Taking Responsibility for Our Behavior Turns Our World Right-Side-Up Again

The man replied "The woman whom you put here with me--
she gave me the fruit from the tree and so I ate it."
The Lord God then asked the woman "Why did you do such a thing?"
The woman answered "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it."

Book of Genesis Chapter 3

The story of Adam and Eve teaches us a great lesson in being responsible for our own behavior. The greater sin here isn't in their having eaten the forbidden fruit. It's in the fact that they both passed the buck. Adam blames Eve for his bad behavior and Eve blames the serpent for hers. Neither one is willing to own-up to the fact that they each made the same mistake.

How often are we like Adam and Eve? All of us are guilty at times of wanting to lay blame for our mistakes on others. We may be fearful of retribution, as it seems Adam and Eve were. Maybe we had very authoritarian parents and we learned at a young age that taking responsibility for our behavior led to severe whippings that were far greater than our offenses. At the time it may have seemed wiser to blame someone else for our mistakes in hope of escaping corporal punishment. Or maybe we had critical parents who demanded perfection. Many of us were taught that our only value as human beings was in our ability to be perfect. If we weren't perfect then we weren't acceptable or worthy of success. This warped philosophy leads to even greater fear than corporal punishment. It causes us to believe that any mistake we own up to destroys our credibility as human beings. It also causes us to live in constant fear; believing that one mistake could lead to the termination of a job, a friendship or the love of those we hold dearest.

In reality, the opposite is true. People get tired of being blamed for our mistakes, and no one respects a person who isn't willing to own up to his or her behavior. God had little respect for the fact that both Adam and Eve played innocent instead of being honest. They knew they were being deceptive-- and so did God. 

God created each of us to be responsible for our own lives and our own behavior. No one else is responsible for our behavior and we are not responsible for anyone else's behavior. We can blame someone else for being a bad influence all we want, but we will never sway God. Someone can be a bad influence, but we ultimately made the choice to do something wrong. No one else can make that choice for us. So let's refrain from telling God "The devil made me do it." God knows better and so do most people.

We may have to face some embarrassment in owning up to our failures, but in the long run, people will respect and value us more for having done so. Owning up to our mistakes clears the air and eventually makes things right again. It places us back in right relationship with ourselves (as we come to accept our humanness), with others ( as we make amends to them for our errors) and with God (who created us to be honest and responsible people). 

Today, let's try our best to avoid the sin of Adam and Eve. If we make a mistake, let's choose to own it immediately, take responsibility, make amends, set our world right again-- and allow our souls to shine!