(Ver 1.1)  This is now “Part 7” in a series of lessons on spoken words.  If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“.  Man is guilty of one very poor behavior trait that is a major short coming in everyone’s life at some point.   It would seem that people like to think that no matter what happens to them or how bad the results, it was not their fault!  We have all been faced with the reality of doing something wrong and then being faced with the consequences and suddenly we come up with all kinds of reasoning, excuses and blame shifting of why we did what we did.  People would much rather shift the blame to someone else, either God or their spouse, or their children or maybe their boss, or maybe those in authority, or whoever is just available or present.  It was because of this reason or that reason, or it was their fault.  It would seem to me that people want a God and a religion that alleviates them from any personal responsibility or even accountability to what transpires in their lives.  I call this the popular modern “No Fault” Religion, and the “God of the Blameless Sinner Theology” philosophy.  If you do not realize it, this is not what the Bible says, it is nothing that Jesus ever taught, nor is it something that you can correctly interpret from the Bible.  Let me give you a definition for the term “No Fault” that we have in the world found in the insurance business:

NO FAULT: in which a claimant is compensated for actual economic loss without blame being assigned to a particular party; in which neither party is assigned blame

A “no fault” policy is one that allows for compensation regardless of who’s is said to be at fault.  In other words no one gets the blame, no one holds any responsibility in any matter and everything is put back to the way it was before it all happened with no admissions of guilt.  This concept has crept into the human life of reasoning and even into Christian theology.  In the legal court system they have developed a Latin term that gives some people an alternative way to plead their case.   This term is called “Nolo Contendere” and it neither declares your innocence or your guilt, but shifts the responsibility to the judge to decide.   In other words the person pleading this way in court neither admits quilt nor declares their innocence.  They are in effect saying it was not my fault, I hold no responsibility in this matter.  This is just another example of the “No Fault” Religious Philosophy that has been growing in prevalence in the church.   However, we need to learn what God says about the situation and our responsibility in every matter and then you will see there is a major difference  with God’s approach.

I want to start by giving you an example of this behavior found in the Bible.  In the book of Genesis, God puts man in the garden.  God tells the man that he can eat from every tree but one.  Satan comes along and deceives Eve into eating and then Adam follows her example, and they both are now hiding out in the garden of Eden from God.  God calls out to Adam and Adam reluctantly answers.  Adam tells God he was afraid and hid himself because he was naked.  God then asks him directly, “Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from”.  This is Adam’s modern theological response to God’s question:

Gen 3:12  And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

Adam obviously shifts the responsibility of his actions to his wife.  In other words if God had not given me this woman, I would not have been in this situation.  The ultimate responsibility was being shifted to everyone, but Adam.  Adam took no responsibility for anything that he had done.  It is a classic example, of the philosophy of a “No Fault Religion”!   Adam says I did it, but it was not my fault.  Isn’t it funny how people do this still today?  God then asks the woman in the garden, “What is this that you have done?” and again we see the classic “No Fault Religion” response of the woman:

Gen 3:13  And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

Eve immediately passes the buck to the serpent, it was the serpent’s fault and not mine.  If it were not for the serpent, I would not have been deceived.  It was his fault and not mine.   In this story, suddenly God stops asking questions when he comes to the serpent.  It seems God’s is tired of hearing people pass the buck and He starts telling each of them the consequences of their actions.  God names a list of things that will happen to each party involved and suddenly there is no more to say.  So was it anybody’s else’s fault that each did what they did?  Or was this just man’s attempt to shift the responsibility off of them to someone else?  Normally this is exactly the motivation for this act of selfishness.  If Adam and Eve had not been caught red handed, figuratively speaking, they would have probably never had admitted to doing anything.  However, once confronted with overwhelming evidence people immediately start by shifting the focus to someone else to get the judge’s eyes off of them, or so they hope.

In some recent news article in America, I ran across this attitude still being used today.  In a local story in one of our surrounding cities, a woman took a gun, that looked like a real handgun and robbed a drug store and got several illegal pills.  The woman then calls her mother and tells her what she has done and that she plans on killing herself with the pills by overdosing on them.  A few minutes later, her car is spotted by the police and they surround her.  After all she had just committed an armed robbery.  The woman’s mother had called 911 to report the situation and tell them that the gun that she had was only a BB gun and not a real gun, so please don’t shoot her.  Before the police could get this information, the woman gets out of her car and points her real looking gun at the police officers.  The officers had no choice but to shoot her.  So now the family of the woman gets on the local news and starts shifting all of the blame of everything that happened to the police.  They should have known better than to kill an unarmed woman.  They should have handled the situation differently.  Do you see the pattern of what the family was saying?  Was it all the policemen’s fault for protecting themselves and the safety of others and for killing this woman unnecessarily?  Does this woman have any responsibility in what happened?  Obviously NOT according to her family!   Does the family have any responsibility of not recognizing the signs of depression or suicidal changes in this woman’s behavior, Obviously NOT according to the family.  According to the family, nobody is to blame except the ones that shot her and that is crazy thinking.  I do not understand how people can come to these conclusions and how the news media can even report them as legitimate pieces of news.  We live in a crazy world that has things completely backwards.

Let me give you another example, of stupid behavior and thinking.  It seems that the family of Michael Jackson is now suing in civil court the doctor that allegedly administered the drugs that killed their relative Michael Jackson.   Isn’t it amazing that if Michael had no money that he would not have been able to pay a doctor for dangerous prescription drugs.   I do not attempt to justify what the doctor did, however it was not entirely the doctor’s fault.  Michael Jackson was a addicted to drugs.  He thought that he needed them to perform and that he needed them to sleep.  Do you think if there was no doctor present in the house, that Michael would still be alive  today?   I do not know, but yet do you think that it was just the doctor’s fault and Michael held no responsibility to what happened to him?  In my opinion, I would say Michael holds more of the responsibility than anyone else, but his family obviously does not agree with that reasoning.

