On July 22, 2015, I had my worst day of parenting ever.

I had to get the kids ready for their swim lessons. Kate was off at a freelance job interview.

I started early. I packed their lunches. I got them dressed and lathered up with sunscreen. They had their towels, pool toys, and changes of clothes.

But then things went off the rails.

Eve was upstairs hunting for some Barbie clothes and wouldn’t come down. Sam decided to start playing hide and seek. The dog wouldn’t come in because he was barking at a squirrel in a tree.

We got in the car after 10 minutes and got behind a slow-moving, stinky garbage truck. The kids were dry heaving. I couldn’t get around the thing.

We were late. Sam wanted to play. He was very rude to his instructor so I put him in time out. Kate was calling to update me, but the calls were at the worst times possible and just added to the stress. And Eve kept yelling at Sam or asking me a ton of questions, and I was snappy with her.

A natural inclination then kicked in. I started looking for someone to blame for this awful day. I wanted to blame Eve, but she was fine and only trying to help.

I wanted to blame Sam, but he was only 3 years old. He woke up early and was tired. The instructor was a substitute, so that probably threw him for a loop too.

I wanted to blame Kate, but that wouldn’t be fair. She was calling because she was probably worried that I needed help, and she wanted to be helpful. I am a parent, too, I should be able handle getting the kids to the pool with all their gear.

I wanted to blame myself for being snappy, or not starting early enough. There had to have been something I could have done better. But I wasn’t all to blame either.

I was trying to find a scapegoat, someone to carry all of the blame. And there’s no one to blame. We all played a part in this perfect storm, but no one was to blame.

Not me, Kate, the kids, the dog, or the trash truck.

Sometimes the cards are stacked against us and there’s nothing we can do. But this too shall pass. We are a resurrection people. We will get another chance. Best to forgive, live in grace and peace and try to do better the next time.

Theologian Alan Jones says, “we live in a litigious, tit-for-tat society where everyone sees themselves as victim who is owed something, and this me-first attitude cripples communal life.” Each of us has a laundry list of how we have been wronged. We have all had days like that July day where nothing went right.

We live in a society that looks to blame others. We blame the circumstance, others, the government, whomever… And if someone hits us, we hit them, but not always to their face. If they serve us slowly and the bun is soggy, we don’t ask to speak to the manager or cook, we leave a one-star review on Facebook and talk trash behind our keyboards.

We live in that world, and so did the disciples. The first century world was governed by honor and shame. If you did things well, you were honored. If you weren’t honored, you shamed and shunned people. So the Jews shunned the Gentiles. They blamed the Romans. And they had reason to!

We see Simon, Andrew, James and John called from their family jobs as fishermen to follow Christ. Many Christians have wondered about why the disciples dropped everything and left. I mean, this is the family business! And they up and leave after just a clever turn of phrase, “Follow me and you’ll fish for people.”

Some think that the disciples drop everything and go because they see how Christ is incredibly charismatic. They see him for who he is; God with us. But the Gospel of Mark doesn’t really lend itself to that interpretation as there is no physical description of Christ or his charisma, it’s possible though.

Some scholars think that the disciples are in dead-end jobs. The lake has been overfished due to Roman demands for fish or high Roman taxes. That feels more likely. Social anthropologists and historians seem to support this claim. So the disciples have a legitimate reason to leave their work and join this guy to help take down the Roman Empire. The Romans are the true source of our problems, these foreigners coming in and taking our jobs, oppressing us, and telling us how to live our lives.

Yet for the Romans, the problem is with everyone else who doesn’t adopt the Roman way of life. The Romans think they are the best thing ever. They’ve made travel safer. They have the best infrastructure. They have the best designs from artwork to aqueducts, they are the best and their ways should be adopted. The problem is all these barbarians, these non-Romans coming in and taking our jobs and not being as good as the average Roman.

Everyone is blaming everyone else, and here comes Jesus. And he calls his disciples and begins to teach them. He calls them today and over the course of the Gospels we find that Christ not only calls them to learn, but he calls them out of the cycle of blame. He calls them out to live differently than everyone else.

The Roman way depends on peace through superior firepower. Yet in all our years of trying to gain peace through war, it has never once worked. In taking an eye for an eye, we only seem to limit our sight. In all the history with our various forms of legal systems which say, “don’t kill people because we’ll kill you” we haven’t stamped out murder or gotten any closer to justice. Jesus calls us out of those endless cycles and dead-ends.

Christ calls us to another way. To a way of love of God and the love of neighbor. A way that prays for our enemies and those who harm us. A way of going the extra mile and blessing those who curse you. And this way is hard, because it’s counter-intuitive. It doesn’t come easily. We’ve been conditioned to the honor and shame culture, but we don’t have to do that.

I realized this on that July day. I don’t have to keep the frustration and pain cycle going. I don’t have to enact my misery on Kate, the kids, the pool, or even the dog. I can just take a deep breath and remember my calling. That I am called to spread the good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ to the world. And that’s a 24/7/365 call, no matter how I’m feeling and no matter my situation. Do I realize it everyday? No. But this day stands out because I got it right once. Three years ago.

How can we live this out? We can question our blame game. We can examine what we think we believe and ask good questions. I recently was in a Facebook political discussion and those never really go well. The topic was immigration. The guy was stating how illegals are bringing drugs into our country, which is a very Roman thing to say. I could have responded that he was wrong, and an idiot, but then I stopped. I began to consider if he was right. I began asking what sources he had. He didn’t have any, he just knew it was true. I quoted what Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust, but verify.” He would post something, I would question it. Then we landed on a 2016 DEA report that shows how Mexican drug cartels are the #1 threat. Turns out, this guy had an aspect of the truth. Yet how they traffic the drugs aren’t through illegals. It’s through FedEX, small airplanes, and citizens of our country that run these drugs. These are things that building a wall won’t stop. The game has changed. And here we were, two people who initially could have traded insults at one another, but instead we learned from one another. We learned of one another’s concern for our country and communities. The lesson I took from this encounter is: Don’t be lazy and make assumptions about people. Ask about their story. Then listen. Be humble. Be teachable. Be human. Be a good neighbor.

Life can change through good questions. In this exchange on Facebook, an interaction changed and two opinions were changed. Life can change through good questions.

Today on NPR’s On Being, they were talking about the difference between Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and human intelligence. Robotic A.I. is really good at answering questions. They are plugged into a system. They act a certain way and find the answer. But humans, we’re wireless. We’re not plugged into a system. We don’t have to act a certain way. The main difference between A.I. and humans is that robots are good at answers, and humans are good at questions. Questions can change a life.

Questions like, “How do I turn my judgment into curiosity?” Or “Could that idiot actually know what they are talking about?” Questions can change everything. Questions like “How do I parent better?” Or what Christ is asking us today, “Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name?”

Works Cited

DEA Report. 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. https://www.dea.gov/resource-center/2016%20NDTA%20Summary.pdf Accessed 1/17/18.

Jones, Alan. The Soul’s Journey; Exploring the spiritual life with Dante as Guide. Cowley Publications, Boston, MA. 2001. Page 129.