“And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:15-17 KJV)
Blame… It’s the antidote for forgiveness. It becomes a different kind of two edged sword. On the out cut, why do I need to forgive if I can blame? On the back cut, why do I need to ask forgiveness if it is someone else’s fault? It is the manager’s perfect tool. It involves no surrender. At all. If we can hold someone else with the burden of responsibility… If we can reveal any one of attributes that cause pain as attributable to them… It is something we do not have to resolve. Or do we?
Are we really better off if it is a water shed to us? Now we have just limited our ability to be involved. We have just limited our ability to care. We have just added the chains of formal structure to what was once open and free. We have added conditions. Is the debt that has just been incurred really big enough to justify all this? What have we really got out of this new deal? To what is it that we really have a claim on? If loving our brother is a requirement to showing our love for God (see 1 John 4:20), then is our blame a right that we ought to be exercising? Or has blame become a tool that successfully separates us from our ability to reconcile?
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18 KJV)