This was published in March 2017. Since that time, my struggle with feeling safe with Father God has been resolved.
Are You Blaming The Wrong Thing?
I know you have heard expressions like these.
Life is hard then you die. Love stinks. No good deed goes unpunished. Don’t get your hopes up. Here is a personal favorite – Don’t fall in love. Fall off a bridge. It hurts less.
Maybe you have said or agreed with sayings like these without giving it much thought, simply accepting them as true.
I certainly bumped through life without giving them much thought. I have even been guilty of telling someone during a ministry session that “Life is just hard. Thank goodness that we are only here for a short time.” In other words, life is short and painful then you die. Not my most shining moment in ministry.
I am not a positive confession person. I have been there and I have done that because I thought it was an essential component of getting prayer answered. I am not going in that direction with this. I am writing about blaming the wrong thing for our pain; something God showed me we do without even realizing it.
The Lord began explaining that humanity is predisposed to blaming the wrong things for our pain by asking me this question: “What do you believe about love?”
My mind is capable of responding with many theologically correct answers, but God was not asking me what my rational mind believed. He was asking me what my heart believed. So I asked my heart, “What do you believe about love? My heart answered, “Love makes you dirty.”
Now, that was not what I wanted to hear but it made perfect sense. My father was a defiler of children. He claimed that his motive was love.
Another dot connected. I now understood why I would not let Father God close to me in the spirit. Whenever I tried to connect, my heart flooded my mind with nasty pictures. My heart was reminding me that father-love makes me dirty and was keeping me safe by pushing Father God away.
The heart is incapable of knowing the difference between any father figure. It lumps all significant men into one category called father. This is a very good reason to get your father issues settled.
From that insight, I began to notice that I was also blaming life for my pain and suffering. I would say, think, and feel that my life was too hard and disappointing. Death became something to long for so I could escape the pain of life.
So what about hope? No point in hoping because hope just disappoints. Better to be hopeless so when the inevitable disappointment happens, it won’t hurt too much. Or so my reasoning went. Kindness? What was the result of being kind? You just drown trying to save someone else.
Love became something to be avoided, life something to be feared, hoping was too risky, and kindness resulted in being overwhelmed. Kindness, hope, life, and love were all to blame for my suffering!
What about truth? Let’s not forget truth! How many of us are afraid of the truth because we think the truth will expose us and reveal something bad?
Because I believed within the deepness of my heart that love, life, hope, kindness, and truth hurt me, I felt compelled to back away from these things.
I want you to stop for a moment and consider what this means. Jesus came to give us life abundantly (John 10:10). He declared that knowing the truth sets us free (John 8:32). The scripture tells us that God is love (1 John 4:16). Hope is on the greatest list found in 1 Corinthians 13:13. And kindness is a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). I blamed all of these good things for my pain.
So, what is the real cause of my pain and your pain and the pain of all creation? It is the fall.
When God first showed me that the fall is to blame for all of creation’s anguish, I argued a bit. I wanted to blame the bad choices of the people who had hurt me. I wanted to blame my own bad choices. I asked God, isn’t it abuse and neglect and disease that’s to blame?He patiently repeated that all evil came about because of the fall. He then explained that the human race is predisposed to blame wrong things because of Adam’s fallen responses to God’s questions (Genesis 3:10-12). Adam blamed hiding from God on his nakedness (not on his sin). He blamed the woman (first instance of blame-shifting), and he blamed God for giving him the woman.
Because of Adam’s wrong responses to God’s questions, now all of us are prone to placing blame on the wrong things, even blaming the good and perfect gifts that come down from the Father of lights (James 1:17).
Maybe it would be helpful if you took a moment to ask God what you are blaming. Ask Him to help you move that blame over onto the fall where it belongs.
Let’s Pray: Father God, Creator of all, Giver of life and all good and perfect gifts, we worship You. Life, love, hope, kindness, and truth are gifts that are always good. Open our understanding so that we can see what we are blaming. Forgive us for blaming You and Your gifts. Help us blame the fall which is the true source of our pain. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
God bless,
Susan
