It Wasn’t My Fault

(But You’re Still the Only One Who is Responsible for It)

It wasn’t my fault. There is a broad spectrum of emotional and intellectual responses, often polarized, when hearing that phrase stated by someone who has suffered a setback in life. But taken at face value, it wasn’t my fault, is often correct. You, they nor I have done little to bring certain losses or setbacks to fruition in our lives.

Life Isn’t Always Fair

If you are driving your car carefully but a careless driver runs a stop sign or switches lanes without looking or fails to stop because they are distracted, then the accident absolutely isn’t your fault.

If you are faithful, attentive, affirming, loving, fun, and full of other positive attributes within your marriage but your spouse is unfaithful, inattentive, unaffirming, hateful, and full of other negative dynamics in your marriage, then an un-wanted divorce isn’t your fault.

If the company you’ve worked hard and effectively to build for years suddenly hits financial woes due to unforeseen events (like a pandemic) and subsequently lays off half the workforce, you included, then your loss of employment isn’t your fault.

If you live a reasonably healthy lifestyle that includes a good diet, exercise, positive thinking, loving relationships, and the practice of no major health risks but you receive a bleak cancer diagnosis after an anomaly is discovered at annual checkup, it isn’t your fault.

Life isn’t always fair. People aren’t always fair. The benefits we grew up with aren’t equal and are often unfair. Some things just happen outside our control, including floods, pandemics, illness, economic depression, wars, crime, and more. There is nothing wrong or weak in acknowledging that many events and conditions that crash into your life aren’t your fault.

There is an important distinction that needs to be noted, however. Saying, it wasn’t my fault, does not mean that you aren’t responsible for accepting where you are and for working on what happens next. To deny responsibility for your life—the good, the bad, and the ugly—flips what happens next from it wasn’t my fault to I’m the only one to blame. (Jimmy Buffet wrote a song about that I think.)

Yes, you and we and I have all been victimized by others and by the seemingly random storms of life. But that is never the end of the story. A setback need not be what defines us.

Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors

The biblical story of Joseph is filled with fortune and calamity; tragedy and redemption; betrayal and reconciliation; incredible success and abject failure. You can read about Joseph in Genesis 37-50. His story is so incredible that is found in other texts. A shorter version of Joseph’s life is told in the Koran, where he is the only prophet to be given his own chapter.

Joseph was his father’s favorite son because his mother was his father’s wife. It wasn’t my fault. And Joseph would be right to think and affirm that. However, there are moments in his childhood and youth, whether through naivety or a sense of privilege or a feeling of superiority, when he let his brothers know that he believed he was above them. Even his father, Jacob, who gave him a coat of many colors as a sign of his favor, was taken aback when Joseph declared to his brothers that in a dream he saw that one day they would kneel before him. This was one of the moments that led to the fateful day when they sold their younger brother into slavery, smearing the blood of a ram on his coat so that they could deceive their father into thinking he was dead.

Joseph was undoubtedly handsome and physically impressive. What young man would not want to be considered incredibly attractive by the opposite sex? The problem for Joseph was that this brought unwanted and inappropriate attention on him by the wife of Potiphar, his boss-owner-slave-master. (Uh oh.) It wasn’t my fault. Joseph would be right again to state that though he still paid dearly for it. When he spurned her advances, fleeing from her outstretched arms, she falsely accused Joseph of being the perpetrator of attempted infidelity. This led him to fourteen years of misery in the prison dungeons of the Pharaoh.

Joseph faced further betrayal, but after fourteen years of never losing his faith, he was miraculously freed from prison and rose to become Pharaoh’s right-hand man and a prince of Egypt. His wisdom, diligence, organizational genius, and spiritual discernment enabled him to save not only Egypt from famine, but also the surrounding kingdoms and tribes, including the tribe of his father and brothers. I’ll leave out his emotional reconciliation with his brothers and how he held no grudge against them, but know that there are many scintillating vignettes woven into his life journey.

The life lesson from the story I’m putting under the spotlight is that no, it wasn’t Joseph’s fault how he ended up a prisoner, but yes, he took responsibility for where he was and what was to happen next, and in so doing, he followed the only path available for him to become a prince.

He followed the only path available for him to leave prison and become a prince.

Setbacks and Comebacks

It wasn’t my fault. Probably not. I can’t forgive like Joseph. That remains to be seen. Some people get all the breaks. No question, some people are given more advantages than others. And despite their naïve arrogance, such a condition is the same for them as for the person who is in the pits. It wasn’t because they are smarter or better. It was a head start gift. (By the way, where we start doesn’t guarantee where we’ll end.  There are many self-directed choices that lead to either the up or down escalator of success.)

We can discuss and debate the problem of pain for hours, days, months, and years, and still not deplete the written and oral material already dedicated to the question. We can question the goodness or existence of God. We can roll into a fetal position in a vain attempt to protect ourselves from further pain. We can cut ourselves off from family and friends. We can rant and rage at the unfairness of life.

Or we can live with resilient faith that enables us to scrabble out of the pit and rebuild a wonderful life. We can turn setbacks into comebacks, even if no such state of being is ever permanent.

A Few Questions

A few questions have set me in the right direction of redemption on more than a few occasions. Maybe they will serve was markers for you as well.

1. Do I accept that life can be hard and will include storms and setbacks? (We are either in a storm, out of a storm or heading for the next storm.)
2. Do I take responsibility for my future? (Where you’ve been is not as important as where you are going.)
3. Do I walk in gratitude or resentment? (Gratitude will make a poor man rich. Resentment will make a rich man poor.)
4. What can I learn from my setback? (No, there are setbacks we aren’t responsible for. But there are some setbacks that are partially or entirely our own fault. Almost everything that happens to us includes life lessons if we observe and reflect.)
5. Do I keep my eyes upward with a spirit of faith and optimism? (Keep your eyes on the eternal while living and focusing on the present. It can be done.)

Back to the story of Joseph, it was his answer to the fifth question that defined and energized his resilient faith. No, being thrown into a pit was not his fault. But he saw the eternal implications of what he was going through:

But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

Genesis 50:20, NKJV

What you are experiencing right now may very well not be your fault. But it is possible that it is your greatest opportunity to date to be blessed and bless others.