Many people don't think of themselves as being creative. However, it seems to me that there's one area where everyone attempts to be creative: coming up with excuses. We all do it.

School's starting — and so begin the lists of excuses for not turning in homework. The most famous, I would guess, has to be “The dog ate my homework.”

Police hear all kinds of excuses. There's a classic, oft-repeated story about a person who ran into a tree and said, “I was just driving along and this tree jumped out at me!”

People also give many excuses for not being able to go to work. One man called in to work and said, “Gus can't come to work today. I’m his other personality and I’ve taken over — and I don't work.”

The book of Proverbs in the Bible refers to a lazy person’s excuse for not getting busy: “The sluggard says, 'There's a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets.'” (Proverbs 26:13) Probably the most famous excuse people give for not getting involved in a church is “It's full of hypocrites.” I wish I had the nerve to reply, “Hey, join us anyway! One more won't matter!”

Most of us attempt to be creative with excuses for all kinds of situations. This is why in this series of six messages about the great temptations we face we’re including the temptation to play “the blame game.” It's a game as old as the hills — well, at least as old as humanity. The very first two human beings, Adam and Eve, invented it.

AN OLD GAME
When God created the first couple from whom the entire human race would descend, they had a perfect world to live in: the Garden of Eden. God told them that they could enjoy the fruit of every tree except one. There had been a previous creation that we commonly refer to as angelic beings. At some prehistoric time — that is, some time before human history — some of these intelligent life forms used their God-given freedom to turn from God. They were led by one we call Satan, or the Devil.

Satan now entered God's new, perfect creation and encountered the female human, Eve. He suggested to her that she could do what she wanted, meaning she could do what God didn't want her to do: eat the fruit from the one forbidden tree. She ate some — and offered Adam fruit from that tree.

They had both sinned. It was seemingly a small thing, but it was really the worst thing that would ever happen to the human race. Sin entered our human existence.

God asked Adam why he was trying to hide from Him and accused him of eating from the one tree God had told him not to eat from. “The man said, 'The woman you put here with me – she gave some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'” (Genesis 3:12) Adam had invented the blame game! First he blamed the woman: “The woman you put here with me — . . .” It's a wonder God didn't say to Adam, “And if she had told you to jump off a bridge, would you have done that, too?” Then Adam blamed God: “The woman you put here with me — . . .” He blamed the woman and God Himself instead of taking responsibility for his actions.

God then went to the woman: “Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:13) She played the blame game, too, and in essence said, “The devil made me do it.”

God didn't play the blame game. He considered all three participants — Adam, Eve, and Satan — to be guilty of what happened. God addressed the issue in reverse order. First He went to Satan and judged him for tempting Adam and Eve. Then God addressed Eve and informed her of the ramifications of her sin. Finally God went to Adam and told him the results of his sin. God held all three participants responsible, and He didn't play the blame game.

A LOSING GAME
It's easy to see that Adam and Eve were playing the blame game. Perhaps it's easiest to see the problems that can arise from making excuses if we think about other people making them. When we hear someone making an excuse, we normally think that they're trying justify themselves and that they don't want to take responsibility for what they've said or done. They're trying to get off the hook; they're blaming other people or circumstances.

Obviously as long as someone makes an excuse for his behavior he isn’t taking personal responsibility for it. He feels that the blame lies not with him, but with someone else or some set of circumstances beyond his control.

Most of us are fairly conversant with some basic psychological and sociological principles. We know that painful events of the past continue to affect us today. The phrase “It was the way I was raised” or a paraphrase of it easily rolls off our tongues. We talk about being victims of one kind of abuse or another. We describe our families as “dysfunctional,” a term that wasn't used even thirty years ago.

All of this is true. There's no doubt that who we are today is clearly tied to the way we were raised or to certain events in our past. One can hardly overestimate the influence of our pasts on who we are today.

