“To the question who was to blame for the tragedy of a man born blind, Jesus replied, Nobody. ‘He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’ We spend a lot of energy wondering who can be blamed for our own or other people’s tragedies….But Jesus doesn’t allow us to solve our own or other people’s problems through blame. The challenge he poses is to discern in the midst of our darkness the light of God. In Jesus’ vision everything, even the greatest tragedy, can become an occasion in which God’s works can be revealed….The whole Hebrew Bible is a story of human tragedies, but when these tragedies are lived and remembered as the context in which God’s unconditional love for the people of Israel is revealed, this story becomes sacred history.”
Henri J. M. Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 129.
Problems are usually more complicated than we think. From my comfortable chair in my comfortable house, surfing social media after a big breakfast with plans to take a leisurely trip to have a mountain hike this afternoon, I glance at the news and wonder why those idiot politicians don’t just solve the problems of poverty, equal rights, high gas prices, international warfare, and Daylight Savings Time. “All they have to do is…” There was a recent meme that related to the pandemic and the Ukrainian invasion that read: “And just like that, everyone on Facebook stopped becoming infectious disease experts and became international relations experts.”
The easiest tactic is to blame the victim and move on. It’s their fault because of some character flaw or sin or irresponsibility or poor judgment or choice of friends or lack of education or, or, or… One problem with this is that the identified stimulus does not lead to consistent results. There is not a clear cause and effect. One person who has an abusive father becomes an abusive father themselves, while another becomes a supportive father. A person who has wonderful, supportive parents becomes an insecure bully. Maybe these are exceptions that prove the rule, but they also prove that blaming the victim (or the victim’s parents in the case of the blind man story) helps no one and actually muddies the water because once blame is assigned then we, the non-victims with resources, feel free to cast judgments based on our perceived worthiness of a victim. Are they deserving of our time, energy, and care? You know, the kind of questions Jesus always asked before he did a healing, exorcism, or resurrection.
I have a friend whose car was broken into last night. The thief stole her nurse’s bag, probably thinking it was a purse. S/he also took her pistol from her console. The car was parked in her carport. Was the robbery her fault? Oh, and her car door was unlocked. Knowing that, was it her fault? If the thief uses the pistol to commit an armed robbery (or worse), is my friend to blame? Those will be questions determined by a judge or jury if it comes to that. Judgments must be made, but they should be made by persons with all the facts and evidence.
One problem with blame-casting is that we are oblivious to our part in the blame and to how our attitudes about the victim affect our decisions. For example, in the TEDTalk, “Does Money Make You Mean?”, Dr. Paul Piff shares multiple social experiments that demonstrate how those of us with resources lose empathy and compassion as we gain more wealth and power.
One fun example of an experiment was with college students playing the board game Monopoly. He says,
“We brought in more than 100 pairs of strangers into the lab, and with the flip of a coin, randomly assigned one of the two to be a rich player in a rigged game. They got two times as much money; when they passed Go, they collected twice the salary; and they got to roll both dice instead of one, so they got to move around the board a lot more….One person clearly has a lot more money than the other person, and yet, as the game unfolded, dramatic differences begin to emerge between the two players. The rich player started to move around the board louder, literally smacking the board with the piece as he went around. We were more likely to see signs of dominance and nonverbal displays of power and celebration among the rich players. One of the really interesting and dramatic patterns that we observed begin to emerge was that the rich players actually started to become ruder toward the other person — less and less sensitive to the plight of those poor, poor players, and more and more demonstrative of their material success, more likely to showcase how well they’re doing. At the end of the 15 minutes, we asked the players to talk about their experience during the game. And when the rich players talked about why they had inevitably won in this rigged game of Monopoly, they talked about what they’d done to buy those different properties and earn their success in the game and they became far less attuned to all those different features of the situation — including that flip of a coin — that had randomly gotten them into that privileged position in the first place. And that’s a really, really incredible insight into how the mind makes sense of advantage.”
We see advantages as something we have earned or are entitled to receive. We see disadvantages as something that can be avoided or overcome with enough street smarts, courage, and determination. If you don’t have those qualities, well, too bad. You “deserve” what you get.
Here is a great lesson plan for a game to lead others through in a classroom setting. Here is the abstract description of the game:
“In Intergroup Monopoly, players begin with unequal amounts of money and are given individualized rules that reflect differing degrees of privilege or disadvantage. For example, a privileged player might receive $350 rather than the standard $200 for passing Go, whereas a disadvantaged player might be permitted to move only half the amount rolled on each turn. During this initial phase of the game, disadvantaged players quite often fall into substantial debt. In a second phase, “equal opportunity” is implemented and all players are permitted to play by normal Monopoly rules. What the players typically discover, however, is that even under conditions of equality, formerly disadvantaged players continue to decline and struggle with debt. This discovery leads to a classroom discussion about how to effectively address the enduring effects of prior group-based disadvantages.”
These games and other life-situation role plays give us insight into how the world works and into how we have many unfounded assumptions about why the world and its victims are so messed up.
If we can accept that life is random, that can help us have compassion for those who lost the coin flip. If we can accept that we who have resources may be used to bless those who do not have resources, we can experience the joy of watching God work through us as agents of compassion, mercy, and justice. “Thy kingdom come [through us] as it is in Heaven.”
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