An Entirely New Perspective

(It is pretty good sign that you are too tired to be blogging when after posting you realize that you made several mistakes within the first paragraph.)

Recently I finally, after almost exactly two years of holding my permit, obtained my driver's license.

For a long time there wasn't any real reason for me to get my license. My family didn't have an extra vehicle for me to drive, I didn't need to be able to transport myself anywhere on a regular basis, and the cost of insurance and gas wasn't something I had the income to cover. Since starting college the possibility of hauling myself to and fro became a much more promising prospect. My father also replaced his rapidly aging vehicle with a slightly less aged vehicle and I started working two jobs. Once all those things kind of fell into place, we started working on getting my required driving hours down and a few weeks ago I finally reached the point where I had the opportunity to take the driving test and I passed.

Until kicks the bucket or becomes too expensive to maintain, my dad's vehicle is more or less mine to use. It is technically still the property of my parents but I bought its new set of tires and am responsible for keeping it full of gas and covering any future repairs costs (Oh the joys of adulthood!). I have dubbed my little blue means of transportation the Rickety Cricket Nickety Mobile and thus far it has done a might good job of getting me around to where I need to be. (I'm praying it won't be in need of any major repairs any time soon...)

For the most part I've just been making the same drive from home to school day after day but since I got my license I've made to "major" trips. I drove myself to the Fortress of Solitude (or My Home Away From Home) two hours away the weekend after getting my license so I could spend a few days hanging out with some of my very closest friends. For that trip I had a passenger to talk with and serve as another responsible driver in case some kind of an emergency occurred. Then this last weekend I made the hour and a half drive to and from my brother and sister-in-law's place so I could spend the day hanging out with my older broski and that time I made the trip by myself.

I know for most people by the time they reach my age/college have been driving for at least a year already (usually more) and it isn't any big deal, but having the power to get myself where I need to be and the flexibility to decide for myself that I am going to take a weekend trip to visit my friends is still a spectacular phenomenon in my eyes and I've been thinking about it a lot recently, especially as I returned home from spending the day with my brother.

When we get behind the wheel of a car we are taking a lot of responsibility into our hands. The lives of ourselves, our passengers, and anyone else out on the road is placed in our hands. When someone gets into a car with you they really are giving you control over their fate for the duration of that trip. It is easy to consider driving, especially that trip from home to work/school that you make every day, as a routine activity as normal as walking or eating, but it is really much more significant than that.

In order to get a discount on my insurance I, among other things, watched a video created by my family's insurance company made up of interviews with various young people that had been involved in fatal car accidents (obviously they were not the fatalities). In some cases they were the drivers and in others they were the passengers, but each in case the lives of some of their closest friends or family members were ended. One girl was in an accident where four of her best friends died because her boyfriend thought it would be funny to yank on the steering wheel while she was going somewhere around thirty miles over the speed limit.

In the video, every accident occurred when the driver was going at least twenty miles of the speed limit and in one of them a guy was going close to 90 miles an hour in what I believe was somewhere between a 40 and 50 mph speed limit zone. In one case the driver and passenger had both been drinking even though the driver was under the legal blood-alcohol limit.

Going that fast and drinking while driving are irresponsibility that are easy to shake our heads at, but on a regular basis almost everyone breaks some kind of road law or another. Speeding between five and ten miles an hour over the limit is done so frequently it is ridiculous. Some people apparently never learned how to use a turn signal. Certain individuals seem to be under the impression that "left turn only" can be read as "right turns are allowed here" and every once in a while stopping at lights and signs becomes optional.

Now, I am far from guiltless in these regards. I've just begun my driving career and I am already fully aware of the temptation to take that 25 MPH speed limit as more of a suggestion than the law, but the fact is that laws exist for a reason and it is not up to us to decide whether or not they apply to us.

When we take risks with our driving we put the lives of everyone around us at risk as well. No matter how talented of a driver we might think we are it only takes one slip up to do something that can never be undone. Obeying the rules of the road not only helps to prevent you from making mistakes but it serves as protection against other, more reckless drivers too.

It is incredibly easy for even those of us who typically strive to be more conservative drivers to let our standards fall to the wayside when we are running late to work, school, or some other appointment but the potential for disaster far outweighs being late to wherever you are supposed to be. I have being late as much as the next person, but when we speed or make a reckless/sudden lane change for the sake of trying to save a little time we are saying, not consciously necessarily, that  our timeliness is more important than the safety of yourself, your passenger, and everyone else on the road. If you are supposed to turn and your in the left lane and you only have one block till your turn then maybe you just have to miss your turn and find a way to get back where you need to be, because it is not worth swerving in front of other drivers who will not be able to react in time.

I am not a very good driver, at least not yet, and so I try extra hard to be sensitive about using my turn signals and clearly indicating to everyone around me what I am going to be doing (sometimes I fail), but even if you are an expert driver with decades of experience and you think that you can easily shift lanes without causing any problems you should still use your signal. What if the person you are turning in front of was getting ready to speed up and pass you?

