In her book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown writes: "Blame is simply the discharging of pain and discomfort. We blame when we’re uncomfortable and experience pain—when we’re vulnerable, angry, hurt, in shame, grieving. There’s nothing productive about blame..."
We are in a time right now when people are uncomfortable, vulnerable, and angry. People are fearful. Some people are fearful of the coronavirus, some people are fearful of the coming economic crash, some people are fearful of the loss of civil liberty in the response of the government to this situation that we all find ourselves in. None of us are immune to this: not me, not you, not anyone.
It feels so good in these situations to find someone to blame. Whose fault is this? Who's in charge here anyway? Blame and anger flare up against our president, our governor, our mayor. They flare up against the reckless daredevil who shows up at Wal-Mart without a facemask, or (from the other perspective) those scared sheep who are going around everywhere in facemasks.
But blaming other people, as Brown points out, is ultimately unproductive. All it will do is tie you up in knots inside, and fuel an ungodly anger. What's more as good Calvinists, we know that in reality God is sovereign over all these things. God is sovereign over the virus, He's sovereign over what the president is doing about the virus, He's sovereign over what your governor is doing about the virus, and He's sovereign over all the statisticians, scientists, and news reporters.
But if you need someone or something to blame, blame sin. In a letter to a friend, John Newton wrote, "My dear Sir, my prayer to God for you is, that he may induce you to employ the great talents he has given you in pointing out sin as the great cause and source of every existing evil, and to engage those who love and fear him...and to stand in the breach, by prayer, that, if it may be, wrath may yet be averted, and our national mercies prolonged. This, I think, is the true patriotism, the best, if not the only way, in which persons in private life can serve their country."
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