When things are not going our way, isn’t there a tendency to “pass the buck?” I mean it is relative easy to blame someone or something else, when we come up short, isn’t it?
You know where the first recorded incident of “passing the buck” is located? It is found in the Bible in the first chapter of Genesis.
The scene finds Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As the plot unfolds, Eve is confronted by a sleek looking, smooth talking serpent. The serpent talks Eve into eating fruit from a forbidden tree that God had previously told Adam and Eve was off limits to them.
Being the good partner, Eve passes the sweet, juicy fruit along to Adam. And he also ate.
Both realizing their sin, tried to hide from God. But as they should have known, there was no hiding from God. He sternly inquired of Adam, “Have you eaten of the fruit from the Forbidden Tree in the garden?”
Adam immediately reached for an alibi, “The woman that you gave to me, she gave me the fruit and I did eat.” Adam had just uttered the first incident of “passing the buck.”
Notice here that Adam passed the buck in two directions: First, he implied that God was partly responsible, for it was the woman He gave to Adam that first created the problem. Adam intimated that maybe God should have checked her references a little better. Then He would have known better than to dispensed her to be with him in such new and unprecedented surroundings.
Adam wasn’t finished. Then he implicated Eve, indicating that if she had not provided the fruit, he wouldn’t have eaten it.
What about Eve? She didn’t bear up any better. She pointed the guilty finger at the serpent. It was the serpent who started the ball rolling in the first place, wasn’t it?
Through the ages, we find that the technique of “passing the buck” hasn’t been improved upon very much. An alibi is still an alibi, regardless of how we try to spin it, isn’t it?
Some things to think about:
You won't ever be better by trying to make someone else look worse.
When we throw dirt, we lose ground.
The best thing for us to do behind someone’s back is to pat it.
We should use a telescope when judging others… a microscope on ourselves.
