Getting what you want

 "The woman you gave me - she gave it to me". Genesis 3:12.

Blame culture.

It's as old as that first dispute in Eden.

"It really wasn't my fault - I'm the victim here... You're the one who is in the wrong".

Notice that scripture shows that the first person we sought to place in that box was God Himself, and that the consequences of our actions instantly brought a catastrophic division between Him and us, and us and everyone else.

Living in a moment where "you" (anything not "me" - defined by what I deem to be right) are the problem, it's become clear that what is defined as evil is only resolved as and when "I" am seen as fully justified and exonerated in what "I" define as your wickedness and what  "I" say necessitates justice and truth. In other words, everything you say and do is wrong unless I determine it to be otherwise. You, however, cannot seek to judge or correct me by some external criteria of requirements (however objective or factual they may be), because I have determined that the single factor that holds any weight in the world is what I decide is good or bad, right or wrong.

Back a few decades ago, America was deemed so rife with the consequences of this manner of behaviour when it came to suing people for pretty much any infraction of what someone deemed offensive that it spawned a popular award-winning TV series to speak to the subject. The current cancel culture, however, makes those days look positively delightful in comparison to the present.

When we reach the point where we believe an ideology makes us so virtuous and moral that we are beyond individual error and corruption, we have crossed from being human to becoming an automaton for a "final solution" of cultic heresy. We can no longer "see" ourselves, the real world, or the true estate of others, because everything is now filtered through the single reference point of our rightness, and that destroys us entirely. Woe to the one, noted Isaiah, who defines light as darkness, and darkness as light, for such blindness brings nothing but an ignorance to their own fall (Isaiah 5:20).

We live at an hour when the "light" that so many have accepted as good in truth leaves them bathed in a malignancy that is eating away their humanity, and the conclusion is truly dreadful (Matthew 6:23).

The Apostle Paul warns that in the perilous days of the end, men would become entirely "lovers of self", not only in respect to pursuing their own desires, but in respect to only 'hearing' their own counsel, and thereby neglecting any admonition concerning the truth that comes from beyond themselves (2 Timothy 4:3 & 4). "Myths" about who and what we are will replace what actually matters.

Dealing with life is often a very difficult and painful process. We all face moments of distress and discouragement, of deep trial and ongoing trauma, caused by loss or lack of the means to do more than accommodate certain problems. We were never meant to be people who resolve everything by solely drawing purely from our 'inner resources' for virtue or strength, seeing ourselves as the source of truth. All of life tells us we deeply need so much outside of ourselves to be genuinely sustained and strengthened - to know the richness of what is actually there to help us. God has provided Himself to us to bring about a care and a sustaining at the deepest level.

We need to get rid of our pretences, and throw ourselves upon the wonder and the beauty of God's gift to the world - the life of His beloved Son.