It’s easy to find examples of the “victim mentality” all around us today.  All too many are tempted to point to others as the reason for bad choices. “If that driver hadn’t cut me off…,” “if the neighbor wasn’t such an idiot…,” “if my parents had treated me differently…,” “if my boss was a better leader…,” and on and on it goes: the assertion that our sinful decisions are really someone else’s fault, not ours.  

It is a time-honored tendency, initially appearing in the Garden of Eden on the lips of the first two human beings.  In Genesis 3.8-13, when God confronts Adam and Eve about their actions, Adam points to Eve and says, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”  Then, when God turns to Eve, she responds with “The serpent deceived me and I ate.”  In short, when challenged, rather than taking responsibility, both pointed to someone else as the source of their sinful choices.   

God didn’t endorse their victimhood claim then, and He is not willing to allow us that excuse, either.  Yes, we live in a broken world where broken choices of broken people impact our lives on a daily basis.  But the joy and the responsibility of our Christian lives is the reality that in Christ, we have been given back our freedom to choose, even in the face of what others might do around and even to us.

Paul puts it this way in Romans 6.6-7: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin may be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”   A few sentences later, Paul follows with, “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus…For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6.11,14).

The amazing good news is that thanks to the freedom we’ve been given through Jesus, we are not slaves to our circumstances, nor can the devil “make us do things.” Yes, he can tempt and he can weave together the effects of others’ damaging actions and words and choices to seek to bait us into sinful responses. However, in Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit we can choose to resist and overcome the evil one’s schemes.  

Let’s not give in to the temptation to play the victim; instead, let’s exercise the God-given grace to choose life!