The Morality at the Stop Sign

8/8/2019 The Morality at the Stop Sign

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The Morality at the Stop SignOn 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 timeI was thinking about secular morality, yes I know I need to get a life; so I began to

try and incorporate this persons 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 drivers 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

Willards The Divine Conspiracy).

Lets 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 sayingthat 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 Im finished.


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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 wethink they want to hear from us or that we think we are supposed to believe in even

if we dont believe in it. In some cases we may even believe that we believe what

we say but deep down we dont 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 dont 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.

Lets 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 dont 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 aspossible 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.


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Only stop at stop signs if the visibility is too poor to see on-coming traffic or if

you cant 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 proceedon 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 wasor 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 lets 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. Thats not to say that we dont still see heroic

actions and self sacrifice once in a while. (Thank God)


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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 morefocus 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 dont 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 orred 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 coworkers

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 ofJesus 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 dont 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.

Lets face it, if you cant stop at a stop sign to give the stranger in the car on the

main road, the right of way or if you cant 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?


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The Morality at the Stop Sign

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