Blame it on Adam & Eve

Following an interesting conversation this afternoon about all the reasons why a certain church sucks, and following the sharing of this conversation with my wife, she helped me see the following conclusion. In church, as in life, we as a people are all about blame.

When something goes wrong, we do whatever we can to show how someone else is responsible and how we are at least somewhat innocent. Luckily, it's not our faults :-) Just blame it on Adam & Eve.

Here's what happened in the Garden after Jim and Gertie (I mean, Adam and Eve) ate of the tree (it's a paraphrase, hopefully funny, yet accurate; for the complete history, read Genesis 3).

God: Hey, Adam . . . hellooooo? Anybody here? It's the creator of the universe coming to walk with you in the cool of the even-ing.

Adam: I'm hiding.

God: What? Why under the firmament would you do that?

Adam: I couldn't find my pants.

God: Excuse me?

Adam: I couldn't find my pants, Lord. I didn't want you to see me naked as the day you made me out of dirt.

God: Well, who told you that you weren't wearing any pants? Did you eat the apple I specifically told you not to eat?

Adam: Ummmmm . . . kinda . . . I guess.

God: Adam? Be honest . . .

Adam: OK, OK, I ate the whole thing . . . right down to the corps. I even got that little hard feeling shell thing on the inside that keeps the seeds in place . . . and it got stuck in my teeth and you haven't invented toothpicks yet, and . . .

God: Adam . . . why did you eat the apple?

Adam: The woman made me do it . . . the WOMAN THAT YOU MADE FOR ME . . . so in a way . . .

God: Don't even say it . . . Eve? Come out here.

Eve: Hey God. Welcome back . . .

God: Thanks . . . so Adam tells me that you gave him an apple . . . have anything to say about that.

Eve: Uhhh, yeah . . . BUT IT WAS THE SERPENT. HE gave me the apple. You know? The serpent that YOU MADE.

God: Honest to me, I really wish you people understood me more.

The point is: neither Adam nor Eve took responsibility for their own actions. It was someone elses fault. IN fact, it was partially God's fault, according to their logic.

But we do the same thing. We don't like something happening in our church, or place of business, or whatever, we always place blame as far away from ourselves as possible. It's ALWAYS someone elses fault. The next time you're in a conversation with someone, with generally negative overtones, take a listen. See how many times one takes responsibility for oneself, compared to how many times one picks out the flaws and faults of another. It's pretty shocking.

God, PLEASE help us realize that we need to serve you. Nothing else matters. If we're going to church primarily expectinging to get something out of it, in the words of my wise wife, we should just stop being Christians.

I don't know how many times I can say, "It's not about us." When we place any of the purpose of our faith on ourselves, we rob God of His glory.

What would Jesus Do? He'd take the blame for all of us, leave the splendor of heaven and hang, nailed to a cross, until he died, covered in blood and spit . . . funny that.

Grace.