I periodically find myself in situations where I dropped the ball, but no one finds out because I have a great excuse. Maybe its a group paper that's due in 2 hours, but I procrastinated. Then I get a text from my classmate that says,

"Really sorry guys, I won't be able to finish my part until tomorrow night! I'll talk to the professor and tell him its my fault the paper was late so you guys don't lose points."

BINGO! Now I can finish my part tomorrow morning, but I will stay silent when that classmate speaks up on my behalf to keep the rest of the group from losing points. No one will ever know my part was also late.

I call this being evasive, which Dictionary.com defines as escaping from something by trickery or cleverness; to avoid, elude, or escape. In many cases, this includes escaping from responsibility and accountability.

Sometimes its temporarily profitable to play the scapegoat card; to pretend I am the victim of my classmate's irresponsibility when the only real difference between her and I is that she was honest.

One day I was hit with the realization that this scenario plays out in my own heart toward God, and the ramifications went much deeper.

About a year ago, I was sitting in chapel annoyed with the message because I was particularly cynical about the Institution of Christianity in America, and especially my christian college. I would think about how many ways the message could mislead someone who doesn't know better, or how "off" the theology was behind phrases and concepts. While sitting begrudgingly in my miserable frustration, God's voice broke though.

"Chelsea, you are playing the victim."

I realized it didn't matter how sound the message was because the state of my heart had pre-determined to be cynical and find errors to justify the bitterness that was already there. Doing this is like deciding on my own opinion, and then doing research to support it rather than doing research to develop an opinion.

"For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’" Matthew 11:18-19

Whoever 'they' are, they were caught in their own inconsistency and we can see that their rejection of Jesus and John has nothing to do with Jesus and John being "wrong" or "off", but it has everything to do with their own hearts being in a state of rejection.

Its much easier to ignore the rot in our own hearts when we can point the finger outward and logically convince ourselves that it has nothing to do with us, but with them. The Blame Game is the ultimate tool to evade taking responsibility for the brokenness inside ourselves. The danger in this situation is that I am not evading another person; I'm lying to myself.

When Christians talk about the "lies they tell themselves", those lies usually sounds like this:

"I'm worthless"

"God doesn't love me"

"I'm beyond repair"

Those are the lies we don't want to believe and know aren't true, but we fear they might be. But there is another kind of lie that sits a bit deeper beneath the surface of our consciousness - those are the lies we want to believe.

That day in chapel, I knew if I admitted the truth, it would mean a difficult process was ahead of me. If I was honest with myself and realized my frustration was due to my own bitter heart, not the speaker in front of me, then that would put the ball in my court. Now I was the one responsible to do something. It would mean that I had to admit I was cynical and hurting. It meant I had to admit I was resisting God, and it meant I had to reach out for help.

That doesn't mean now I blindly trust whatever a speaker says, but it does mean that I am no longer a slave to my own cynical heart. Freedom from bitterness does not mean I think everything is right in the world, it means I choose not to live within a victim mentality and evade responsibility.

Maybe you can justify a hundred good reasons why you should be upset, and why you deserve to be bitter or cynical. At the end of the day I found I was not asking myself if I was right to feel that way, but if it was worth it.

And then I realized God had to ask himself the same question two thousand years ago. Humanity deserved to to pay for the injustice it wrecked upon the Earth, but I wonder if God asked himself, "But is it worth it?". So God looked at Jesus and said, "I think I have a plan", and I think Jesus smiled back.

"Let's do this".

If anyone has a right to be cynical, its God; yet He chose to lay down His rights for a better story. It wasn't fair or easy, but it was worth it for Him. What price are you paying to hold onto your cynicism?

"[Jesus] Who, existing in the form of God,

did not consider equality with God something to cling to,

but emptied Himself,

taking the form of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—

even death on a cross."

Philippians 2:6-8