David:     Here’s a problem I believe characterizes many, if not most, all children. When something bad happens for which, they are responsible, they quickly blame someone else. “I didn’t do it. Billy did it.”

Karen:     Or it might sound like this: “Who ate some of these cookies I baked for after dinner tonight?” “I didn’t do it. Caitlin did it.” “Maybe that’s partially true, but how come you have chocolate on your face?”

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen:     Now here’s a slight variation to what we’re talking about. “He started it.”

David:     “No, I didn’t. Eliana did.”

Karen:     We could give infinite examples. Most people know exactly what we’re talking about.

David:     I’m sure they do.

Karen:     It’s the harmful, childish habit of blaming others.

David:     Its quick finger pointing. One of our family stories, Karen, has become lore of the Mains family. It’s about a trip we took about four and a half decades back to Alaska. That’s 45 some years ago.

Karen:     Let’s paint the scene.

David:     It’s still very fresh in our minds. Okay, go ahead.

Karen:     So, we have four kids. At that time, the littlest guy was we’re thinking about between one and one and a half and two years of age. And then Joel, who’s four years old, and then the two older children, Melissa and the oldest son is Randall, just so people don’t have to try and fill in the blank spaces here.

David:     We were asked to come and minister in Alaska. We have never been there before. And wonderful, wonderful people.

Karen:     In February in Alaska.

David:     Sled dog race time. They said, this is the best time of all to come to Anchorage. And so, we did. And the four kids, we brought them along with us.

Karen:     Well, they paid for our entire family.

David:     It was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Yeah.

Karen:     So, this is, remember, Anchorage in February. So, there is snow everywhere, two feet of it, at least in my memory. It seems like it was two feet everywhere. But if you’re going to have that much winter in a place you’re living, you learn to combat cabin fever by just getting out all the time. Those people, they snowshoed, they did cross country skiing. They were out in the weather all the time. Otherwise, you just get locked up in your cabin or your home all that long winter.

David:     Now we had to make a trip from Anchorage east to Glen Allen because we were on a radio station there.

Karen:     And we were visiting those stations.

David:     So, all the kids were in the car. You and I were sitting in the front across from Bill, who was our host, and we hit white out.

Karen:     A whiteout. We could not see the road, but you didn’t have any choice. You had to, I mean, you can just see what was right in front of you, right in the side. This was a mountain pass.

David:     Now we didn’t know when we packed to go to Alaska whether we should take a lot of extra diapers or not because Jeremy was kind of in between. He was becoming trained.

Karen:     Self-sufficient.

David:     And sometimes we would have relapses.

Karen:     Yes. Right.

David:     So, here we are in this whiteout going very, very slowly. And I went like that. And oh, my goodness.

Karen:     The odor coming out of the back seat.

David:     I recognized something. And I turned her out and I said, “Jeremy, did you do something in your pants again?” He’s just this little guy.

Karen:     It was a long trip too.

David:     His immediate response was, “Joel did it.”

Karen:     “I didn’t do it. Joel did it.”

David:     Now how Joel did his poop in Jeremy’s pants?

Karen:     That was an amazing peat.

David:     It was just very, very succinct. There’s that problem. You know, point the finger, and say it’s the other guy. Anyway.

Karen:     It was a wonderful trip. Remember, they invited us to come during the fur rendezvous.

David:     Yes.

Karen:     And this is just, it was Alaska blanket tossing in the snow. I mean, they put a person in it. It was just wonderful. And then they had sled dog races. And there’s another little cute quote of Jeremy’s too. He was just a little guy, and all wrapped up in his snow suit. He could hardly move, and we put him on a sled, and we could see the sled dogs coming down.

David:     Down the trail.

Karen:     Put the drivers down their trail. And they pass us. And then there was a lull. And we heard this little voice down below from the sled thing.

David:     Well, he could see because he was slow. He could see what was in the distance.

Karen:     His voice said, “Here come another one.” So, two great memories from the trip to Alaska.

David:     Karen, were you aware that finger pointing, “he did it, she did it,” can carry over into adult life?

Karen:     Oh really? Tell me about it. I have never ever.

David:     People in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. I know because that’s my decade now. We still do it. We catch ourselves saying, you know, “he did it.” Just like when I was a kid, I would say buddy did it.

Karen:     Your brother.

