Scapegoating God: When Certainty Becomes a Shield

Scapegoating God: When Certainty Becomes a Shield

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

People love a scapegoat.

When something goes wrong, we look for someone — or something — to blame. And more often than we care to admit, that scapegoat is God.

We see it in history. People have justified wars, colonization, slavery, and genocide by claiming divine authority. We see it in our personal lives, too. People make harmful choices, destroy relationships, or uphold oppressive systems and say, God told me to.

But let’s be real: is it God? Or is it the human need for certainty, protection, and control?

The Convenience of a Divine Scapegoat

We don’t like to sit with ambiguity. So, we take our deeply felt convictions — our best guesses about what is right, true, and good — and we make them necessary. We act like they are fixed, unshakable, and beyond question. Not because we know they’re true, but because they give us a sense of security.

That’s how binary systems work.

In a binary system, there has to be a clear right and a clear wrong. There has to be a…