We're still in denial about debt

Financial debt

Financial debt - personal, corporate and national - has been much in the news recently. We're beginning to recognise the glaringly obvious: that we can't continue to live beyond our means. Debts have to be repaid sooner or later and this is usually painful.

As a nation we are struggling to put in place austerity measures which will bring the debt mountain down while still protecting the poorest and most vulnerable. So far we seem to be failing on both counts, in that our national debt is still increasing, while it is the poor, the young and the vulnerable who are being worst hit by the cuts.

The cost of addressing this debt is counted in redundancies, unemployment, longer working lives and reduced pensions. It's painful, and is likely to last years.

But this is only the financial debt - the one kind of debt we are waking up to and daring to address. There are other, much greater debts, not even spoken of or considered, and which will demand a much more savage repayment.

Debt to the third world

We in the Western world continue to live our affluent lives on the backs of exploited labour and plundered resources, which we take without proper recompense from the third world. This is a debt to the majority of the world's population, kept in poverty in order to maintain the minority in comfort - so we can pamper our pets, worry about losing weight, and have shiny cars to wash. ['The West' - the North American, European and Australasian continents plus Japan - amounts to about 22% of the world’s population.]

The cost of addressing this debt would be much greater costs for many goods, and a consequent significant decrease in the living standards in the West over the decades to come. No - let's not even think about that!

But do we think this can continue forever without some pay-back? Civil unrest, mass migration, wars and the fall of western powers are all likely.

Debt of natural resources

But there is a yet greater debt! It arises from the profligate use of the world's natural resources. We use up millions of years of coal and oil in a few decades; we take iron, other raw materials and precious natural minerals as if there is no tomorrow.

And in so doing we rape the planet, change the climate, melt the ice caps - and make it increasingly likely that there will be no tomorrow for our children and our grandchildren.

The cost of this debt is weighed in the survival of the human race in any form that we would recognise today, quite probably within the space of hundreds of years.

The debt of sin

Finally we enter the realm of debt where the cost is not just a matter of belt-tightening or redundancies, nor even significant changes in lifestyle, but is a matter of personal life and death.

All the above comes under the heading of sin. And for this there is no repayment possible other than falling on our knees in humble repentance and seeking God's undeserved forgiveness.

Don't assume this is a small matter - the cost to Jesus was death, and to us is choosing whether to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. And this decision has consequences not just for tens or hundreds of years, but for all of our eternity.


Like the financial debts, none of these other debts are going to go away; they only get worse while we pretend we're fine. The question is: are we going to continue to turn a blind eye until it is too late and we reap the consequences of our actions? Or are we going to begin right now?