he Yorubas (a tribe predominantly in West Africa) have a proverb that says “if you point one finger at someone, you are inadvertently pointing three at yourself” This proverb is so very true in the marriage institution, as many of us are often pre-occupied with what our spouse did wrong, pointing fingers at them rather than taking responsibility for our own short-coming and how what we do is affecting our marriage.
Human nature is very interesting, I have not met a normal human being (regardless of maturity of faith) who will instinctively accept blame for anything, our first instinct/reaction is to blame someone else, then if the evidence is glaring to now say “my bad” or “I’m sorry”, apologizing is even a tough thing for some, who would insist that if you did not do what you did, then I would not do what I did.
Psychiatrists and psychologists (and other mental health professionals) at one point adopted a therapy technique that blamed parents for whatever a child does even as an adult, and lawyers quickly jumped on that bandwagon, using it as a defense for errant adults. There is no doubt that family of origin, the actions of people around us or who we associate with, and spiritual influences in the heaven-lies affect us, however pointing fingers at those things as the reasons for the predicament we face as adults in our marriages, our careers or how we raise our own children is simply wrong. At the age of accountability we have a choice to have our mind renewed by letting Christ be LORD.
No human being has a choice of who the parents would be (some of us wonder why God bless some with children – a woman in my city recently killed her son and kept his decaying body in the house until her story to a curios family member didn’t jell), children born in the same home also come out from that environment with different view of what went on based on their personalities. The Bible however tells us that at some point in life, each one of us would get the opportunity (regardless of how good or bad our family experiences were) to make a decision for Christ and decide to be obedient to His words.
Joseph grew up in the same house with his other brothers, who were callous enough to even think of killing him but eventually sold him into slavery, yet when he had them by their balls, he chose to forgive them. David was not the favorite child of Jesse, because when Prophet Samuel came to his house to ask for his sons, Jesse did not even think of David, yet David grew up to be a God fearing man, who had the opportunity to kill his arch-enemy (King Saul) twice but never did it because he feared God. Regardless of our growing up experiences, everyone one will get to an accountability age when he/she gets to choose life or death on their own. I have discovered that choosing to follow the real Christ is as difficult for someone converting from another religion as much for someone who has been religious (church attender) all his/her life.
As Nigerians (perhaps Africans) we all write and complain about bad governance from Obasanjo to Yar’adua, from the governor of Lagos state to the minister of (or for) energy, how they are stealing from government treasuries, yet we don’t see our part to the problem of a failed nation. We give and take bribe (consoling each other that it is the way of life), our marriages are falling apart because of our ego and disobedience to God’s instruction for the marriage institution. In our own little kingdoms we demand respect adding titles to our names to feel good and we turn our local assembly upside down because the pastor won’t give us a "title", yet we blame politicians who are buying certificates in America or church leaders who demand the title of “bishop”. We need to look inward and figure out how “we” (each one of us) are contributing to the failure of our great country – Nigeria.
In the American political arena, the current government is still blaming the past eight years for high unemployment even after passing $787B stimulus bill and $3.6T budget (with increases in education, health and doubling EPA budget in just one year). Repubilcans blame President Clinton for signing the bill that changed the banking laws that fostered greed, but would never mentioned that Senator Phil Graham (R) wrote the bill. Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd who contributed to the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the same people who now blame others and are still encouraging the dangerous spending and high deficit which would cause inflation soon. The republicans who are now making noise about deficit benefited from the boom (based on consumer credit) of the Bush era without challenging their own president on how he turned a surplus into deficit (without even counting the wars cost). Individually, many of us took mortgages we know we could not afford based on our income, but we took it anyway and even did thanksgiving in church, and we now join the chorus condemning greedy Wall Street bankers - hmm.
Overcoming finger pointing as a human in my opinion is simply impossible, we need supernatural help; it takes the grace of God for us to go against our natural instinct of passing the buck than to accept 100% responsibility for our 5%, what is normal is us blaming our spouse (or other people) for the 50% he/she caused in the conflict at hand.
In my book “the Enemy Within” I shared my own experiences with passing the buck or pointing fingers, for the first few years of marriage, all I saw were the inadequacies of Ola, and I embarked on a mission to make her in the image I envisioned for a “Christian wife”, blinded by my crusade I not only blocked myself from seeing the good attributes she brings to our family unit but I felt I was the best gift to the marriage (I didn’t even think I was capable of doing anything wrong). I had problem with how she kept things, I had problem with relaxing on a Saturday (that is environmental day for me), I complained about her spending but it was appropriate when I indulged on what I wanted (especially what made me look good as a husband, like a luxury car).