David:     Buddy was the nickname for my brother Doug. Yeah, buddy did it.

Karen:     I might have said I don’t remember doing it because my sister was so much younger than I. “Val did it. Valerie did it.

David:     Yeah. Probably this flaw is not as bad as say refusing to pay someone for work they have done on your behalf.

Karen:     Or cheating on your taxes.

David:     Maybe it’s not as bad as embezzlement.

Karen:     Or holding up a bank or kidnapping.

David:     But it was serious enough that Jesus referred to it in one of his parables. I have the scripture for you. This is Luke Chapter 18:10-13. I think people will recognize it right away.

Karen:     This is pretty powerful. It was important to Jesus because he told the story.

Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other tax collector. The Pharisee of course, people may not know but that was one of the Jewish religious leaders.

David:     Yes.

Karen:     And just in case we have some who don’t know what that was.

The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers. Or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get.”

But the tax collector, Jesus continues in his story, he stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

David:     God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Like that poor bozo over there.

Karen:     Finger pointing right there. We got it.

David:     Religious in any sense. Shift the blame. Take the spotlight off of yourself and shine it on the other guy. It’s just part of what human beings do very easily. It just seems to come when no one teaching you how to do it.

Karen:     So, you and I have had many discussions about how this has become a major error here in American States.

David:     Yeah, it’s huge. Absolutely huge. Can’t believe it.

Karen:     So, take for example the very present problem of the coronavirus pandemic that we’re going through. No one wants to be responsible.

David:     Yeah, so the problem is that China started it. You know, they weren’t fair in the whole thing.

Karen:     Or maybe it was WHO, the World Health Organization, who’s being irresponsible.

David:     Dr. Fauci, he kept changing the message.

Karen:     Or the president.

David:     Or the corona task force.

Karen:     Or people who refused to wear masks.

David:     Even Bill Gates. Bill Gates. The other day I heard someone on the news say, people are blaming Bill Gates. Poor Bill Gates. He’s giving millions and millions.

Karen:     He’s hardly poor.

David:     But that was the wrong adjective to use.

Karen:     We have to have someone to blame.

David:     The Republicans, they don’t care if people get sick and die.

Karen:     Or the Democrats will do everything they can to make this pandemic worse than it really is.

David:     Oh yes, I know. Don’t talk to me. The real problem is Nancy Pelosi.

Karen:     Or I think it’s Mitch McConnell who has left the solution sitting on his desk for months.

David:     Donald Trump wants poor people to get sick and die because most of them are Democrats.

Karen:     Got it, right there. All of those in that list. We hear this chorus, don’t we?

David:     Yeah, recently I said to Karen during our prayer time together. We pray together pretty much every day. But we don’t pray necessarily at the same time. Sometimes it’ll be at the start of the day. Sometimes it’s at the close of the day.

During the day. But I had just watched a newscast on television, and we took a break and said, let’s pray together. It’s kind of a time of the day when we don’t have something that’s pressing right at the moment. But I said, because I was kind of upset by that program.

Karen:     Irked by it.

David:     We should probably say this background. You and I usually cancel each other’s vote out in.

Karen:     Presidential. It’s 59 years of marriage.

David:     I vote very intelligently and then you don’t think about it. You just say whatever you vote, I’ll vote the opposite.

Karen:     That’s not true. I study. The candidates, I look at their policies and positions. However, you’re right. We have never voted for the same presidential candidates. Except one time in 59 years of marriage.

David:     Okay, well anyway, I was kind of riled up and I said, “We are going to sit here. And none of us can do anything else until we both say something good about Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Just think about it. You can’t say anything negative. You just have to say something good about both of these.”

Karen:     Or something naively good.

David:     No, no, I was sincere. I said, “We’re going to say this.” And it took a while.

Karen:     It did take a while.

David:     It took a while, but we were quiet, and we respected each other. And then you said something nice about both men and then I said something nice about both men. And I would say that that was a good exercise and it basically said “That’s been a long time since either one of us said something nice about these two men.”

Karen:     Can I just make an insert comment? I think you and I have pretty much concluded that the daily or nightly newscast contribute to this divide in American opinion. And it depends on their political persuasion. They cast people of the other political persuasion or party in a very bad light. And so, they’re framing this dialogue for those of us who are trying to catch the news in a way you can’t help but pick it up, come away feeling discontent with whoever they’re discontent with. So, it’s something we really, as Christians, need to be aware of as far as what we’re absorbing from the secular newscasting system.

