A city employee in Lodi, California, is suing the city for damages after he backed a dump truck into his own parked car. The 51-year-old man argues that because the "city's vehicle damaged my private vehicle," the city owes him $3,600. As ridiculous as this sounds, blaming others has been a basic human trait since the beginning.
People have been blaming other people for their own actions since the beginning of time.
When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, their eyes were opened and they lost their innocence. God asked the man a simple, yet penetrating question: "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9). In the past, Adam had intimate fellowship with God, but now he responded in fear and hid himself.
God's follow-up question was more convicting than the first: "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" (v.11). Then the blame game started: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate" (v.12). The man blamed God and the woman for his sin. The woman blamed the serpent rather than herself. Ever since that day in the Garden of Eden, we tend to blame others rather than ourselves for our sinful choices.
This is what is wrong with society today. We see it in people’s personal lives and in the corporate world. People do not take responsibility for their actions.
You might remember this one on July 24, 2002 – the wire services reported that Mr. Caesar Barber of the Bronx, New York, was filing a lawsuit against McDonald’s. (He was soon joined by various other plaintiffs suing Wendy’s, Burger King, and other fast food chains.) Mr. Barber had for years been wandering into McDonald’s restaurants, apparently under the impression that they served health food, and had been receiving hamburgers and French fries instead of celery stalks. He had no idea that you could get fat from such products, and sure enough he developed heart problems and other medical conditions associated with obesity.
This guy is not obese because he ate himself into obesity but because McDonalds sold it to him. Again, not his fault.
In fact the only obese people I can really say we shouldn’t blame for being fat are the ones that are bed ridden and eight 800 lbs. I’ve seen those shows where they show them and how they eat 25 hamburgers, 10 pizzas, 5 bottles of soda in a day. The people to blame there are the ones that keep providing it for them. Heck they can’t get out of bed to get it themselves.
A California man who passed out drunk on the railroad tracks sued the Union Pacific railroad because its engineer and conductor did not sound the train’s horn after seeing him – they were too busy trying to engage its emergency brakes.
In October, 2000, a Knoxville (Tenn) woman sued McDonald's, seeking $110,000 in damages, claiming she was disfigured by a scalding pickle that fell from her hamburger. She claimed that the pickle was unreasonably dangerous. The woman's husband also sued, for $15,000, claiming he had been deprived of his wife's companionship during the ordeal.
A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
We wonder why the children of today are turning out the way they are. They are taught that nothing is ever their fault. If they are failing in school it must be the teachers who are not doing their jobs. In fact it is being looked into to get rid of the grades designations A-F because if a child receives an F it might make them feel bad.
When we hear of children shooting up schools and other kids who do they blame? Not the child. They look for every excuse. The child had abuse issues, the parents ignored him.
The media, society and many parents teach children of today (our future adults of tomorrow) that it is not “my fault”.
Do you think we would have learned something from Adam and Eve after all these years?
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