Looking at the three fingers we point at ourselves does not mean the other person does not have those things we hate or want them to change, it simply means spending time to work on our own short-coming rather than concentrating and being blinded by the short-coming of our spouse or other people around us. It is also important for us to know that the Bible never told us that we were to change our spouses, but simply to be obedient to our job description without condition and let Him [God] take care of your errant spouse while you are obedient in sometimes seemingly impossible situation(Romans 12: 19-21 principle).
As I have read and re-read the Bible and the principles there-in, I have come to the conclusion that the intention of God when He brought a man and a woman together was for each one to be obedient to His instructions for each and not for individuals to point fingers. In what I call marriage job description in Ephesians 5: 21-29, women are told to honor their husbands without the condition that he loves his wife, the same way men are told to love their wives without the condition of her honoring first. Human sinful nature and the kingdom of this world built on “self” has brought the conditions before obedience, so we now define marriage as 50/50, you do yours and I do mine (instead of 100/100 each person giving fully without condition).
The strength to look inward in my opinion (and personal experience) starts with knowing Christ and then yielding to Him as Lord. There are many “Christians” who are saved but refuses to let Christ be Lord in their lives, they know the word but they still choose to be led by their flesh and how they feel – these are people at every strata of the body of Christ hierarchy. Jesus Christ said, those who love me obey my commandments and my Father and I will make our home with such a person, Apostle Paul said as Christians that we are “crucified” with Christ (dead to sinful nature) but Christ now live in us, so we don’t do what our flesh wants but what the Christ (Holy Spirit) in us want us to do, so rather than fighting to remove the speck in someone else’s eye, we are told to remove the log in our own eyes.
As I wrote earlier, the process of log removal from our eyes is not natural for the “flesh”, so it takes a conscious surrender of our will to His will, and we get strengthened in the process through practical acts of obedience. I don’t agree with Chief Awolowo all the time, but one of the things I heard him say a few times as a young man was “acknowledging our problem is 50% of the solution”. Every husband and wife (or human), reading this article need to take a break from finger pointing, stop blaming people or being, the devil, your mother-in-law, your wife or husband and sincerely ask how “you” are contributing (or contributed) to the problems you are going through?
Ask your wife or husband to write three things that they think you could change, ask your children what dad or mom is doing that they don’t like and ask trusted friends what they think (take what they say, eat the meat and throw out the bone). More importantly, go to God at your own time and ask Him to show you areas that you could be more obedient to His words or the leading of the Holy Spirit. Ask for grace and set strategies for yourself to do just that.
Strategies of obedience could include not talking or responding while I’m angry so I don’t say stupid stuff (Ephesians 4: 26) – if you are angry call someone or sing, loving my spouse even when I don’t feel he/she deserves it (Romans 12: 19) – when you are mad at him/her go to the card store and by him/her a card that says what’s on your mind but still says I love you, learn the act of forgiving even when the other person is unrepentant (Colossians 3: 13) – praying for the person that hurt you is a good therapy (don’t pray for him/her to die - ha-ha), learn to listen to the Holy Spirit indwelling in you, when the Spirit says “go and knell down or hug your husband and say you are sorry” don’t fight it and say over my dead body, or when the Spirit say “give your wife a hug or ask her to sit on your lap and apologize for not being a godly husband and letting your mother run your home” (Matthew 19: 5), don’t give the excuse that it is not “our” culture.
Many times the reasons Christians don’t follow the leading of the Holy Spirit (or written word) are lack of knowledge and primarily “pride”. It is difficult to follow an instruction you don’t know and many times we are too lazy to study the word, we rely on what we hear on Sundays quoting our pastors, a book or an article instead of reading and knowing what the word says. In some cases when we know, we have too much pride to be obedient because it is difficult for our sinful nature, we place wealth above God’s word, I’ve heard some African men in the Diaspora say “my wife would never know how much I make” while some women compare their husbands with other men who earn more money or could provide a better standard of living. Pride has nothing to do with speaking about the goodness of God (materials or whatever) in our lives with others, it is thinking that we can handle things and telling God to stay back.
My prayer (including for myself) is that rather than point fingers we will all get to the place of maturity, where our focus in whatever we are going through is not so much the other person, other people or even the devil (are famous culprit) but that we look inward at what we need to change and to pray for the other person (wife, husband etc) to look inward as well.
Remain Blessed
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