I should probably stop ranting because it isn't actually going accomplish anything and the purpose of this post wasn't meant to be a lecture about driving safely...

What I wanted to get to address was mainly this change in perspective that driving has given me. I see vehicular transportation in a whole new light now that I have the ability to actually control the vehicle and make my own decisions. For one thing, I feel significantly more interdependent and having to power to get myself where I need/want to be is pretty incredible. The problem is that I every time I drive I become more aware of how appealing compromising what you know is right becomes when you have the power to call the shots.

It is truly a mark of humanity's sinful nature when, as soon as we are presented with the power to do something good, the wrong we could do with that power moves to the forefront of our minds. Good men turn sour when put into positions of high authority and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Having the power to do something seems to give us the impression that we suddenly have the authority to dictate what is right or wrong. We start to delude ourselves into thinking that we are smarter than the people that established the rules in the first place and that if we can get away with it we should be allowed to do it. We see it in others all the time, but we never want to accept it in ourselves. We fume in rage at the person who pulls in front of us without a signal but when it comes time for us to turn we frequently and conveniently forget that.

The thing is, all of our power and all of our influence is given to us by someone else. We might claim driving as our right as U.S. citizens but the government could easily take that right away from us. The same goes with all of our "rights" and all of our "power." No matter how high you go up there is always someone hire who distributed that power. Power, influence, control, leadership... all of them are gifts that we have a responsibility to use in a particular way.

Along with the right to drive we are given a series of rules to follow. We are given a speed limit, we are given traffic signals, and we are given instructions to take care of other drivers and of pedestrians. If we break those rules than we forfeit our right to our power. When we start acting like everyone else on the road, whether they be in a car, on a bike, or on foot, needs to cater to our wants and desires we have allowed our power, which is no more than a gift, to go to our head and inflate our egos to something beyond what they really are.

There is a lot to be said for being dependent on others. It teaches us humility and it helps us to understand that everything we have is actually a gift, and that goes far beyond legal matters of this world. Abuse of power and freedom was what caused the fall of man.

Everything we have and everything we are is a gift given us from God. Our families, our wealth, or power, our influence, our status and everything we ever achieve in life comes from what God has granted us. He gives these gifts to us freely because he loves and cares for us, but that doesn't mean we have the right to do whatever we want with them.

When we have been abundantly showered with gifts and privileges we somehow start to think like we have a right to them and that for whoever is supplying them to stop handing them our would be wrong, abusive, and/or negligent. There is an honest appreciation and gratitude the blessings we have in life that is lost when we reach a certain point of comfort and success in our lives. This is so blatantly visible in modern American (and probably many European) culture where not only are all our needs met but we live in a land full of excess and plenty. Our entire world becomes centered on what we have a "right" to and what our government and "privileged" members of society owe us. Forget the 1%, the remaining 99% is still better off than those living in mud houses and starving in various developing countries across the world. Our self centered, power blinded attitudes extend far beyond our driving habits. You can see them in our masses scrambling for free benefits and hand outs from the government, you can see them in the business and political realms where people clutch their wealth and influence to their chests as if their lives depend upon it, and you can see it most prominently, in my opinion, in our wanton slaughter of unborn children for the sake of sexual freedom and convenience.

We have power in this county. Not just those living in New York Penthouses, but everyone with food on their plates and clothing on their backs. We have power and we have been exceedingly blessed, and yet instead of being thankful for that and taking the blessings we have been giving to live in love and kindness towards our neighbor we shove each other to the ground in order to demonstrate that we are deserving of more. It happens everyone on every level from driving to our views of religion.

Maybe it is true that going thirty-five in a thirty mph zone isn't going to do any harm. Maybe that is true. But there is a problem in your understanding of what that speed limit and our right to drive means. The Law is not a suggestion for us to follow when we feel like it. We have been granted truly incredible gifts and opportunities, but with those privileges come rules Those rules may not make any sense to us. They might seem unfair or ridiculous, but their power comes not from how much sense they make to us but from the entity that creates them.

Again, I fail in this regard all the time and I am regularly guilty of self-centered actions and pretentious decision making, but I will still confess what I believe to be true regardless of how often I fail to stand up the standards I believe to be right. I may not be able to confess my beliefs and thoughts eloquently or entirely coherently, but what that which is true will stand up on its own regardless of my attempts to support it.

Following the Law to the letter is always what we should do, and bending or breaking it will always be wrong. Thankfully the Gospel and the Resurrection will always be there for us when we mess up, but even the fact that our sins our forgiven doesn't change the fact that they are still sins. The gifts we are given may be ours, but when we abuse them or take them for granted we are at fault.

Anyhow... that is probably enough drowsy ranting for now. I hope, as always, that this is benefit to my readers and not merely incoherent ramblings.

This is the kind of stuff I think about when I'm driving. 

Pax

"I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.
He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.
He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil.
All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him."
(Luther's Small Catechism meaning of the first article of the Apostles Creed)