When You Have Two Flat Tires, Not One

Years ago I was on the interstate driving home after meeting with a friend. Suddenly I heard a loud “boom” and immediately it felt like my car was traveling on a cobblestone road. Quickly pulling to the roadside, I found the right rear tire totally flat. More than flat – shredded. (Have you ever had shredded wheat cereal for breakfast? That’s what the tire looked like.)

One flat tire is troublesome
enough, but two at once?

After replacing the destroyed tire with the spare tire “donut” provided by the manufacturer, I started out, expecting to complete my return trip. But the car began shuddering as much as before. So I again steered off the road and discovered the right front tire also in shreds. What? Flat tires are common, but how often do two go flat simultaneously? I hadn’t seen anything in the road, but something large and very sharp must have cut both tires severely.

Nothing like turning a smooth, carefree ride back to the office into chaos. It gave whole new meaning to the term, “tire-less worker.”

Since vehicles don’t come with two donuts, I called a wrecker service to haul my car to the next exit and find someplace to replace both tires. My unexpected travel dilemma required not one solution, but two.

I was reminded of this experience recently by my friend, Randy Nabors. In his own blog post entitled, “Sometimes A Car Has More Than One Flat Tire,” he comments on circumstances surrounding the shooting and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Mo. I’ll not get into what Randy has to say, but it’s insightful. If you’d like to read it, here’s the link: http://randysrag.blogspot.com/2014/08/sometimes-car-has-more-than-one-flat.html

Applying this observation in a broader sense, life’s problems often have multiple facets that can’t be resolved in one easy step. Poverty is one example. Some people insist the solution is simply raising the minimum wage. Increase hourly pay a few dollars, problem solved. Nice theory.

This certainly would provide relief, at least for some, but issues surrounding the poor – and poverty in general – are numerous, complex, and often multi-generational. Deeply rooted problems stemming from poor education, declining parental influence, lack of preparation and training for jobs, even a lack of positive role models, individuals who’ve risen above impoverished circumstances to provide hope and inspiration for others. Simply boosting hourly pay rates could help, but as a long-range answer it would be like applying a Band-Aid to a cancerous growth.

The “sometimes there’s more than one flat tire” principle applies to many pressing issues facing our society and the world today: Health care, escalating violence, energy concerns, war, disease, equal opportunity, economic disparity, bigotry, and others. In the home, resolving marital strife, the challenge of raising and guiding children to become productive adults, addressing financial problems, and other problems also can often seem like incurring multiple flat tires on a car at the same time.

So what should we do, individually and as a people? Shrug our shoulders and declare the problems are too many, too complicated, so everyone should just look out for themselves? This seems to be the attitude of some, but we know it’s not the right response. And while the easy, quick fix often can’t eradicate deeply rooted problems, any attempt to provide help is better than no efforts to offer assistance.

James 4:17 states, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” So we have a responsibility to do what we can. To recognize a problem, but choose to do nothing when we have the capacity to help in some way, is sinful and abhorrent to God, according to the Bible.

At the same time, isolated attempts to address problems, without the concerted efforts and contributions of other able-bodied and resourced people, usually amount to the proverbial “drop in the bucket.” For persistent problems defying the quick-fix, the book of James offers more advice: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).

Knowledge is good and important. But it requires wisdom to determine how best to sift through the vast storehouse of knowledge available and discern how best to apply it, aiming to solve or at least alleviate problems rather than intensify and prolong them.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

A morning news show interviewed a young woman who was overcoming “orthorexia.” Have you ever heard of it? This, I learned, is a real condition in which a person forms a “fixation on righteous eating” – becoming obsessed with eating properly. Well, you learn something new every day.

For many of us, a refrigerator is like a
magnet. Even filled with good things,
it can become too much of a good thing.

This eating disorder, while different from bulimia or anorexia, can become equally problematic. This woman said she would stand in front of her refrigerator for 20 minutes debating what she could eat that was good for her. Over time she developed a variety of maladies including rashes and even disruption of her monthly cycle. In her determination not to let anything unwholesome enter her mouth, she apparently was restricting herself to too much of a good thing.

Admittedly, most of us will never struggle with this problem – ours is more likely the opposite, trying to ward off the temptation to over-consume fat grams, calories, and other unhealthy ingredients in the foods we eat regularly. But can you see how even good things can become bad things in excess?

Work is a good thing for many reasons, yet we all know of people who have become workaholics, spending inordinate amounts of time on the job to the detriment of family, friends, even their physical and emotional well-being. The Internet (in most cases) is a good thing, but if we spend too much of our waking hours “surfing the web,” or being entertained by social media, we can easily neglect other important matters.

Being a devoted spouse or parent is good, but there are limits even for this. We all need our personal space, and children need to learn to become less dependent on mom and dad as they get older. So if your son or daughter is 30 years old and has never lived away from home, maybe it’s time for them to adopt a personal declaration of independence.

Too much of a good thing can apply even to activities such as attending church or reading the Bible. How? Well, for starters, if you’re in the church building every moment the doors are open, but aren’t providing spiritual leadership in your own home, maybe it’s time to reorder priorities.

I’ve known people that have gone from one conference on evangelism to another without ever speaking to another soul about Jesus Christ. James 4:17 states, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” The Scriptures also offer this challenge: “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” Just soaking up good information, no matter how much, has little value if we don’t put it to use.

Perhaps the classic example is the “rich fool” Jesus described. This businessman, apparently a farmer, had experienced a bumper crop, one that exceeded the capacity of his barns. “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’” (Luke 12:14-20).

Moral of the story: Anything to excess, no matter how good, is excessive.