One of the first evidences of the Fall concerns the universal human reluctance to confess our sins. I am usually ready to confess yours, but I am not at all keen on confessing mine. When God confronted Adam, the man was quick to shift the blame: 'The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate' (Gen. 3:12). Eve adopted a similar tactic: 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate' (Gen. 3:13). In each case, every word is true, but the intention is obviously to shift the blame for sin on to the next person. However, it is not only the serpent who did not have a leg to stand on!

Nothing much has changed since that first sinful day in the garden. As Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God, the people became restless for a god which they could see, and so they prevailed upon Aaron to build a golden calf. Returning from the mountain, Moses called his brother to account, but Aaron's excuses are less than convincing: 'And I said to the people, "Whoever has any gold, let him break it off". So they gave it to me, and. I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out' (Exod. 32:24). Aaron tried to make the whole sorry episode sound like something that just happened, like a slip on a banana skin. Somehow, the golden calf just popped out of the fire.

Over the years humanity has become very adept at shifting the blame. The youngster in the nursery will readily point the finger at his sibling for the paint on the wall. This is a trait that we do not readily lose as we become older. Often the process of blame-shifting can be dressed up in psychological terms to appear quite justifiable. Anna Russell poked fun at this in her Psychiatric Folksong:

I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalysed
To find out why I killed the cat, and blackened my wife's eyes.
He put me on a downy couch to see what he could find;
And this is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind.
When I was one, my mummy hid my dolly in the trunk,
And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day
And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.
When I was three, I suffered from ambivalence towards my brothers,
And so it follows naturally I poisoned all my lovers.
I am so glad that I have learned that lesson it has taught:
That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault.

Actually, this refusal to accept the blame for sin is having serious effects on the administration of law in modern western societies.

Recently, a murderer who had holed up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state was arrested by the police. The murderer was armed with knives and handguns, so the police used a police dog to subdue him. After his arrest, the murderer sued the county for the use of excessive force in his arrest. It seems that in the skirmish the police dog mangled his foot. The extraordinary thing – which is no longer surprising – is that the murderer won a $412,500 settlement, which his attorney said would help ease his client's re-entry into society on his release from prison.

As you well know, this is not an isolated incident. A man in Florida in 1996 drank himself into a stupor, then broke into a fenced, gated and locked sub-station, climbed up a transformer, and was blasted by 13,000 volts of electricity. He survived, but you can guess what happened next. He sued the electricity company and the six liquor stores which had sold him the alcohol he had consumed. Somebody else had to be responsible for his troubles.

According to the Scriptures, we have an enemy, the devil, who seeks to mislead us (1 Cor. 15:33). These things are true, but they do not exonerate us. As Paul told the Corinthians:

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.1 Cor. 10:13

Or, to cite James: 'But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed' (James 1:14). As much as I would like to, when I sin, I cannot blame the devil, my wife, my children, my place of work, the stress of modern living, the trade unions, the government, or the fact that when I was a youngster I was smacked with a wooden spoon.

As the old adage tells us, we are our own worst enemies. And we have no valid excuses. To receive mercy from God, we must confess and forsake sin (Prov. 28:13). The Christian way is paradoxical but true: when we try to shift the blame, it remains with us; when we own up to it, it is removed.