Forgiveness Pt. 2 - Laying the Blame

Now don’t get me wrong; here in a few pages I’m going to have my own list of steps on how to forgive. I’m just trying to break up the tension a little bit, because what we are discussing here is really serious stuff. People say and do silly little things at work everyday that get under your skin. Companies fire you for reasons you don’t think are valid. Punks rob you. Thugs break into your home. Relatives molest other relatives. People get raped. People get murdered. There is a lot to forgive in our world today.
When I was growing up my mom used to say, “I never said life was fair.” That’s the truth. We don’t always get what we deserve. Religious leaders and well meaning people will delude themselves and others into not taking action, suppressing emotions, or burying the truth by saying the actions of others will catch up to them some day. Well…it doesn’t always happen that way. And yet…. And yet if we don’t forgive we are stuck in a place in our lives where the event, the action, the scar they left is all we seem to be able to focus on. Or maybe we bury it and never acknowledge the crime done to us. The thing is we can never forgive a wrong if we don’t admit a wrong has been done. How do you ever forgive someone if you won’t admit that they did anything to you?
I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Flanigan when she says that to forgive someone you first have to blame them. Sometimes, I don’t like to assign blame. I’ve never walked in that person’s shoes. I don’t know what life experiences they have had that led them up to that point. It didn’t really do much of any real harm and I know they have had a tough time. The thing is…everyone is responsible for his or her own actions. There are a lot of people out there who have been through some pretty terrible stuff; abuse, neglect, rape, molestation, death of loved ones, and more. Many of these people are caught up in destructive patterns of behavior that they have tried unsuccessfully to escape. When it comes down to it; when they do something bad to you it is their fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not their parents fault. It’s not their attacker’s fault if they were previously victims. It is their fault.
If someone hurts you the blame is on them. Not you. Not anyone else. You will never really be able to forgive them if you don’t blame them. You have to state it, say it out loud, yell it, or at least acquiesce to it…. “It is your fault this happened. You are the reason I am hurt. I blame you.” I know in the past (and still to a certain extent in the present) I have a strong tendency to want to “walk in the other person’s shoes.” That is I want to explain away their behavior by saying their past led them to this…it’s not really their fault. Well, the thing is their past wasn’t swinging a frying pan at my head…it was them!
Understanding someone’s background will help you understand why they did it (maybe), but it isn’t an excuse. Whether they are an adult or a child (to be held accountable legally or not) if they did something to you then they did something to you. This isn’t a commentary on our justice system. I’m not saying children should be treated like adults in the courts (I’m not saying they shouldn’t be either). I’m saying for the sake of forgiveness, if you don’t blame someone there is no one to forgive!