, and with any accuracy, assess blame for those things that go wrong is life’s greatest fool.

The Jesus story is instructive. To ask who is to blame is to ask the wrong question. Failing situations are not times for assigning blame but rather are opportunities for the doing of good. The instruction of Jesus is that we need to do our work of goodness while there is opportunity.

The word “salvation” is very important in Christian theology and is a theme that runs through the Bible. It is a greatly misunderstood word. In popular use if people have salvation, they have a ticket to heaven.

This is not a good definition of salvation. It is my own understanding that salvation is experienced when a person’s life is made whole, when life is made meaningful, when life is a joy. When the blind man received sight, he experienced life in a whole new dimension. When a child in rural Alaska learns to read, life becomes much fuller. When these good things happen, people taste salvation.

I have never known a person whose life has been made better by blame and condemnation. Let us not be weary in our well-doing. Leave blame out of the conversation. We have better things to do.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His e-mail address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.