Assigning Blame????

 I cannot in good conscience assign blame equally. The Bible doesn't either. When the prophets rail against Israel's sin, it's the Priests and the Kings who are faulted - folks with power, the power to change things for the better, but who choose to change things to suit their own interests and feed their own appetites. 


When Jesus over-turns a table or two, it's in the Temple, the bastion of religious power. Jesus clearly speaks to all, but his harshest words are directed, not to the people, but to the powerful. 


Jesus would not tell a poor single Mom living in South LA to spend a little less, and not put anything on a credit card. 


No. Jesus would speak to the system that keeps her unemployed or underemployed; a system that fails to provide public transportation; child-care; health-care; good schools; clean water and air; healthy food. A system designed and managed by the powerful during the last 50 years, for the sake of the powerful; a system sucking the life out of millions. 


To speak of an equality of responsibility is biblically impossible - Jesus said it well: "Those to whom much has been given, much is expected." Responsibility for building a just and life-inducing world belongs to the powerful. In their failure, they are condemned ("hard for a rich man to make it" - parable of rich man and Lazarus), and in their success (e.g.Zacchaeus), be blessed.