Brink of the Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park. August 2023.
Knowledge is good, for many reasons. But it is not wisdom. Insight is similar to wisdom. Insight comes from inspiration.
Wisdom is knowing what to do when the right rules aren’t apparent, or perhaps don’t directly or obviously apply.
This book is practical in its instruction. But since the wise know that all men are fools — never forgetting the possibility that they themselves may be the chiefest among them — it is wisest perhaps to remember that we fools by our very nature despise wisdom and instruction.
We’re all in our “terrible twos”: We don’t like being confronted, contradicted, being made to feel powerless, small, like a fool.
However, we must ask God’s power to set these things aside, grow up enough so that we can receive the words of this book, treasure up its commands, make our ears attentive to wisdom, and incline our hearts to understanding.
In part one, I told you that it’s entirely possible to find peace on the roads, that the stress of driving comes down to an animal/biological/physiological response: Fight or Flight.
The question is this: Can we, how do we check out of this game?
First the bad news: Just like everything else Jesus tells us, it’s hard work and requires continual awareness. But freedom is on the other side, folks. It will be worth it.
Let’s talk about fear first.
Fear is an appropriate response to danger. The roads are sometimes dangerous. And yet we’re very clearly told to “fear not.” What this does not mean is that we are to go doing stupid things like jumping off of cliffs. What is does mean is that if you do everything you can to be safe but still cannot avoid a potentially dangerous situation, do not worry, for God is with you.
We have to drive: You gotta go to the store and get food for your family or yourself. You have to go to work to provide for your family or yourself. On vacation, you need to get out of town to see God’s creation, to renew. You need to visit your parents. Etc.
So drive carefully and wisely. Beyond that, do not fear.
Ok, that’s flight. What about fight? What about anger?
I am convinced that as Christians we do not own anger, except in the rarest of situations: righteous anger (e.g. somebody is about to hurt a child and you need to step in to stop it).
Almost all of our anger comes from ugly places. For instance, pride says, “I would never do such a thing!” Truth is, yes you probably would if you were in their shoes, if you had their upbringing, life circumstances, etc.
Let’s talk about a situation you know far too well: Let’s say you’re going to a concert and there’s a very long line to exit the freeway. Somebody in the lane to your left speeds all the way down the line as far as they can, and then pulls into a gap near the front of the line. Infuriating, isn’t it?
It shouldn’t be. You don’t know their life situation overall, and you don’t know what’s going on with them right that moment. You really don’t.
A quick story: Many years ago, my dear wife was in the car rushing my son to a place where he could get medical attention because was having great difficulty breathing. She didn’t have time to get an ambulance. She had to hurry to save his life. Someone, most probably thinking they were going to “show” my dear wife and not let her speed, repeatedly pulled in front of her to prevent her from proceeding at that pace.
Ok, you say, that’s for sure a cautionary tale. But that kind of situation is, like what, one-tenth of a percent of speeders? What about the other 99.9%?
Easy answer, tough to execute: Jesus tells us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” If a person is simply an idiot, I mean really an idiot with little regard for others, they’re not going to repent and change their lives because a stranger is angry with them.
Give up judging aggressive drivers –turn that over to God. Drive wisely and carefully. Get out of people’s way. Swallow your pride and anger*. Admit that you don’t know everything. Pray for those who persecute you. Take comfort in knowing that God’s got it all covered.
*Regardless of how long you’ve been driving, you will almost certainly have a very large amount of built-up anger, fear, frustration, and disappointment. You have to find a way to get that out so that you can find peace! Cry it out, talk it out, whatever it takes. Counselors can help.Identify it and do the work to remove it from your life.
We don’t like being told what to do, even by God himself. We don’t like rules. They are a suffocating blanket. Freedom is what we want.
Are God’s rules suffocating? Is it freedom from Him that we really want?
In Psalm 119:97-99, we are told that God’s commands for us are to be “desired more than gold,” that they are “sweeter than honey.” That they “give [us] more understanding than all of [our] teachers,” “make wise the simple,” “delight the heart,” and “enlighten the eyes.”
Ok, wait a minute. What the psalmist is telling us here seems to strongly conflict with our idea of freedom. What’s going on?
Because we are dull in wisdom and hard of heart, Jesus sums it up for us all in Matthew 22:37:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
So that’s it? All those rules and regulations come down to this? Love God and other people?
Doesn’t sound suffocating to me at all.
Only our broken nature could make a hell of heaven, a bad guy of the source of all goodness. We are called to give up our little kingdoms of one and join the Kingdom of God. He’s the only one who can give us true freedom.
