Every Loser's Recognizable Limp
I seriously doubt that you or I will be able to stand before the Lord on judgment day and say, "But my wife made me do it," or "I did what I did because of my repressive childhood." We won't be able to blame the church, the school, the society, the government, or anyone else. To be sure, if these have caused us trouble, they will pay for it, but we will still be responsible for what we have done. God expects us to behave responsibly in whatever situation we are in.
Introduction
(Read Genesis 3:6-19)
Pete Hamill wrote an excellent article in the October, 1991 issue of READER'S DIGEST, which he called, "It's Not My Fault!" In it he referred to what he called "victimism" in America, the idea that wrong behavior is not one's own responsibility, but is rather the fault of someone else. Listen as I read a portion taken from Hamill's article.
"One morning last spring, Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff during the gulf war, went home to Morris High School in the South Bronx. He had been gone for 37 years. Now, thanks to the poise and intelligence he displayed during the war, Powell was one of the most influential generals in recent American history.
"He stepped briskly from a limousine into a tight cocoon of security men and school officials. He smiled. He shook hands. He seemed not to notice the crowd of black and Latino men across the street, huddled in front of a shelter for homeless men.
"'What he know 'bout bein' down?' said one. 'I seen him on the TV. Talk so pretty! College boy, got everything he want.'
"Another joined in, then another and soon the rap was flowing. They'd drawn the wrong hand in life; they were poor and black, or poor and Hispanic, or poor and luckless, and never had a chance. They'd been locked up by bad cops, flunked out by racist schoolteachers, abused by heartless welfare investigators. Look what's been done to us, they said again and again.
"Across the street, Powell was addressing a group of high school kids. His message was simple: Stay in school; don't take drugs. Nothing new - except that it came from a man who spoke with the authority of success, yet had come from one of the worst slums in America."
Many people today live their lives under the never-questioned assumption that if they have problems, there must be someone else who is to blame. When questioned about some otherwise unacceptable behavior, it is always the fault of the justice system or the school system or the government, or their family or their parents or their spouse. Always, it is someone else who is to blame. Surely it isn't them! Such "victimism" Hamill writes, "implies that nobody is personally responsible for the living of a life. The defeats, disappointments and failures once thought to be a part of each human being's portion on this earth are now always the fault of somebody else."
I dropped out of high school and can't get a job. It's not my fault. I'll go on welfare or start stealing cars. I started taking drugs as a teenager and now I can't remember things. It's not my fault. I deserve special medical treatment. I got married on a whim and now I can't stand this person I'm with. It's not my fault! I'll get a divorce.
In a ghetto, a woman points to a hole in the wall of her apartment put there by her boyfriend in a fit of anger. "Why doesn't the landlord fix that!"
Why doesn't she fix it herself?
Shifting the blame to anyone but me. It's as old as the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree, God said in effect, "What is going on here?" Adam said, "The woman made me do it. It wasn't my fault. Eve said, "The Serpent made me do it! It wasn't my fault." Blame shifting. Refusing to take responsibility.
Zig Ziglar calls what I'm talking about "Loser's Limp." In his book, SEE YOU AT THE TOP, he says,
You know what loser's limp is if you've ever attended a football game or watched one on television. The offensive player slips behind the defensive player, reaches up, pulls in a pass and heads for the end zone. The defensive man quickly recovers and takes out in hot pursuit. When the offensive player gets about 20 yards from the end zone, the defensive player realizes he's not going to catch the man with the ball. Everybody in the stands knows it too. So, the defensive player frequently pulls up limping and the people in the stands say, "Well, no wonder the poor guy couldn't catch him. Look, he's crippled."
It is bad enough when a person shifts the blame and knows that he is doing it. It gets worse. Some people even come to believe their own excuses.
A NEW YORK TIMES article back in 1971 had these words:
Even thieves are able to justify their work. A veteran, a very professional thief, who lives in New Jersey, reasons, "What I do is good for everybody. First of all, I create work. I hire men to deliver the cars, work on the numbers, paint them, give them paper, maybe drive them out of state, find customers. That's good for the economy. Then I'm helping people to get what they could never afford otherwise. A fellow wants a Cadillac but he can't afford it. I save him as much as $2,000. Now he's happy. But so is the guy who lost his car. He gets a nice new Cadillac from the insurance company. The Cadillac company--they're happy too because they sell another Cadillac. The only people who don't do so good is the insurance company, but they're so big that nobody cares personally. They got a budget for this sort of thing anyway...Come on now--whom am I really hurting?
No matter how it manifests itself, this idea of avoiding responsibility by blaming others for what we are and do adds up to only one thing: Those who do it lose. Adam and Eve lost and so will we. Perhaps Ziglar wasn't so far off when he called it "loser's limp."
It is my hope that today's prevalent "victimism" hasn't claimed you as a follower. I hope that you accept full responsibility for your own actions, no matter what they might be. Just in case you don't, though, or just in case you need some moral support in continuing as a responsible person, I want to point out three areas of life where blameshifting "victims" lose.
