The Morality at the Stop Sign

On my way to work this morning I encountered what is a common event to anyone

who drives on a daily basis. Another driver ran through a stop sign on a side street
and cut in front of me and of course then proceeded to drive too slowly. At the time
I was thinking about secular morality, yes I know I need to get a life; so I began to
try and incorporate this person’s behavior into my thoughts concerning secular
morality.

I came up with the premise that there are two ways you can view our basic traffic
laws. Anyone who has a driver’s license knows there are basic traffic laws that we
learn when we prepare to take the written test in order to get our drivers permit.
Once we have passed the written test that proves we have an understanding of all
the basic traffic laws, then we can drive with certain restrictions, and eventually we
take our drivers test, where we better not run any stop signs.

Now how does this relate to secular morality, you might ask? Well I thought the
same thing myself as I drove to work and this is what I came up with. In order to
grow we must look at our beliefs and why we believe what we believe. (See Dallas
Willard‘s The Divine Conspiracy).

Let’s consider the written drivers test and what we learn. I would suggest that most
of us never learn what the underlying reasons or core principals are for our traffic
laws. I also suggest that we can learn something about ourselves and our morality
by examining these principals.

I know this is getting pretty heavy for a stop sign, and perhaps you are now saying
that I must have really been annoyed by this person who cut me off, but in reality I
am very grateful to them as they motivated me to start thinking about all this fun
stuff. Of course you may not be so happy right now but I hope to turn you around
before I’m finished.
My basic premise in this discussion is that you can discover your true beliefs by
looking at your ordinary day to day actions and by trying to see the root cause of
what you believe and why you believe it. The value of an ordinary event is in its
ordinary nature, and it is this ordinary nature that makes it less likely that we will
put up our moral guards. What I mean by moral guard is when people ask us the
“tough” moral questions we may in some cases end up giving them the answer we
think they want to hear from us or that we think we are supposed to believe in even
if we don’t believe in it. In some cases we may even believe that we believe what
we say but deep down we don’t really believe it. Have you ever told yourself a lie
so often that you have convinced yourself that it is the truth? In some cases we
may begin to tell ourselves the lie because we join some group and as part of
membership of that group there are certain implied if not explicit beliefs that all
members must have. How many Christians say they Love Jesus and yet have never
really spent any time thinking about what that really means and how does that love
show itself on a daily basis in our lives?

Since we are going to call ourselves a Christian then we must believe certain
fundamental beliefs and dam to hell if I am going to admit that I really don’t believe
them. Do we even allow ourselves to admit that perhaps we have some doubts or
that we are confused about some of these beliefs? I may actually convince myself
that I really do believe these beliefs but ultimately our true beliefs are shown by our
day to day actions and how we live our lives over time.

Let’s look at the parable of the Pharisee who puts a lot of money into the offering at
the temple and the poor widow who put in a copper coin. Then Jesus asks who gave
more? To me this is clearly a rhetorical question by Jesus as he must expect his
audience to know which one to pick. Clearly he is teaching a deeper point here as
the rhetorical question is only at the tip of what Jesus is teaching. Jesus is teaching
us truth by using a simply ordinary kind of event, one that we can relate to and
personalize. I have found for myself that the more I read the gospels the more I see
in Jesus teachings both simplicity and complexity of message. I see a multiplicity of
lessons at ever deeper levels of spirituality. That observation alone is enough
motivation for me to keep reading the bible for the rest of my life.

So I suggest that sometimes we can learn what our true beliefs are by examining
our behavior in these ordinary actions. I don’t want to imply too much here. A
single stop sign does not define you and should not be used to convict you as a
hopeless sinner. Only you can really teach yourself by looking as honestly as
possible at your day to day behavior in these simple day to day events. Keeping in
mind the above cautionary statement, let us proceed. The two competing beliefs
that I suggest are underlying the basic traffic rule of stopping at a stop sign are as
follows.
 • Only stop at stop signs if the visibility is too poor to see on-coming traffic or if
you can’t speed up quick enough to pull out ahead of the on-coming cars
without getting hit by them or lastly if there is a visible police car in the
vicinity.

• Always stop at stop signs as the other drivers have the basic right to proceed
on a main road without the concern for traffic from side roads cutting in and
possibly causing accidents. This is referred to as right of way.