David:     This is very interesting and I think we’re typical of many people, whether husband and wife are together in the way they vote or whether they’re separate. Recently, I remembered watching maybe half an hour long a program and then you said, “This sounds like another so-and-so basking episode here. Have you had enough, David?” And I said, “Yep, I’ve had enough. Let’s turn it off.”

Karen:     Yeah, being aware of that is really, really important for the viewer.

David:     Anyway, it was a good thing and I think that other people, this would be a recommendation I will make that nobody will pay a bit of attention to, but I think people would do well even if they both agree on who they’re going to vote for, that the couple would say, “We’re going to learn how to say something good about the other person.” Just to get used to hearing our voices say something good about the other person. Now, I’m making that suggestion, but I don’t think anybody will pay a lick of attention to what I just said, but I think it would be a good thing.

Karen:     I think it’s a very Christian thing to try and do. These are not just political animals. They’re human beings and we have a mandate to pray for those in power. And I think that mandate from Scripture would include those who are attempting to rise into power as well.

David:     Let me share another experience we had recently as a couple and it was the extended family, one of our sons and his son, our grandson, came over and we watched Hamilton on television. We had seen Hamilton in Chicago, incredible production. A friend gave us tickets. It was a great gift, and we went in and were deeply moved by what we saw, but now we had a chance to see the original cast on television. Many people had watched Hamilton recently.

Karen:     For those who are not aware of Hamilton, it is a modern musical on the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States. A lot of people really don’t know anything about him. His life was brought to focus by a best-selling biography written by Ron Chernow, C-H-E-R-N-O-W. It’s an extraordinary piece of work.

This musical was put together by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

David:     Yeah, he had read that book.

Karen:     He had read that book, but they had a very common background. Both of them had come from the island.

David:     You’re talking about Hamilton and also the writer of the musical?

Karen:     Miranda, that’s why he picked up on this historical character. Both of them come from the Caribbean islands, from very poor backgrounds and bad family situations. And so, Hamilton’s life, when Miranda read the biography about him, was so stunningly similar as far as his origins, that he put it into this extraordinary stage musical. I mean, that thing is brilliant. Absolutely.

David:     That’s genius.

Karen:     It’s genius. There’s no way that you cannot understand that that’s what it is. And what’s particularly remarkable about it is that Lin Manuel Miranda has used the contemporary musical idioms such as rap and hip-hop to cast the songs within that musical framework. So, having seen it on the stage, I mean, some great pieces you need to see over and over again before you can really grasp the brilliance of them. So, we saw it on Chicago. A friend actually gave us a gift of tickets. I think the tickets were like $450 apiece. We could never have afforded that. And then we watched it on television this last week and watched the first half and the second half. What was different was that because of our grandson being present, we had the Chiron so we could see the lyrics on the television screen.

David:     The story is the conflict. He did it.

Karen:     He did it. He did it. He did it. He did it. He did it. Right.

David:     Between Aaron Burr, who is a leader in every way, a man with tremendous skills, and Hamilton. And their conflict, which grows finger pointing, getting mad at one another. Until finally, when you get to the end of the story, it’s not words now. They’re shooting at one another.

Karen:     It’s a duel. In a duel. Burr challenges Alexander Hamilton to a duel. In the play, I mean, I have to research this in Chirona’s book. Burr did point his gun at Hamilton. Hamilton shot his gun up into the air.

David:     Pointed his gun into the air. I don’t think he ever shot it. But there’s a point in that play when you knew it’s inevitable. They’re going to destroy each other. And they do. I mean, one man is killed, and the other man is never the same again.

Karen:     He never recovers because Hamilton was so brilliant in such an essential… He set of our entire economics here in the States, that is still in existence today.

David:     But you feel the tragedy.

Karen:     It was tragic.

David:     And the tears come to your eyes. It’s funny because I mean, that was years and years ago, but it’s impossible not to say what an absolute tragedy.

Karen:     Well, that’s a classic demonstration of what we’re talking about now. The blaming and the shaming, letting those finger pointing, letting those emotions rise to such a point you can’t control them. And it ends in taking someone’s life.

David:     I don’t know where America is headed, but I feel tragedy. I look at where it is, and I think it’s to the place where we can’t even say something good about somebody else.