I. They Lose In Their Society.
Perhaps you saw the 60 Minutes segment a few years ago on the San Antonio rapist. The man was caught after he broke into the house of a 26-year old woman and raped her for the third time over a period of three months. He confessed but told a San Antonio jury that he was the victim of a high testosterone level that increased his desire to the point that he couldn't help himself.
The defense plea that the rapist had some type of overpowering biological urge to rape was not unusual, but the defense request that the jury rather than the judge sentence the rapist was surprising. One would suppose that a Texas jury of eight women and four men would throw the book at a man who brutally raped the same woman three times in her own home. But they didn't. In fact, over the objections of the prosecution, the jury ordered that the rapist be placed on probation and required to take a drug that is known to reduce the testosterone level and thus (it is claimed) eliminates the heightened libido.
The jury bought the idea that this man "couldn't help himself" after hearing from respected physicians who testified that those who were the victims of this hormonal problem had lost the power of self-control. But here is the catch...if you asked the physicians how they know that the rapist had lost self-control because of the hormonal problem they could only reply that since the rapist did not exercise self-control he could not exercise self-control. But clearly the vast majority of those who have the same testosterone level as the San Antonio rapist do not rape.
I happened to read about a man who was suing a hospital. A Doctor had performed staple surgery on his stomach to help him lose weight. A couple of days after his surgery, he raided the hospital refrigerator and stuffed himself with everything he could find. This tore open the staples and forced another surgery.
He was suing the hospital for having a refrigerator near his room. He claimed the temptation was too great. Thus, his complications were not his own fault but the hospital's fault! Sounds like Eden, doesn't it?
Here in Oregon just a few months ago, a family won a multi-million dollar settlement against a major tobacco company because their relative died from smoking cigarettes. Now I don't like cigarettes. I don't think people should buy them or smoke them. But the Surgeon General's warning has been on the label of cigarettes for over thirty years ("Warning: Smoking Cigarettes may be dangerous to your health"). This man chose to smoke them in the face of the warning. How can it be that it is someone else's fault? Which company or industry will be next to be blamed and sued for someone else's stupid choices? How long will it be before someone targets the church for causing something for which he or she is unwilling to accept rightful responsibility? Actually, lawsuits have already been filed in that context.
Is this issue of who is responsible important to a society of people? Absolutely. Until it is settled as far as who is to blame, our streets won't be truly safe and our courts will be glutted with trivial lawsuits. With lines of responsibility ripped to shreds, how can we continue?
Sigmund Freud, the so-called founder of modern psychotherapy, believed that man's basic problems are caused by guilt. One who is guilty is torn by an over active conscience (he called it "superego"). Accordingly, he theorized that the way to be rid of guilt is to find someone else in the patient's past on whom to fix the blame (i.e., parents, church, strict family, etc). Once you can blame someone else, then you should be free of turmoil. But what Freud taught and for the most part our society has accepted from the "experts" has brought us to this present age of irresponsibility.
Commenting on the practice of modern psychotherapy to try to solve man's guilt problems by finding someone in a person's past on whom to fix blame, Christian counselor Jay Adams writes:
"The extent to which the Freudian ethic has permeated contemporary thinking may be seen in its influence upon thought about crime. Some blamed Dallas rather than Oswald for President John F. Kennedy's death. When Charles Whitman from a tower in Texas picked off innocent passersby with a rifle, many said that society must be held guilty for the act. When a Jordanian immigrant assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the television was filled with indictments of the American public. The murderer himself is no longer held responsible. "He couldn't help it" has become a very popular phrase since Freud."
In more recent news, anyone and everyone is being blamed for the recent school shootings in Oregon and Colorado - everyone, that is, except the three young killers. As a society, we just can't believe anymore that a person could possibly be evil on the basis of his own choices and decisions.
A couple of years ago the mother of Ennis Cosby (son of the well-known celebrity, Bill Cosby) said that "racist America," not the man who gunned her son down in an apparent robbery attempt, was responsible for the death of her son. Is this not more of the same shifting of blame from the perpetrator (in this case the greedy thug who was robbing Cosby) to someone or something else?
Our society will lose and continue to lose in the area of law and order as long as such shifting blame is allowed to continue.
Question. In our text, did God allow Adam or Eve to get away with their attempts to shift the blame to someone else? No. Each one of those who participated in the wrong that was done was held responsible and received punishment for his wrong actions. Our world would do well to learn the lesson of Genesis 3.
Those who shun personal responsibility lose in their society.
II. They Also Lose in their Personal Lives.
Personal counsel that puts responsibility on the individual seeking help to change despite what others have done is something that is hard to come by today. A 60's folk song by Anna Russell, as quoted by Jay Adams in COMPETENT TO COUNSEL, characterizes what it is often like to go to a counselor.
I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed
To find out why I killed the cat and blackened my husband's eyes.
