Kicking the Can Down the Road
Recently, a lot has been said about “kicking the can down the road” in the United States.
The phrase kicking the can down the road means delaying a decision in hopes that the problem or issue will go away … or somebody else will make the decision later. Does that sound familiar?
In America citizens have grown weary of the government’s unwillingness to grapple with the huge amount of national debt we have incurred as a nation over the past 20 years.
It’s a national debt so incomprehensible that experts say it’s better to compare it to a household budget to really grasp it. Our total tax revenue is about $2.2 trillion. In terms we can understand, it’s equivalent to a person having a $22,000-per-year job, but spending $18,000 MORE than he makes each year and having credit card debt equaling—get this!—$143,000, yet, with all of this debt, paying only $400 a year against his credit card bill!
How unrealistic is that? It’s another example of what happens when we live in denial!
So, what is this “kicking the can down the road” all about?
It’s really a two-part philosophy:
1. Ignore and put off discovering difficult issues that have the possibility of showing something isn’t working or going right.
2. After these issues can no longer be ignored or remain hidden, then put off for tomorrow the hard choices that we know should be made today to solve these issues.
But what about YOU? What about your personal life, its challenges, its decisions?
Do you ignore reality about the problems in your life and deny the need to understand their true causes?
Do you put off till tomorrow the tough choices that you need to make in order to solve the problems you face?
Late in His earthly ministry, Jesus Christ referred to a similar attitude that would pervade society at the time of the end. In Matthew 24 He said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved” [verses 21-22, King James Version].
Truly a horrific time when world conditions and problems will be worse than man has ever seen!
Yet the actions of the people at the time Christ described say much about man’s focus amidst these troubled times. Notice: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” [verses 37-39].
In other words, a time of a world in denial, a society that continues with “life” as they know it—all the while ignoring the conditions that surround them—expecting someone else to address the reality of the problems they face.
While the U.S. government is, once again, “kicking the can down the road” regarding the responsibility to balance the federal budget, there are even more pressing problems that are being ignored and denied.
God’s Word reveals the sobering story of a world of conflict, confusion and deteriorating morals at the end of the age—a time when mankind will actually be “looking the other way,” “living in denial” and choosing ignorance over understanding when it comes to the cause of man’s myriad problems and the answers needed to solve them.
Left to himself, mankind will continue to “kick the can down the road.”
For Life, Hope & Truth, I’m Doug Horchak.
