The blame game has no winners. It also has no shortage of players.
Fingers are pointed. Questions are asked. But nothing is ever accomplished.
The main question asked in the blame game is the “why” question. “Why?” is one of the most revealing and important questions ever asked. It’s also one of the most annoying questions ever asked. It all depends on who is asking and, well, why.
Not all “why” questions are created equal. Some launch us into the unknown and lead us to great discoveries. Some circle round and round with no possibility of ever being answered. In fact, “Why?” is what five-year-olds say when they don’t know what to say. (“Eat your dinner.” “Why?” “Because broccoli is good for you.” “Why?” “Because it has lots of nutrients in it.” “Why?” “Because green vegetables have iron in them which makes you strong.” “Why?” And so it goes.)
Most “why” questions are endured rather than answered.
Psalm 43 is one of our “why” psalms. Most scholars believe it was originally part of Psalm 42 since they share the same chorus:
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God (Ps. 42:5, 11 and Ps. 43:5).
The other option is that Psalm 43 was written as an intentional add-on to Psalm 42, continuing its basic theme — basically Psalm 42, part 2. But in either case, this portion of or addition to Psalm 42 purposefully became a distinct psalm in its own right at some point.
(Whatever the historical human pathway that led to two psalms instead of one, God gave us two for his own reasons. For those who are interested in such things, scholars have a name for saying it’s a waste of time trying to figure out the history behind such editorial decisions: canon criticism. After decades of scholars trying to dig up the path ancient texts took to end up in their final form, Brevard Childs wrote that all we actually have in our hands is the final version and that version is the only one we can deal with. Not only that, even if there were previous versions of the text, the final editor had reasons for giving it to use in its final form and those are the only reasons we can reliably comment on. All that to say: This is what God gave us. And so we deal with Psalm 43 on its own, seeking to understand how it shapes the praying soul.)
Psalm 43 kicks off unhappily, mad at the whole nation. The words “vindicate” and “plead” are courtroom language. The psalmist is lawyering up, ready for a fight.
Vindicate me, my God,
and plead my cause
against an unfaithful nation.
Rescue me from those who are
deceitful and wicked (Ps. 43:1).
The first victims of the blame game are other people. In this case, it’s the unfaithful nation.
There never has been a faithful nation. There never will be. At least, there won’t be this side of the heavenly kingdom of God. And we really need to stop lying about the good old days when we were a God-fearing nation. That nation never existed. It didn’t in Israel. It didn’t in America.
But there are so many ways we can point our finger at the nation right now. Political insanity. Sexual chaos. Screen addiction. Environmental degradation. Mental illness. Legalized drugs and gambling. Body modifications. Reality TV. Participation awards. Porn and social media addictions. Rap music and man bun hairstyles. Whatever is on your list, I’m sure you could easily come up with twenty reasons why ours is an unfaithful nation that God needs to do something about. We are being swarmed by the deceitful and wicked.
Whatever’s on your list, you’re probably right. It’s a mess out there. And there are plenty of people to blame for it, too.
But before continuing along that path, Psalm 43 quickly points in another direction with two quick “why” questions.
You are God my stronghold.
Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy? (Ps. 43:2)
This time, the finger points at God. He’s the one who has done the rejecting. He’s the one who could end the mourning by stopping the oppression. But he’s silent. Terribly silent.
God could fix things. A little bit of his light and all would be good. A tad of his faithful care and everything would be so good that the temple would be filled with worship and I’d be right up front, leading them.
Send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God (Ps. 43:3-4).
If God would take care of things, just imagine the songs of praise that would result! They’d reach the skies. It’d be glorious. So glorious.
This should make the psalmist happy. Visions of future praise based on imminent deliverance are often enough to shake the psalmists from their funky moods. But not this time. Instead, the pointing finger of accusation turns to find another victim to blame. It turns inward.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God (Ps. 43:5).
Self-blame is no winning strategy either.
Self-loathing is rampant in our culture. All those years of telling kids they’re awesome when they know they’re not has only raised the performance bar for them, making awesome their new and unachievable standard. (It’d be far better to tell kids that they’re loved, which is true, than that they’re awesome, which isn’t true. It’s far easier and more enjoyable to live into being loved than it is to live into being awesome. And even if they’re awesome for a while, someone else more awesome will always come along and replace them, making them feel not so awesome anymore.)
But even before our attempts to overload on self-esteem, people fell into self-blame.
Now, I want to make a distinction between self-blame and confession of sin. Self-blame is a generalized feeling of failure and worthlessness. Confession of sin is the naming of a particular deed as wrong. You can’t be forgiven and make amends for a generalized feeling. You can for a particular deed and even for a whole string of deeds.
Where other psalms lead us into confession, Psalm 43 wallows in self-blame. But it doesn’t stay there. What saves the psalm from its blame game loop is giving up on the game altogether.
Stepping out of the courtroom, the psalmists stops blaming and urges himself to hope in God. He doesn’t have answers to his questions. He hasn’t mapped out solutions to his problems. He doesn’t need to. God is the answer to an entirely different question: Who shall I put my hope in? God is the solution (or will at least provide a solution).
This may seem simplistic and it can be when we’re avoiding responsibility. But that’s not the case here. Attempting to assign responsibility through the blame game has failed. All that’s left is to hand over the far-too-big problem to God, trusting that not only will he sort things out, but that in the end I will be praising him for it.
There comes a time when I am at the end of my questions, at the end of my wits, at the end of myself and all I have left is God or nothing at all. It’s at this point that either I despair or I discover hope in its purest form.
I wish I wouldn’t need to get to this point, but there are times in my life when I have to get to the very end of the blame game before I can join Psalm 43 in saying to myself, “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”