Blaming the Victim

Are people to blame for their own misfortunes? Is there a "karma" which assures that if we act morally good things will come to us, and in contrast, that if we act badly, evil things will boomerang back? Does that mean that every time something unfortunate happens to me I'm being punished for something wrong I've done?

In sociological circles, it is called "blaming the victim" when we claim that people must somehow deserve the misfortunes they suffer. It is a mentality which unfortunately afflicts many religious people who often see calamities as divine retribution. We have only to look at last month's earthquake in Haiti and the unfortunate remarks of Pat Robertson who claimed it was divine payback for a pact Haitians supposedly made with the devil some 400 years ago.

But it is certainly not isolated to religious types. How many people around the world - and in our country - believe that the events of 9/11 were retribution for America's misuse of power over the years?

Why is such a mentality - though often subtle and unspoken - so prevalent in our society?

First of all, blaming the victim gives us an excuse to not help those in need because they are the cause of their own suffering. We often hear people say, "He made his bed; now let him lie in it." When we are gripped by this mentality, we claim that the poor are impoverished because they are lazy. Or we might say that if we give the homeless money, they will only spend it on booze and drugs. By blaming people for the adversity they face, we can wash our hands of any responsibility to come to their aid.

Secondly, blaming the victim gives us a false sense of security. If bad things only happen to bad people, then we can keep ourselves safe simply by being good. Because we believe in God and go to church every Sunday, we can be deluded into thinking that we live a charmed life and that no misfortune can ever touch us. And when something unfortunate eventual does happen to us - when we have experienced a sudden death in the family or have lost our job unexpectedly - we wonder what evil we could have done in our lives to deserve it. We blame God for abandoning us and insist that we were entitled to better treatment because of our good behavior.

I suspect that many of us, if honest, can admit to falling into this trap in our own thinking. When we do, we are strangling off compassion for our fellow human beings and setting ourselves up for major disappointment when we realize that things do not always go our way just because we are pious. Most of all, we are perpetuating an image of God as a tyrant who is just waiting for any opportunity to smite us.