Blame is the Name of the Game 3 of 4

            When a bad thing like this happens, it is necessary for an individual to be able to explain it.  To make sense of the incident.  This is a necessary part of maintaining a coherent narrative.  So, in our society, we quickly look for someone to blame.  That parent is negligent.  This zoo is careless.  Those Christians are creating a hostile environment that encourages people to shoot homosexuals.  Blame is cast in all sorts of different directions, because once we’ve cast the blame, we’ve made sense of the incident.  Our own personal narrative has become coherent once again. 

            The alternative is simply unacceptable.  The alternative is that there are horrible things happening out there, and neither I nor anyone else really has any control over them.  It could be me or my family that suffers the next awful tragedy.  I could be a victim and be unable to do anything about it.  This is far too scary to deal with.  It makes the narratives we construct that allow us to have nice happy lives fall apart.  They become incoherent. 

            Of course, the reality of the situation is that there are bad things that happen, and you or I or any other person might, through no fault of our own and outside of our own control, suffer on account of them.  A storm might destroy even the most well-built home.  The person most meticulous about their health might still develop a fatal disease and suffer from it.  Even in my own home, violence might reach me.  No matter how hard I try to protect my child, some awful occurrence might change my life forever. 

            We play the “blame game” to maintain a coherent personal narrative, but the truth is, these narratives that we construct for ourselves is a lie.  I can blame someone else for every awful thing that happens, but at some point, I have to admit that there are awful things that happen outside of human agency.  Animals will be animals.  Weather will be weather.  Disease will be disease.  Broken humans will be broken humans.  And the consequences will affect us all.

            God gives to Christians a different narrative than the ones we try to construct in our society.  He gives to these lives of ours an ultimate truth and meaning that does not find its origin in our own whims or desires, but in His Word – in fact, in His nature.  God tells us that He is holy and just and righteous and perfect and, perhaps most importantly, loving.  His love for His creation, especially human beings like you and me, informs His every interaction with us.  His love led Him to cast dam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as their imperfect presence in the midst of His holiness would have meant their destruction.  His love led Him to preserve Noah from a flood meant to bring the earth to resemble God’s holy and righteous nature.  His love led Him to select Abraham from out of all the people to make into a great nation, through which the rest of the world would also be blessed.  His love led Him to send His Son Jesus to be born in human flesh, among us, in order to provide from among the whole mess of humanity one who was holy and just and righteous and perfect and loving.  His love led that Son to die on the cross, in the place of every sinful, unjust, lacking righteousness, imperfect, unloving brother and sister among the human race.  His love led Him to raise His Son from the dead on the third day.  His love led Him to proclaim this good news to all creation.  His love leads Him to deliver us a promise that this Son will return one day, to bring an end to this fallen creation and grant to us eternal life in a new heavens and a new earth, where we will, in that day, be untouched by sin and suffering.  When there will be an end to these bad things that cause some to have an incoherent narrative.