Modern man lives with a tension of his own making.  Today’s prevailing philosophy regarding man’s nature is that man is good. Man is born innocent.  It would seem that parents would soon crush this false teaching. Our children talk back, exhibit selfishness, and disobey us at an early age.  No parent has to teach them how to act or talk in this manner.  Parents do not teach their children how to lust, how to be prideful, or how to fight for what they want.  Their own nature is sufficient to erupt into these responses.  Yet the goodness of man continues to be taught.

A tension arises when an evil action occurs that is so awful that it cannot be swept under a carpet of forgetfulness or ignored.  Such an incident occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech on April 16.  Thirty-two students were killed and several injured by a student who then turned the gun on himself.  Believers in man’s goodness cannot define this as a good act.

In these incidents attempts are made to shift the blame elsewhere. In the recent incident there were numerous attempts to take this blame down several avenues. The administration was blamed for not providing more security, such as a campus lockdown after the initial double homicide. Perhaps psychiatrists should have been more pro-active in dealing with him.  The Virginia legislature should have had stronger gun laws.  The weapons should not have been sold to him. Tech professors should have done more to alert authorities.  Perhaps the ladies stalked should have pursued legal action.

However, if the blame is shifted to any of these individuals, or to someone else, does not that make them bad?  Does not that then destroy the fallacy that man is basically good?  If responsibility is shifted from the perpetrator to someone the person has come across in life‘s pathway then that person is guilty of evil action.

Man is created in God’s image.  Deep within, man realizes he is a sinner.  When confronted, we will say that others are worse sinners. God is only against bad sinners (those who, on our scale, are worse than ourselves). He accepts sinners like us because our sins are not that bad. 

Man is not basically good.  We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Putting blame on others for my evil actions does not work.  It does not alleviate what I did.  Blaming others does not alleviate what the gunman did at Tech.  We are all responsible for our own actions.

However, so often when we are caught in sin, we, too, want to shift blame to others.  The father who gets unrighteously angry at home may want to blame an overbearing boss at work.  A child who has wrongfully tried to get his own way may blame a sibling’s initial action.  An adulterer may blame his unresponsive wife for his own unfaithfulness.  Blame shifting is not new to our culture. It began in the Garden of Eden.  Shortly after the Fall, when confronted by God, Adam replied, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.” (Gen. 3:12)

Yet there is no one on whom to lay the blame for our actions.  Returning to the Tech incident, the gun shop owner sold many guns under Virginia law.  It was this particular gunman that used the gun in this horrendous way.  In a similar manner we could walk down each of the avenues where blame was placed. In every incident we would have to conclude that not one of the other people’s decisions made the gunman pull the trigger; he did it on his own.

No doubt, man will continually desire to lay blame for his actions elsewhere. Sin is a heavy burden to bear.  Man denies his own sinfulness, yet he knows he acts wrongly.  This tension is often resolved by shifting the blame.  In this sense, the other person becomes our messiah for that action.

Such faulty thinking provides open doors for us to present the Gospel in its truth and grace. In reality we do not need someone on whom to lay blame. We need someone on whom to actually lay our sins.  Thankfully, the Christian knows the Messiah on whom were laid the sins of all God’s people.  Through Christ we not only admit we are rotten sinners, we also rejoice that we are forgiven sinners because of Christ’s finished, sufficient work.

The Gospel is the message that blameshifters in all cultures need to hear.

©2007 Byron Snapp, Hampton, Virginia