Lessons from Road Rage

One of my worst qualities is how I drive. It's just a fact of my life. I'm not really a good driver, nor am I consistently conscientious. I am easily distracted and quickly stress out over normal roadway situations. But, perhaps the worst of my qualities that surfaces when I drive is my road rage. I simply cannot tolerate it when people don't understand what is going on on the road and thus inconvenience me. I can often be seen talking very sternly to screaming at drivers around me, explaining to them exactly what it is that they are doing wrong and why it is that this action makes them a crazy person. This is, admittedly, not the most effective method of getting through to them, but I'm just so frustrated that they can't do what they need to do.

Now with this introduction you are probably thinking that I am writing a blog on patience, or level-headedness, or having a Christlike attitude in all situations.

I'm not.

See, as I was driving home from Dunkin' I had the (not at all rare) occasion to yell at the driver in front of me. We were at a 4 way intersection in which everyone had a stop sign but us. I get it, it's a confusing sort of thing. But, I imagined that the driver in front of me, who was initially confused, would survey the situation, realize that he didn't need to be stopped, and the whole stopping-ordeal would end quickly. I soon realized that this was not the case and flashed my lights at him. When this wasn't enough to encourage him to take the appropriate action I began to yell "We don't have a stop sign! We don't have to stop! Why are you stopping?! No one else is going! Everyone is waiting for you! Go! Go! Go!" Eventually, the confused driver got with the program (but certainly not because he listened to what I said) and we proceeded on our merry way. It wasn't my proudest moment, but when I got to thinking about it I saw that there was a biblical application in this scenario that I had never before considered.


Let's assume for a moment that we are the confused driver holding up the show. Let's also assume that God designed the road and this whole scenario for us, and that he has made sure that the Holy Spirit through the Bible is stuck behind us in traffic.

Here we are just meandering down the road of life, when we get to a situation that we should blow right past without stopping to get involved. It's a place we don't need to be, and it's time to get a move on. God, in his great wisdom, has given us lots of indicators about the appropriate actions in this situation. There are the road signs, that is--our natural sense of morality, telling us what to do and there are tons of Christian cars around us who are all taking the appropriate actions. This should certainly be enough for us to relatively quickly figure out what we should be doing in this situation--namely, getting out of it.
Of course, we are dead-set on doing things our way, or else we aren't even paying attention to what is going on around us, so in his great mercy God has put someone behind us on the road who knows what's going on, and is happy to set us in the right direction. So, when we don't understand the road signs, and we don't pay attention to the cars around us, the Holy Spirit sits behind us and flashes his lights and yells at the top of his lungs "Not that way! That's not the right choice! That won't make you happy! There's a better way! Listen to me!" Now we are even more dense than the people we encounter on physical roads. We simply are not going to ever get with the program unless we listen, otherwise we are just going to make a big mess of things.

Luckily for us, the major difference between my situation on the road today and the situation with us and the Holy Spirit is that we can hear him if we want to. When I'm behind a confused driver on a physical road, he can't be expected to respond to my commands because it's impossible for him to hear me. However, when we are in a situation where we must make choices in life, we only don't hear the Holy Spirit because we choose not to. The Bible is always here for us as a resource, but if we don't pick it up, all of the Holy Spirit's yelling falls on deaf ears. Should we be able to understand what's right to do using road signs and context clues? Yes. But we won't, so we need to be constantly in the word for guidance. We need to tune in, as it were, to the guy behind us in traffic who knows how we should be acting.

The second notable difference in these two situations is that, while I just yell at drivers on the road because I'm selfish and impatient, the Holy Spirit yells at us through God's word because he loves us so much that he wants us to only make good choices. He gave us lots of indications outside of the Bible that should tell us how to behave, and then he went the extra mile to spell it out for us very explicitly because he wants to be with us. If we ignore our conscience, or the good influences around us, but especially if we ignore His word, we aren't going to do the right things, and God cannot tolerate sin.


So really this is just a very weird (and probably convoluted?) way of me encouraging all of us to not ignore God. We need to be reading his word, and looking for his instructions in our lives or else we will be "that guy" who just can't get it together. And in life, not listening makes us more than just an inconvenience to those around us, it causes us to miss out on our reward. Nobody wants to be "that guy" on the road, and we certainly don't want to be him in life. Let us be always more diligent in our study, and more conscientious as we make decisions.