SPEEDING AND THE FEAR OF THE LORD

This isn't an official resolution I've written down, but it's one I've had for almost four years I think. I don't speed anymore. My conviction about this started when I read a little article in Tabletalk magazine four years ago. It was in the November 2002 edition. The article was titled, Little Things Do Mean a Lot by Greg Bailey. In this article Mr. Bailey proposes that by simply obeying God, by committing ourselves to radical obedience to His word, we will reclaim our distinctiveness in the culture. He goes on to say that one arena where we can practice this radical obedience is in submission to our governments. Few of us fail to submit in the big areas like murder, robbery, etc. But what about the small things? What about the laws which seem to inconvenience us and are so easy to ignore and make excuses for? In Romans 13 Paul says we are to be subject to the governing authorities. We all agree that if the government commands us to do something contrary to God's law that we are bound to obey God and not man. But what if we just think the law is inconvenient? He then mentions speeding, taxes and water restrictions. Bailey concludes that practicing scrupulous obedience will attain for us great distinctiveness.

After I read this I began to think through the reasons why I speed and how it relates to my faith and my view of God and His authority. My reasoning with the Lord and the Scriptures came down to this - God has commanded me to subject myself to the governing authorities and that includes the laws they pass. God has established them by His own providence. When I decide to flagrantly (or just indifferently) ignore some of those laws because I think they're inconvenient or stupid or may cause me to be embarrassed, then what I'm communicating to God through my behavior is that I don't respect His authority and I don't fear Him. If I have such a low view of man's laws and think that I can disregard some and obey others, isn't there a temptation to view God's laws in the same way? I think the point of Romans 13 is that your obedience to the governing authorities that God has providentially established is directly related to and reflects your respect and fear of the Lord.

This has been my conviction for the past four years. It was hard at the beginning to slow down and really pay attention to my speed. But a couple really neat things have happened as a result. I am used to the speed limits around where I live now so it's not a big deal anymore. I can actually tell without looking at the speedometer if I'm going faster than I should. Also, my conscience is totally clean whenever I see a police car. Before I would always get nervous and look in my mirror to see if the police car was turning around. Now I have no worries whatsoever. That has been a really freeing feeling. And, I have noticed that my arrival time to places has not changed. Slowing down those five or ten extra miles per hour really hasn't affected me in getting where I need to go. On the down side, I have gotten some nasty looks and my share of tailgaters. I've even had people pass by and yell at me. Oh well, I guess I can handle that. I shouldn't care so much about what other people think anyway. One funny thing about this - my husband does not share my same conviction and my oldest son knows it. Did your children every ask you, after they learned to read the street signs, how fast you were going? My oldest did several years back. He's one of those perfectionist types. (Gee, I wonder where he got that from. ) Well, this has been an opportunity to explain to my son that two people can have different convictions about small things and still be Christians. It's been interesting. That certainly was an instance where I had to be careful not to communicate disrespect to my husband.

I hope you enjoyed reading about how I came to this resolution. Hopefully it will encourage you to think about some of your convictions and how you came to hold them. Blessings.