Getting Out of the Blame Game

Antagonism’s like competition,

Two take turns to attack,

But when one stops the Blame Game,

Peace is what we tend to attract.

We do tend to suspect that the blame game gets us nowhere.

It seems the instant defence we lurch to when we are attacked—we respond, at least from within, by defence of counter-attack. It’s instinctive.

Sometimes we only realise what we’ve done well after the event.

Their blame of us begets our blame of them. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Getting out of the cycle of blaming people when they have let us down is not as hard as it looks and we derive peace as a result.

The thing is any time we get sucked into the blame game it backfires.

We lose our peace.

Blame and Peace Cannot Coexist

We get stewed up over how betrayed we’ve become. In trying to fix the blame where we think it belongs some of it inevitably attaches itself to us by the way we feel. When we feel aggrieved within peace cannot coexist.

Blame someone else and we give ourselves the perverse permission to feel resentful. This is madness. To protect ourselves from resentment we must treat the other person as fairly as we can.

When we blame people we are not being fair on them.

We may see them as responsible for something they have not done well, but we cannot afford to attribute blame. Blame implies we have an emotional response to what has occurred. Whatever somebody has done or hasn’t done should be able to rest there as a fact without us becoming emotional.

There is a place for us in coexisting with people in our relationships where we can allow them to fail, as we can allow ourselves to fail, without getting overly emotional about it. When we arrive at this place, peace is what we derive; peace for all concerned.

Seeing Life Beyond Blame

Blame is always counter-productive. When we devote our emotional energy to blaming thinking and behaving we are really saying we are happy living life off-track. Nobody who wants the abundant life should do that. Blaming behaviours send us off into tributaries of violence away from where life is truly at.

Our challenge, if we are truly interested in the abundant life, is to get beyond the blame game. There are possibilities to love even those who would be blameworthy. There are possibilities to forgive those who blame us. When we are out of the blame game we begin to see the options to love.

Seeing life beyond blame is the ability to see life in true perspective. It’s when we devote ourselves to the broader life of divine vision, where we ask God for sight we would normally not receive. Such sight is the God-perspective, where we begin to see all people and all situations as loveworthy.

Blame is like a domino,

It sets off a chain of regret,

Love is also like a domino,

It sets off a chain of needs met.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.