It’s easy to blame others, isn’t it? It’s easier to blame your bad mood on your spouse than to own up to your grumpiness. It’s easier to blame your moral carelessness on your friends than to own up to your lack of sobriety. It’s easier to blame your brothers and sisters in Christ than to own up to your spiritual complacency. It’s easier to blame your parents than to own up to your immaturity.
Have you been playing the blame game for a while now? Is there anything you need to take ownership of today? No matter how good you get at playing the blame game, you never really win.
Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:19-27)