He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,
And here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind:
When I was one, my mommy hid my dolly in a trunk,
And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,
And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.
At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers,
And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.
But I am happy; now I've learned the lesson this has taught;
That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault.
Today if you listen to many, alcoholism is a disease, not a sin - and who is responsible for a disease? Who can help it if they catch a bug? So the alcoholic is not responsible, even when he runs down an innocent child with his automobile. Fornication is the natural result of years of repression of the sexual urges. "As natural as a sneeze," I heard one woman say once. I mean, after all, how can we help ourselves when we repress what is a natural biological function? Chronic thievery is not stealing but "kleptomania," a compound word originating from the Greek "kleptes," a thief, and "mania" a word meaning madness or insanity according to Webster. If a man is insane, how can he be responsible?
In contrast to this, listen to God's word in I Corinthians 6:9-11:
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you but you were washed..."
Washed from what? Washed from the sin that the Bible says each of these things is. If each one of these things were something we couldn't help, then God wouldn't be just in keeping us out of his kingdom for practicing them. But the Bible indicates that we are responsible for our actions in these and other areas. It says they are sin, not sicknesses or inherited traits.
The first step in change is accepting responsibility for your actions or, to put it another way, admitting you have a problem you need to deal with. Much modern thinking causes a person to avoid responsibility, thus more often than not, avoiding solution to problems.
This issue is a great problem, even for people in the church. So many people have passed the buck for so long that when someone suddenly points the finger at them and says, "God's word indicates that you are responsible for this and must change," they get offended! Or they think you're nuts.
Recognize the limp? You can't miss it. Thus, they lose in their personal lives because they find that they cannot change.
He who does not accept responsibility for his problems will not change because he or she reasons, "Hey, it's not my fault, so there is nothing I can do."
One of the prime issues that has to be resolved in marriage problems is this issue of responsibility. Until the husband takes full responsibility for his actions regardless of his wife and the wife does the same, regardless of her husband, few problems can be solved.
Shifting blame makes us losers in our society. It also makes us losers in our personal lives. But most seriously of all,
III. Those Who Shift Blame Lose with God.
Have you noticed that God has so designed the gospel that a person must acknowledge that he or she is a sinner before they can be saved? Is that a coincidence? Hardly. Have you also noticed that God has so designed the issue of continued forgiveness so that we must confess our sins before we can be forgiven? Why does God do it that way? It is because He wants us to accept responsibility for our actions!
I seriously doubt that you or I will be able to stand before the Lord on judgment day and say, "But my wife made me do it," or "I did what I did because of my repressive childhood." We won't be able to blame the church, the school, the society, the government, or anyone else. To be sure, if these have caused us trouble, they will pay for it, but we will still be responsible for what we have done. God expects us to behave responsibly in whatever situation we are. I Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but with the temptation will provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it." If there is always a way of escape for me so I can endure it, how can I cite circumstances which make escape impossible?
A few years ago I talked to a man who had left his wife and children for another woman. (Not a member of this church). He gave me excuse after excuse as to why he felt justified. But the bottom line was that he did not have biblical grounds for divorce. He will have to answer to God for his wrong. No excuse will stand.
II Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad."
"But," someone says, "Surely there are difficult circumstances that free me from responsibility." Perhaps there are, but if so, they are a lot more difficult than most people imagine. Listen to Hebrews 12:4 - "You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin."
You see, God expects us to strive to do right to the death if necessary!
The church at Smyrna in the book of Revelation was told in chapter 2, verse 10, "Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days."
Now, did Jesus then tell them not to worry about it, they would be OK if they gave in and sinned? God would understand since things had been so rough? No! He went on to say, "Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life."
Most in our generation will have given up on being faithful to God long before they give their lives. They will go to their graves thinking they were justified in their disobedience. Not until judgement will they find that God expects faithfulness in all of life's circumstances, not excuses. Yes, there is grace, but grace is extended on the basis of repentance, not excuses.
Conclusion
Charles Shultz, the creator of the "PEANUTS" comic strip often seems to have a knack for catching us at what we are doing and portraying it through the antics of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest of the gang. One strip captures what I've been saying very well.
After striking out, Lucy walks away with a scowl on her face, muttering: "This bat is no good! It's too light! That ball they're using is no good either! How can anybody hit when the sun is so bright? I bat better when it's cloudy! It's too dusty out there, too! I can't hit well when the wind is blowing! That bat I was using is too short! It's hard to see the ball today! You can't hit a ball when the bat is too thin! I think their pitcher is...."
In the last frame, Charlie Brown says simply: "Good grief!"
Well, it's not good, but it does bring grief. Blame shifting is causing our society to come apart at the seams. It prevents people from really solving their personal problems, and worst of all, it keeps them from God.
Do you have the limp? Are you a blame shifter? An excuse maker? What are your reasons for not accepting responsibility for your actions? When are you going to stop it and accept responsibility? Things can never get better until you do...
Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.
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