Does Your Christianity Shape You to Blame Others?
By: Emily Swan
Tags: Christianity, Politics, Jesus, Spirituality, Culture

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Spiritual practices shape and form us so that, during a crisis — whether a personal crisis or a corporate one like the current pandemic — we’ve built instinctual rhythms and ways of thinking to help us cope.

If you’re a Christian, here’s a question for you: Has your spirituality shaped you to blame others in times of crisis, or advocate for the vulnerable? I’m seeing prominent Christian leaders play the blame game, and it’s anti-Jesus and anti-gospel.

Blaming Others

An NBC News article included this about Ralph Drollinger, a man who leads a bible study group on Capitol Hill for members of Trump’s cabinet:

In a blog post titled “Is God Judging America Today?” a pastor who leads a weekly bible study group for members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet appeared to blame the coronavirus pandemic on several groups, including those who have “a proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality.”

He also mentioned “China” and “environmentalists” in the list of people he holds responsible.

Then, popular mainstream evangelical pastor and author John Piper tweeted this on March 21:

If you’re scratching your head at his convuluted sentence, yes he’s blaming the Coronavirus outbreak on people who look at pornography.

If you’re Jerry Falwell, you blame “the media” — not for the outbreak itself, but for inflaming the response to it.

Our current president, whom evangelicals embrace as their own and still support to the tune of 82% approval according to a recent PPRI poll, deliberately blames China.

Scapegoating

Humans discovered a mechanism over time that prevents violence from breaking out in our various human groups — from smaller units like families and faith communities, to larger units like nation-states or empires. To save our various groups from self-implosion due to rivalries, group members can identify a scapegoat on which to project our collective anxiety and envy and rivalry.

Scapegoats are used to control the amount of violence that takes place in anxious groups — if we can channel angry energy onto one person or a minority of people, then we can prevent violence from becoming widespread.

I’ve written about scapegoat theory at length here, here, and here.

In my tradition, Jesus became the scapegoat for all of humanity — we projected our collective anxieties and sin onto him and we killed him to make ourselves feel better and bring temporary peace to a volitile situation. We declared an innocent scapegoat “guilty” and sentenced him to death. Jesus respresents all innocent scapegoats everywhere, for all time. (Anthropologist and historian René Girard showed that scapegoats are almost always innocent of that which they’re accused.)

But God sided with the innocent scapegoat and overturned our human death sentence by raising Jesus from the grave. And, in doing so, God proclaimed the innocence of all scapegoats, everywhere. We are not to sacrifice others on the altar of blame because only God is capable of judging and assigning blame. Jesus told us we are very bad at that task (see Matthew 13:24–30). We should focus on the plank in our own eye, instead of the splinter we see in others’ eyes.

Accusation and Advocacy

Converting to Christianity means relinquishing our proclivity to accuse others and instead be filled with the Spirit called “Advocate.”

In my faith tradition we picture systemic evil as a “spirit of accusation.” When personified in biblical literature we name it Satan (which just means the accuser); when pictured en masse, we call it a hoarde of demons. This spirit of accusation infects humanity — it is our go-to. It is psychologically easier to blame gay people, environmentalists, China, the media, immigrants or the scapegoat flavor of the week than to process the idea that there is a pandemic that is largely out of human control. We like to think that if we blame someone or something, we can eradicate or punish those people or institutions and make things go back to normal. It doesn’t work; it never has. All it accomplishes is stirring up violence against vulnerable groups of people.

In the Greek, the Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete, which means Advocate. We are to be filled with the Spirit called Advocate to stand with the innocent accused, just as Jesus stands with the innocent. We are to repent of our accusing ways and instead advocate for the vulnerable.

If your Christian faith instills you with an accusing reflex, you are doing work that is anti-Jesus. Change your ways, and sit in the discomfort of being human — of being without answers, without certainty, and walking in faith that we serve a God whose name is Love. Faith is all we have right now. Control is an illusion.