Who's fault is it?

Before you read on, you need to know this one basic assumption: I haven't been closely following the BP oil spill. I don't know what caused it, but I'm assuming that it had to do with someone making a mistake--either by poorly installing equipment, or poorly inspecting equipment, or using poorly designed equipment.

Recently the CEO of BP has been taking a lot of flack. The media (and everyone else) seems to point their fingers at him and him only. But this whole time I've thought that that claim was ridiculous--the CEO is in no way responsible for the oil spill. I don't even think the failed recovery attempts are his fault either.

It is not the CEOs job to manage each individual oil well. In fact, he is doing his job poorly if he does focus on each minute detail of the company. He has executives who are over vice presidents who are over directors who are over managers who are over workers (this isn't the exact hierarchy at BP, but the point is that there are a lot of layers of leadership). Some worker or manager or director or vice president might be in a slick situation (get it...), but the CEO was not the man on the oil rig that made whatever mistake that caused this big oil spill.

Basically we are blaming the CEO for the failed actions of someone below him. The truth is, he is the CEO and he's ultimately the one left to explain the situation, but he isn't the one at fault. The only thing that senior leadership can do is implement training procedures for the company to follow. The failure of the CEO is a reflection of failure of people in BP to follow company procedures or instructions.

Now the difference between God and the CEO is that the CEO is not all-knowing. The CEO does not know every fault and short coming of the people that work for him, but God does. But, in the same way that it's not the CEO's responsibility to be the employee, it's not God's responsibility to be each follower.

It's not the BP CEO's fault, but someone else's. It is likely that the person who cause the spill failed to follow some established policy (either in the way he did something or failure to properly inspect things). The CEO is getting all of the flack for the worker who did not follow the rules properly.

God is like that CEO. He personally didn't cause any "oil spills" (i.e. murders, disasters, sins, etc), but he did create a manual that his "employees" (followers) are meant to follow (i.e. Holy Spirit and Bible). If you blame God for something, you shouldn't blame him, but rather the one who didn't follow God's rules.