However, as long as we excuse the way we are or where we are in life by identifying something in the past as the reason, we have no chance to overcome what's happened to us. We continue to be victimized by the wrongs done by others, circumstances beyond anyone’s control back then, or by our own mistakes and sins of the past or present. When we play the blame game we never win!

CHOOSE TO STOP PLAYING
We can't change what someone did to us in the past. We can’t rework the circumstances of the past that worked against us. We can't undo our own bad judgments, miscalculations, and sins; what's done is done. However, the present isn’t set in stone — and neither is the future. God has given us the marvelous ability to make choices. We can't control what has already happened, but we can control how we’ll respond to it!

Sometimes you can track a problem through previous generations. For instance, it's not unusual to find several generations of alcoholism in a family. Does it have to keep moving down the generations? No — not if one of those generations takes personal responsibility for his own decisions and behavior and decides to do something about it. Many people enter the AA program. Step number ten of the twelve steps of AA states, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” In other words, we need a willingness to stop playing the blame game.

Perhaps your parents weren’t religious — or you had religion crammed down your throat. You can blame them and use it as an excuse for not getting excited about God, or you can take a fresh look at God and decide for yourself what role He should have in your life.

I'm reminded of a description of three kings of Judah. The first, Manasseh, “. . . did evil in the eyes of the Lord, . . .” (2 Kings 21:2) His son Amon “. . . did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. He walked in all the ways of his father; . . .” (2 Kings 21:20-21) Amon’s son Josiah succeed him. As Paul Harvey, the newscaster says, “Wash your ears out with this.” “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord . . .” (2 Kings 22:2) Josiah broke the generational curse of the past two generations! It can be done! However you were raised or what happened to you, God can turn it around!

Perhaps someone betrayed your trust, and you keep telling yourself that’s why you can't trust people today. You can choose to stop being victimized by what one person did in the past. He doesn't have to continue to define who you are!

Maybe someone told you that you were stupid, not good-looking, incompetent, or in some other way said that you'll never amount to much. Did you ever stop to think that maybe they were wrong — and that you can act in a way that guarantees that they were wrong?

When Jesus was being crucified, He prayed to the Heavenly Father concerning those who had whipped Him, pounded the nails into His hands, and set Him up the cross. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) Though they did wrong, the people who crucified Jesus didn’t know that they were crucifying the Son of God. In many cases we can pray for those in our past who hurt us deeply: “Father, forgive them, because they didn't know all that they were doing to me.”

Part of our choice to no longer be victims of our pasts may involve more than that simple choice. It may be such a deep issue that we need to join AA or some support group, talk about it with someone, or join a class like Ed Findlay's “Healing Wounds” class that's starting in a couple of weeks.

Our past experiences — distant or from yesterday — don't have to automatically ruin our lives. We can choose to respond instead of reacting! Our pasts may explain the way we are today, but they don’t excuse it! We can choose to live differently!

A BETTER GAME
Bad things happen. There's trash in our past, both distant and near.

We live in a day when trash is recycled. I have a flyer I picked up in a coffee shop; on the back it says in small print, “Printed on 90% post-consumer waste paper.” Diann and I take our newspapers to recycling bins because all that paper will end up in some brochure, beverage cup, or egg carton — and a tree will live another day instead of being cut down for paper. By the grace of God — and that’s what it takes: the grace of God — we can imagine ourselves with similar words imprinted on our lives: “This life lived using a high percentage of post-consumer pain and hurt,” which means that we’re using the junk of our pasts to build a better today and tomorrow.

It's very easy to put the blame for the way things are on someone else or on something that happened in the near or distant past — or to blame our own past mistakes. However, we're not living in the past: we're living in the present, and the future is yet to be. We have control over the present and the future. We can keep the past from messing up the present and the future if we stop playing the blame game!

Make sure that you have the Lord in your life. Decide that you want to live today and tomorrow His way. Ask for His help, and He’ll help you live better than the past says you can!