September 13, 2011
Curb Check
Our downtown area has gone through a traffic makeover to make it a
safer place for pedestrians and drivers. Not everyone is happy with the design
of the traffic flow, the bulb outs and the narrowed down street. Recently a
constituent complained, “You’ve made it
too hard to drive downtown…you have to be so careful.” Exactly the point! We
need to go no further than looking at the tire marks on all the street curbs to
know that more than a few of us are not staying in our designated lane of
traffic. I can see similarities with the Word. Many portions of the Bible are designed
to slow us down, make us cautious and show us how to navigate obstacles of sin.
Often our attempts at obedience are marked with curb checks, but thankfully the
curb is there.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Funny thing is, the curbs were there before the modifications, too. The fact that there were tire marks on them was more indicative that we live in an imperfect world than it is indicative that we need to trade functionality for perfection. While we are comparing street design to Scripture, maybe we should look at Romans 14:5 , “One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” You are right about portions of the Bible slowing us down. But other portions are complete roadblocks, while it yet has an Audubon or two, and myriads of simple curve warnings. It is generally clear about which portions apply to what attitudes and habits. It’s clearest ones are not difficult to discern, either. Stuff like cheating, stealing, and murdering are easily classified as wrong by the concreteness of their immediately destructive effects, while generosity, honor, and forgiveness are open lanes of an Audubon. Yet, the effects of fornication, adultery, and homosexuality are much less immediate and far more abstract. But things like not smoking, not dancing, imbibing caffeine, body piercing and tattoos, R-rated movies, teeny-weeny polka-dot bikinis, and voting for Democrats are much less clear because their damage is extraordinarily abstract and not at all immediate (except voting for Democrats.)
-----The highways of life are full of these latter type issues. And even though God has a definite mindset about each, the function of love and mutual respect in Christ’s body on earth is far more important to Him than each member of it performing every last iota of his entire lifetime to the absolute pinnacle of perfection as he alone knows God perceives it. So the Bible does not fill the highways of life with petty obstacles which become no more than the narrowing of streets to choke traffic and bulb-outs to conform behavior into monotonous, efficiency-ending sameness. Instead of meticulous enumerations of regulations, the Bible chose to trust the hearts of Jesus’ children to the discretion of their own minds about matters of the more voluminous flows of mundane life. And so Paul wrote, “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind.”
-----But now, when needing to turn right or left onto what flows both into and out of Montrose as a highway (or to even cross it,) I no longer have what God respects as a responsible choice of my own mind. But to attempt a forcing of perfection upon the populace (which God’s Word doesn’t even do) our wonderful government has once again murdered effectiveness to fail at creating perfection.
-----I dared to share my mind with a passerby on that street, one day. He adamantly agreed with me. So I tried another, to the same effect. And again, and again, and again all I found was indignation for what has been done to our fine town. I talk about it a lot now, mostly to strangers. And I have yet to encounter anyone less than extremely frustrated with the blatant disregard for our persons of these “improvements,” these restrictions, these reaches for utopia.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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