These may not seem like deep spiritual principals although I bet you can pick out
the morally correct one. To those of you who pick the first option you can stop
reading now, for the rest of us let us look closer at the principal. If we selected the
2nd choice then why do we sometimes not follow this principal? That was not a
rhetorical question by the way. Is it as simple as, this is not important enough to
even think about or worry about doing what is right and wrong? That may be the
case for some or even most of us, however in response to that argument I would
say doing the right thing was not contingent on how important the right thing was
or not. If we are going to start to redefine our principals based on what we consider
to be important or not important then we are essentially leaving God or in this case
the police out of the equation.

I would also point out that what we sometimes view as unimportant can be more
important than we think. For example, What if my young daughter is in the car?
What kind of driving lesson am I giving her. Perhaps someday when she is a
teenager and starts to drive she does the same thing but she forgets the first part
of the first principal above and she runs a stop sign where there was poor visibility
and she does not see the truck coming down the street and she is hit and hurt badly
or worse. Then afterwards you find out she ran a stop sign. Then would this seem
unimportant

But let’s dig even deeper. Let us look at what could really be motivating us to do
this. In short this kind of behavior does boil down to; “I want to do what I want to
do regardless of the consequences. So stop telling me what to do”. Of
course that philosophy is not a Christian one and is not one that will cause you to
grow spiritually either.

So let us try to understand why we might be doing this. I suggest that our society
has become less and less civil towards one another and less and less respectful and
caring about other people in general. That’s not to say that we don’t still see heroic
actions and self sacrifice once in a while. (Thank God)
Yes we still drop coins or even dollars into the Salvation Army buckets over the
Christmas holidays and maybe we will write a check out to our favorite charities
once In a while and perhaps some of you men even open doors for attractive
women and maybe even little old ladies. However as you look at our culture in a
broader view I see less and less civility, less and less tolerance. More and more
“Self Help” gurus and “Self improvement” classes and seminars and more and more
focus on how I can get a better job. How I can control my kids. How I can pay less
taxes and how I can get ahead at work. Also as a side note I noticed over the last
Christmas season that the Salvation Army boxes now have locks on them.

There is not a lot on how to be generous to others, How to be kind and decent to
strangers, how to love even those we don’t know and even harder than that, to love
your enemies. Well there is one source of information on these things and that book
is the bible.

So as we go about our day to day activities, let us try to keep God and his son Jesus
the divine teacher in our minds and as we approach all the different stop signs or
red lights let us still keep Jesus in our minds, and in keeping Jesus in our minds let
us try to keep those principles that we know Jesus taught us in our minds. As we
make decisions for all these little mundane actions, let us keep Jesus teachings
close to our hearts. Those decisions, like whether or not to talk behind a coworker’s
back or to put money in the church offering plate or to let the little old lady cut in
front of you at the grocery store.

If more and more of us were to keep Christ in our hearts on a daily basis, then
perhaps this world would start to look more and more like the kingdom of God and
less and less like the kingdom of man. Perhaps as we follow Jesus teachings in all
the little things we will see ourselves transformed more each day into the image of
Jesus and when the “Big” events hit us as we are living in the ordinary events we
will be able to “do as Jesus would do in our situation”.

A while back it was popular among some Christians and you still here it once in a
while today but not as often, “What would Jesus Do?” or WWJD, I think it was a
bumper sticker as well. That is quite fitting as it represents a bumper sticker
mentality of spirituality. Not that the sentiment is bad. Just that it is next to
impossible, if you don’t have Jesus in your life on a daily basis. If you are not
keeping Jesus in your day to day life through the course of the boring every day
mundane actions then how can we expect someone to all of a sudden do as Jesus
would do when we face the really life changing problems such as someone at work
stabbing us in the back or when a spouse cheats on us.

Let’s face it, if you can’t stop at a stop sign to give the stranger in the car on the
main road, the right of way or if you can’t be civil to the old lay counting pennies at
the bank on the line in front of you then how will you react to a spouse who
betrayed you or a co-worker who is feeding the boss lies behind your back?
So let us all take our boring day to day actions more serious, after all that is where
we spend most of our time and if we don’t have Jesus with us where we spend most
of our time then how much time are we really spending with him? How could we
expect to call on his name only in times of trouble and receive wisdom and peace of
mind to handle the worst case scenarios? You would no more expect someone who
has never run a marathon to be able to run a 5 mile race on day one of their
training. So let’s start our marathon training by stopping at stop signs, especially if
you see me coming down the road. (Ok maybe I still have a little resentment
towards that person who cut me off this morning? I’ll have to try and forgive him.
After all WWJD)