Responsibility

I was watching a young man on the Judge Judy show yesterday who had borrowed his girlfriends car to go to a job interview. Afterwards he decided to go visit his grandparents and got into a car accident. The girls insurance would only cover half the costs of the repairs and she was suing him for the other half. What was amazing is that no matter what was said this young man (23 yrs) didn't believe he had any responsibility to pay even though he was responsible for the accident. Judy Judy grilled this man up and down and he would not change his stance...he believed someone else was responsible for his actions. Even at the very end he said that it was his girlfriends fault because she knew he had been in accidents before and she shouldn't have loaned it to him. Pretty unbelievable, huh?

I began my journey this morning in reading through the Bible in 90 days. As I was reading in Genesis I was struck by how Adam and Eve did the same thing. In Genesis 12 and 13 when they were asked why they had eaten from the tree of knowledge Adam first said, "the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Sounds like Adam doesn't want to take responsibility for his own actions...almost like he's blaming God for giving him Eve in the first place. Then when Eve is confronted, she says "the serpent deceived me , and I ate." She is blaming the serpent even though she made the choice to take that bite.
Later in Genesis 16:1-5 we see Sarai blaming someone else for her choices. She didn't want to wait on God to conceive so she gave her servant Hagar to her hubby Abram. Well, you can imagine what happens there, right? Hagar gets pregnant, Sarai gets upset when her servant has lost some respect for her and she tells her hubby that he's responsible for her suffering. This one always gets me when read it...you put another woman in your husbands arms and then get mad over the consequences?
And yet, we've all been there, haven't we? You do something you just know isn't quite the right thing to do (or maybe you do think it's the right thing to do) and then when things happen you don't like...it's very easy to play the blame game. I see this everyday with the young children I work with...but, sadly I also see it regularly with many adults. I have to challenge myself regularly as well to look at my actions and not try to blame someone else if I don't like the way things turn out.