road rage

It’s hard to drive like a jerk while Jesus is on the radio but it’s not impossible.

It’s hard to drive like a jerk while Jesus is on the radio, but it’s not impossible. In fact, I realized today that I do it quite often. Realized may not be the right word, however. It’s more like I was informed today that I do this quite often and I was unable to deny it. 

While driving back from a day-trip to the beach with my family, I found myself getting annoyed at another driver who was driving aggressively. My instinct, an unfortunate result of spending too many years driving in and around Washington D.C., was to match his aggression. When he started to pass me, I began to speed up. As I did, I was struck by the irony of the situation. 

On the radio, I was listening to Christian music. “How can you drive like a jerk,” an inner voice asked, “While listening to music about Jesus?” As soon as this thought crossed my mind, I began to slow down. I really don’t want to drive like a jerk. I know it’s not safe or even necessary, and I am sure not being a good representative of Christ in the world when I do. 

I remember hearing author Seth Godin say once that it’s not that the other driver cut us off that’s the problem, it’s the story we tell ourselves about the other driver cutting us off that’s the problem. We tell ourselves stories about the driver, we tell ourselves stories about ourselves, and we tell ourselves stories about why the other driver doing this thing to us. But these stories are mostly pride’s way of justifying our un-Christlike behavior so that we don’t have to change. 

Pride is a powerful tool of the devil and I’m as susceptible to it as anyone. That’s one of the many reasons I need Jesus. Left to my own devices, I will always choose to retaliate against perceived slights and challenges to my ego no matter the risk to my life, the lives of those in the car with me, or the lives of the other driver. But Jesus challenges this mentality and this behavior. 

Jesus asks me to do better, to make better choices, and to treat others better. He asks me to love my enemy, even my imagined enemies, and even my enemies on the road. In a strange way, I should really be thankful for aggressive drivers because they present me with an opportunity to practice this love of my enemies through the example of Christ Jesus who, even while he was dying on the cross, asked God to forgive his persecutors and all of us along with them. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Committing murder in my heart on the highway

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22, NIV).” 

I was running late for jiu-jitsu this morning, not too late, but late enough to be in a hurry, and I was getting annoyed by slow drivers and traffic lights. At one point, I even honked at the driver in front me for not turning when the light was green. It became clear to me later, after being stuck behind him for a while, that he was most likely lost and trying to figure out where he was going, and my attempts to hurry him along were not helping. 

As I got on the highway, I moved over to the left lane so that I could get where I was going more quickly. That is to say, I was speeding. Unfortunately for me, there was a big white pickup truck with shiny chrome wheels ahead of me in the left lane who was content to go just fast enough that no one could pass him and just slow enough to get on my nerves. 

The further I drove, the more frustrated I became. It was’t just the pickup truck in front of me. Everyone around me was annoying me. Either they weren’t going fast enough or they weren’t using their turn signal or I didn’t like the color of their car or they had a bumper sticker that offended me. It became increasingly clear to me that either something was wrong with everyone else or something was wrong with me. 

Just then, the thought came to me, “How many people have you murdered in your heart today while driving to jiu-jitsu?” I knew this was a reference to Matthew 5:21-22. I also knew that it was a lot of people. In fact, it was too many people to count. 

Then, as my mind tends to do, I extrapolated this out to all of the people I had ever been angry at or annoyed by any time I have ever driven anywhere for the thirty or so years that I’ve been driving. For many years, as a coffee equipment technician, I essentially drove for a living, meaning I was on the road for many hours a day encountering many hundreds of drivers each day, a lot of whom were not driving how I wanted. 

With this in mind, it occurred to me that, if I were to take Jesus seriously, and I do, I am guilty of murdering many hundreds, really thousands of people in my heart. Being subject to judgement by God for my anger, as if it were in fact murder, I realized that I have a very severe punishment coming my way. God being the just God that he is, I will eventually have to pay for these crimes of the heart against my brothers and sisters. 

But God is not merely a just God. He is also a loving and merciful God. He knows that we cannot possibly live up to his perfect standards nor perfectly obey his commandments. The entire Old Testament proves this over and over again. And so after many attempts to reconcile with us and forgive us for our transgressions, God finally made the greatest sacrifice a father can make, and he sent his own son to die for every wrong we have ever done or will ever do so that, through Jesus Christ, we may be forgiven once and for all. 

This knowledge, once accepted as the truth it is, should make us nicer. It should make us so grateful and so humbled that we could not possibly sin against the Lord ever again. And yet, we are selfish, broken, and extremely short-sighted creatures for whom nothing is ever really good enough. 

No matter what God does for us, including sacrificing his own son so that we may live, we still have lapses in love, compassion, and goodness. I, for one, had many this morning on my short drive to jiu-jitsu. Somehow, because I was late for class and in a hurry, I completely forgot that I have been saved through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and I opted instead to get angry at every driver who crossed my path. 

Sometimes I think God allows us to have these moments of weakness just so that we can see how broken we are and how much we need him to make us whole. While this incident and this realization resulted in my praying for both forgiveness and for love and patience for my fellows, I know that this will not be the last time I get angry at another driver and commit murder in my heart. I hope and pray, however, that these incidents become fewer and farther between as God heals my heart and forms me into the type of person he would have me be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.