Church Planting Lesson #24:  Stop being the victim.

Below is a post that a friend of a friend put somewhere in cyberspace.  I wanted to write a blog about the same thing, but she said it much better than I ever could:

Have you been wronged?
Have you been abused? Mistreated? Unloved?
Have you been cheated? Lied to? Deceived?
Have you been the victim of injustice? Unjust laws? Unjust authority?
Was your mother cruel? Your father absent?
Were you improperly educated? Improperly socialized? Improperly moralized?
Did someone do something to hurt you? Maybe even intentionally?

Well, join the club.
Everyone I have ever known has been hurt in some way by other people. Everyone I have ever known has been, at one point in time, the victim of some type of injustice.

Do you know the difference between the people who succeed in life and those who wallow in failure or despair? It’s very simple—they stop blaming other people for their dysfunction.

I know that there are a million legitimate explanations for why you have a propensity toward anger management issues, laziness, ignorance, sexual impropriety, depression, obsession, or addiction. It may be biological, emotional, mental, etc. And being clear about the reason for your dysfunction is important both for my understanding and for your journey toward well being, but these reasons cannot be used as excuses for your behavior.

Did you hear that?

There is a HUGE difference between providing an explanation for why something occurs and using the explanation as an excuse to affirm it.

So, back to the difference between the people who succeed in life and those who wallow in failure or despair.

They stop blaming other people for their dysfunction.
They don’t say, “It’s because I wasn’t loved enough as a child.”
Or, “It’s because the system is keeping me down.”
Or, “It’s because no one ever told me I was smart.”

As far as I’m concerned, as soon as you are wise enough to pinpoint the problem, you are now culpable for your treatment of it. And the only people who survive these great hurts and injustices in life are those who, rather than wasting time pointing fingers at the problems, choose to rise above them.

Obviously, some of these problems need to be solved: injustice, abuse, infidelity, etc.

But, those who choose the position of “victim” only render themselves helpless to affect change. They take themselves out of a position of power and into a stance that is weaker than their offender. And then they truly do become helpless and hopeless.

So, seriously, can we agree to stop being victims and start taking some personal responsibility for not only ourselves but for our world? Complaining hasn’t helped in the past and it certainly won’t help now.

All the “blame game” does is makes us feel okay about being terrible human beings.

Maybe it’s time we focused, instead, on actually getting better.