Karen:     Who’s different than ourselves. Yeah, right.

David:     Yeah. Who has ideas that differ, whatever. This is a very sad day. Let’s get into my old habit of trying to put into a sentence what it is we’re hoping to convey and let’s hope that this sentence has some of the feeling in it as well. I took a long time writing this out and when I got done, you said it’s pretty good, but I think I can improve on it.

Karen:     I am the writer of the family. So, sometimes that happens.

David:     Okay. The harmful, childish habit of habitually blaming others can be halted by developing the practice of honest and humble self-examination.

Karen:     Let me read that again. So just for emphasis, our listeners can listen again to it. The harmful, childish habit of habitually blaming others can be halted by developing the practice of honest and humble self-examination. Now why do we say that? That’s the thing I think we need to go into.

David:     Well, I think it’s very important that we look at ourselves. Am I a part of the problem or can I somehow help in terms of the solution? I still have one suggestion I’m going to make and it’s a good one, but I’m not sure people will hear me, but I’m going to try it. I’m reminded Karen of the old spiritual. It’s not my brother or my sister, but it’s me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Until we come into that humble attitude, we’re not going to see a solution to this problem.

Karen:     Yeah. Generally, I find that when I’m upset with someone, I’m upset with them because there is something lacking in myself. I can’t exercise charity. I only exercise judgment. I point the finger because I’m not mature enough on the inside. And so, I do need to look and say and ask myself the question, why does that bother me so much? Why is that person all my buttons? Why does that person get under my skin? It’s not their problem that I’m reacting to them. It’s my problem that I’m reacting to them. And I need to look within. Now sometimes what happens? This is not infrequent. The thing that bothers me about that person is a characteristic that I’m having trouble with that bothers me about me. And so instead of taking responsibility for my own maturity, I don’t say, “Okay, God help me become a better person and forgive me for being that way.” I impose it upon that person who’s acting in a way that I often act but don’t like about myself. So consequently, I don’t like it about them. So, this role of self-examination is extremely important in that feeling of wanting to point fingers or blame or being judgmental is a good sign that there’s something within us that we need to come to terms with. And what we want to do is extend charity. We want to say “We don’t know what all is going on and I don’t know why that person is choosing to be that way or think that way. Can I find out? Can I sit and ask them and listen to them? Tell me why.”

David:     “Yeah. I want to hear where you’re coming from. I don’t want to argue. I just want to hear where you’re coming from.” I want to go into another family story.

Karen:     Okay, we get a lot to do.

David:     I don’t know where this started. I know it wasn’t me, so I’m going to say this is your fault.

Karen:     Okay, blame me.

David:     But we don’t have couches in our living room area. We have two very long church pews. And we’ve had church pews in our living rooms for a long, long time.

Karen:     We do have one couch. And then on either side of the couch there are two church pews that face one another, but they are beside the fireplace. So, the couch faces the fireplace and then either side are these two church pews. And the reason we have church pews is we had so many people in our home who lived with us. We had groups coming in all the time and we went through upholstered furniture. It just collapsed because we had a lot of young men in our home, friends of our kids or whoever they were. They’d plop on the furniture. And so, after we’d replaced a few couches with secondhand pieces that had other years of wear, I said, “Enough of this. We’re just going to get church pews and we’re going to put them beside.”

David:     Yeah, it’s coming back to me now. In fact, I remember, especially in the inner city, where sometimes people would need a place to stay, people who had been drinking.

Karen:     Right.

David:     Or get them out of a tavern. And after a couple of times of people throwing up on our couches, I said “Church pews are probably a better idea.” So, we’ve had these for a long time and now I’m going into one of your ways of disciplining say our two young boys…

Karen:     …who are always fussing at one another. There’s like three, or four-years difference between them. They were youngest.

David:     Yeah. And so, you would say what?

Karen:     I’d say “I want you to go and sit on the church pews and you are going to work this out between you. I am not your judge. You are going to figure out.”

David:     I can’t tell who did it for who.

Karen:     “I can’t, you know, cause you’re blaming one another. And so, I’m not going to even try and separate this out. You go sit in the church pews and don’t get up out of the church pews until you’ve come up with a solution.” Now when they were sitting on the church pew, I could hear if I were in the kitchen, Jeremy who was the youngest, “Joel, come on, we can get, we can get up.” And Joel say, “no, not going to work it out.”