How can people get any more stupid and still be alive?  Do people have any responsibility in what happens to them?  Does the Bible say it is not your fault that you are in the mess that you are in right now?  Does the Bible put all of the blame for everything that happens to you on Adam, Satan or someone else?  Did Jesus ever heal someone and tell them, I’m so sorry this happened, it was just not your fault that this happened to you?  If you search and actually read and see what the Bible says on the subject, you will find that is just not the case.  People actually hold more of the responsibility of what happens to them,  than anyone would care to admit.  Let’s see what Jesus said in one example:

Joh 5:14  Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

Jesus after healing this man in John 5, told him “I’m sorry this happened to you, I know it was just not your fault!”   No, Jesus did not say this, did He?  Jesus actually warns this man that what you do affects what you get in life.   Jesus tells the man very clearly NOT to go and intentionally sin again, or his sins would allow or cause something worse to potentially happen to him.  There is a clear implication that what happened to him was caused by something that he had previously done in the first place.  Isn’t that what Jesus said?  What we see in the Bible is a Spiritual Law being spoken of.  Many Christians are not familiar with this Spiritual Law even though it governs their daily lives, 24×7.  Here is the Spiritual Law that Jesus was talking about:

Gal 6:7  Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

This is a broad statement with broad implications and consequences attached to it.  These are the words of the Living God and He tells us very clearly that He will not be mocked!  What does it mean to mock?   What is mocking?   Jesus was mocked at His trial and even as He hung on the cross, the Bible says.  The Bible says that Jesus endured words from people saying “Hail the King of the Jews”.   To mock someone or something means to ridicule them, slander them, make fun of them, speak words out of your mouth that are the opposite of praise!  It can also be the way you say it, that makes it disrespectful.   You could say something good in a sarcastic way and this could be mocking someone.  It would seem to me that God is at the very least referring to what people say in Galatians 6:7.  Isn’t that what God is talking about in this verse?   God gives us a farming principle and an agricultural law in direct relationship to what people say.  God tells us very clearly that whatever we plant, that is what we harvest in life.  You can apply this to things we do, but primarily God is talking about your words.   If you read the Gospels you will find that Jesus talks a lot about farming principles, crops and agricultural things like that.  However, Jesus was not a literal natural farmer and he was not talking about natural things at all.  Jesus was discussing spiritual things in relationship to natural things that we could observe and understand.  Do you realize that it is almost impossible for God to discuss spiritual things with people who barely know anything about natural things?    In one of the parables that Jesus reveals to the people, he discusses the Sower and the soil.   In this parable the soil was of course, the hearts of men.  Then the seeds that were planted in this soil were the “Words of God”.   We are taught that God’s words are seeds that produce the good harvests in our life.

Did you know if God’s words are the positive seeds, then every other person’s words are also seeds and they can become negative seeds if they are opposite to what was spoken by God?   Man was created in the image and likeness of God.  Meaning that man was an exact duplication of the God kind of being!   The angels of God could look at Adam and recognize God’s spiritual DNA.  We were not created on the same level or at the same capacity as God’s ability, but that does not mean we have no power to control what happens in our lives.  What is a seed?  Have you ever planted a real natural seed in the soil and watered it and watched it develop over time and grow?   A seed is a self contained system that has propagative properties to produce postive or negative things.   A seed holds properties to replicate it’s kind and produce more of its species.  Seeds rarely work by themselves and are dependent upon other factors.  Correct soil, light, temperature and water are just a few of the dependencies that many seeds require.  All of this is very similar to e the place of words in the world.   People say things constantly and most of them they do not mean or even believe will happen.   People say “that just kills me”,  “I laughed until I died”, “You gave me a heart attack”, and other crazy sayings.  If people’s words would suddenly come true, most of the time none of us would be here right now.

If words are seeds that people plant, and these seeds produce crops in your life then what have you been planting?  Can you look back on things that you have said in the past and see anything about what you have and are experiencing right now?  Maybe, yes and maybe no?   Nevertheless, the Bible if you study it correctly never alleviates you from any responsibility.  If you die and go to hell, you will not be able to plead it was not my fault.  You hold great amounts of responsibility to what happens in your life.  If you turn down the wrong street at the wrong time, if you choose to take a flight that will crash, if you go to the wrong side of town, if you eat the wrong foods, if you drink the wrong drinks, if you buy the wrong drugs, if take the wrong drugs or if you do whatever.   You see what you choose to do in life matters.  Where you choose to go in life matters.  Who you associate with in life matters.  Who your friends are in life matters.   What you eat matters.  What you drive matters.  Where you walk matters.  Where you go to church matters.  I’ll go further than that, and say what you think also matters.   What you say matters.   Your decisions and choices in life ALL have consequences attached to them.  Wise choices come only from knowing God and His Word and poor choices come from listening to Satan.  The Bible says that those who are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God.  That also means that there are plenty of  those who are not being led by the Spirit of God and they therefore make bad choices in life.  Jesus told us that wide is the path to destruction and narrow is the path that leads us to salvation, peace and safety.  Now realize that God has set the choices in front of you and you are the one making the choices for your life.  If you don’t like what you are reaping right now look back and see what you have been planting!  Then change what you plant!

If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words you can go to “Part 8“.