March 1

Day 262: Landmines

There is a story of king Saul in 1 Samual 13. As I read this earlier today, I saw way too much of myself.

Saul had ben king of Israel for a year. Saul and not enough men are already in trouble, surrounded by Philistines. Already exhausted, under resourced and outnumbered. Saul is looking for relief.

Being chronically impatient, Saul had taken matters into his own hands. He assumes for himself the role of priest, and offers sacrifices intended to appease and please God. Only priests were supposed to do that.

When he's called out by the prophet Samuel for doing so, Saul is immediately defensive. "I saw the people scattering from me," meaning, my resources are depleting. "You [Samuel] were late getting here," meaning, YOU let me down. "The Philistines are mustered against me," meaning, my situation is increasingly dire.

"So [rather than wait for you] I 'forced myself,' and offered up sacrifices." Meaning, I am justified in what I did. I did what I did because of what you didn't do.

In all this, Saul is doing some world class blame-casting. He is shifting any guilt on him to others. He is self-justifying by indicting others. His blame-casting is his sacrifice.

I do this; and you likely do too. We look for who else we can blame for our hurts or misfortune. We then feel justified to say or do whatever we think will result in our comfort and justification.

When anyone reads the life of Saul, they see someone who surrounded himself with emotional land mines. Easily offended. Quick to his own defense. Always disappointed in others. His problems were always someone else's fault.

It is hard to interact with anyone who's surrounded with land mines. It was some years ago, in a place not here, when Deb and I decided a certain relationship had to be ended. So we did so.

Because we were tired of stepping on landmines. It didn't take a spark, but only a perceived spark to light that person's anger to epic proportions. And in her mind, her anger was always justified.

Her chosen landmines were her chosen self-defense mechanism. Problem was, those landmines didn't come with warning signs. You didn't know until you stepped on one.

How very difficult it is for any of us to own our own stuff. We don't want to own our stuff, because doing so threatens our own idea of who we are. Thus, we are sinners who look for other sinners to blame.

C.K. Chesterton, the Catholic theologian, was once asked by the London Times newspaper, "What's wrong with the world?" He said simply, "Dear Sir, I am."

Whenever any of us gets to the place where we can admit to our own sinfulness, we no longer find margin for blame-casting. And I'll say this: We cannot get to that place without a full acknowledgement of how deeply we needed and continue to need Jesus to transform our own hearts.

This same Jesus did in fact critique, but never criticized. Jesus never cast blame, even though He alone had every right to do so.

So why is it we somehow feel it right and best to blame-cast? Why do we so quickly believe our issues are always someone else's fault? Because we are choosing in those moments to disbelieve the gospel?

I can only imagine how freeing it would be to take even one day off from burying landmines around ourselves.