I was just a pill. And so, then I said, “Okay, you can sit here on these church pews till you’re ready to work this out. But while you’re sitting here, you have to say, calm my spirit, calm my spirit.” Now every parent knows that the worst part of parenting is arbitrating between kids who are having fights with one another. Because they do this, they blame one another through the whole thing. So, in the kitchen, I’d hear these little boys going, of course their feet are swinging back and forth, “Calm my spirit, calm my spirit, calm my spirit. Joel, are you ready?” “No, not going to.” “Calm my spirit.” Two little boys.

David:     Come on, we’ve been here a long time.

Karen:     So, that’s the story of the church pews.

David:     Karen, I’m almost reticent to say what I’m going to say.

Karen:     Ok. I’m listening.

David:     I’ve laid the background. Okay. I think that churches because we can’t meet many, many places, churches can’t gather. We could still open churches that have pews, and we could say to the people of those congregations, “I don’t know whether you’re for Trump or for Biden, but you need to talk to each other and understand each other where you’re coming from. And a good place to do that, because sometimes it’s awkward, is here where we have church pews. There’s a long pew right in the front. Somebody can sit at one end. Somebody else at the other end of pew number two. You can start talking and don’t interrupt to say, ‘this is why I feel I’m going to vote for so and so’. And the other person can say, this is why I feel I’m going to do the… you can learn from one another. If you start getting back into arguing, he did it, she did it. Then you have to stop and calm your spirits.”

Karen:     You know, we’re kind of laughing about this, but there are a lot of families that are not able to have significant conversations as families if they get into these areas. So, it could be something where people would take this model and just say, “Okay, we’re going to calm our spirits, calm our spirits.” Go to the nearest church, borrow the church pews, and see if you can’t come to a point where you are able to hear. Basically, able to hear without judgment. Let that person have their opinion without denigrating it. I mean, there’s, we got a whole possibility here.

David:     Talk quietly. You know, you could even have a conversation going on in the back pews.

Karen:     And you can’t leave until you work it out. That’s the point of it all. You can’t leave until you work it out.

David:     You can sit there and say, “Calm my spirit, calm.” You know, I think, Karen, if we could resolve it with congregation members, we could open up the churches all around the country. We’re not going to preach. We’re just going to let you come and talk and listen to one another.

Karen:     Calm your spirit.

David:     And you’re going to learn how to say something nice about it.

Karen:     There’s possibilities in this. There really is possibilities.

David:     Well, I think I’m facetious and I think I’m not being facetious. Somewhere we need to change, or we’re headed on that projectile where there’s sadness and pain ahead that is even beyond what we know at this present time. Yeah, a song I like very much. It’s God Bless America. You know who wrote that? I told you this morning.

Karen:     Yeah. But I didn’t know that until this morning.

David:     Yeah.

Karen:     Irving Berlin. I’ll tell people who Irving Berlin is. Our age set will know.

David:     Well, we think of him as a show person, probably one of the greatest of all American songwriters. Not only God Bless America, his first hit came out in 1911.

Karen:     Wow.

David:     That was Alexander’s ragtime band. You can play the tune in your head even as I say.

Karen:     It’s almost there. Yeah.

David:     You know, Irving Berlin was born in Russia. And he came over here as a young boy, got into show business, wrote…

Karen:     Immigrant. Oh, my goodness.

David:     …White Christmas. Easter Parade. No business-like show business.

Karen:     You know, a lot of these are still played.

David:     Anything you could do; I could do better.

Karen:     Oh yes.

David:     Yeah, there are all these songs. And he wrote God Bless America, not as a hymn. He wrote it as a patriotic song, if you please. And I love it. It’s shorter. There was a time when people said, let’s replace the National Anthem with God Bless America. I would probably vote for that. I like it because when I sing or hear God Bless America, I think of the God I worship, but it could be a Muslim would think of the God he or she worships and so on. It isn’t partisan in that sense. God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above. I’d change one word in that line. From the mountains to the prairies to the ocean white with foam, God bless America. My own sweet home. It’s very beautiful. The word I change is the… The lyrics are, through the night with the light from above. I would say, through this night with the light from above. Stand beside her and guide her through this night with the light from above. From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam, God bless America. My home, sweet home. God bless America. My home, sweet home.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois, 60187.