Spiritual Hiccups - The Blame Game

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  A + B = C.  There is cause and effect.  When things go wrong, there must be someone or something to blame.  There is a certain logic to such thinking. But from a logical standpoint, Jesus' answer this question of blame is unsatisfying.  "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."

Does that mean it's God's fault?  Did God cause this fellow to be blind his entire life just so Jesus could happen by and heal him one day.  If that were the case, why not render him blind in an accident a few days earlier?  At least he wouldn't have had to be blind all those years.

But I'm not sure Jesus is interested in the blame game, or in a logical coherent understanding of suffering.  The fact is, there is a tragic quality to all life.  Jesus himself cannot escape this, and he tells his followers that they cannot either.  They must take up their cross.  They must lose themselves.  If Jesus is our model, a willingness to suffer for the hope of a new day is required. It is how we discover our deepest and truest humanity.

This is not a call to suffer for the sake of suffering, nor is it meant to trivialize the suffering of others.  But Jesus does call us to enter into the tragic nature of life in ways that cost us.  Such a call does not always sit well with our culture.  After all, we want to "lose weight without exercise or diets" and to reduce deficits without raising my taxes or cutting any of my benefits.  Often it is easier to blame the poor for their own plight than it is to find ways to fight poverty, especially if those ways bring any cost or suffering to me.

Certainly there are many times when wrongs are done, people need to be held accountable, and situations rectified.  But very often, the blame game is about protecting me.  If the man is born blind because he or his parents sinned, then I don't have to feel bad for him.  His suffering doesn't necessarily demand a response from me.  The blame game is very often a way to insulate myself from the world and it's brokenness, to say that its suffering is not my concern.  But that is not the life Jesus lives, nor is it the life he wishes for us.  I think that's why Jesus says things like, "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

It is tempting to turn away from the pain and suffering in the world, to say, "It's someone else's fault and not my problem."  But Jesus rejects such a move, instead seeing an opportunity to show God's hope, God's love, God's dream for a renewed creation.  And he enters fully into the brokenness of this world, reaching out in love even at the cost of his own life.  And he says to us, "Follow me."

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