Horse Done Left the Barn
against blame shifting
Now David and Haggith’s son Adonijah honored himself, saying, “I will be king.” So he made war-wagons and horsemen ready for himself, with fifty men to run in front of him. His father David had never troubled him at any time by asking, “Why have you done this?”
Theologians lay the blame of the murderous and catastrophic division of Israel at the feet of Rehoboam, or his father Solomon. But the fault lay at the Head, who was Rehoboam’s grandfather, David. It was David who first multiplied wives. It was David who first multiplied gold. It was David who first multiplied horses. These rebellious behaviors, clearly against the Law, taught his children and grandchildren by example. As an incident investigator would say, Rehoboam was a proximate or contributory cause, but David was the ultimate or root cause.
This is not what we want to hear. We want everything bad to be the bad guy’s fault. Most of our energy is spent doing spin control and blame shifting. A good example is seen in one of Christendom’s teachings on marriage. “Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage”…
Apt to study arguments, indeed. It ain’t just in marriage that we do that. It turns out that technology doesn’t defenestrate goodness. Liberalism isn’t to blame for the church’s acedia. Modernism didn’t steal our glory. It’s not the Enlightenment’s fault that injustice abounds. Millennials didn’t ruin the economy. Margaret Sanger’s didn’t put a gun to our heads and force us to abort our babies. Feminists didn’t make men into liars. Immigrants didn’t leave the barn door open. Evolutionists weren’t the ones who taught the church that everything is slippery.
The fault is all ours. Yeah, us. The good guys. The orthodox. We hate God’s word and we love wickedness, and we teach our kids to love it. Horse done left the barn. But we enjoy wallowing in victimhood, just like Adam, the guy who tried to blame everything on his wife. We ain’t changed none.
A little dose of Flannery is in order here. We need to re-read her final short story “Revelation”, and we need to see ourselves in Mrs. Turpin. We need to repent of our righteousness. If you haven’t read it in a while, listen to Studs Terkel narrate the story.
Let Mary Grace throw a book at you. When it clonks you in the head, you can get saved. Things get beautiful then. But up until that point, they’re ugly. It reminds me of one time when I got saved long ago. I spent three sleepless nights trying to blame all society’s woes on lost people. I knew all of the theology of humility, that I was in theory no better than them. But it took a shellacking and some insomnia before it actually sunk in. Sometimes when I’m trying to get saved these days, it pays for me to reflect on that old moment for a bit.
Thankfully, the Kingdom isn’t about getting all of our horses back into the barn. We can practice extreme ownership while having joy that the world knows nothing about. So, go get you some communion and step into the fire.
