Sinning while we speed

A funny thing happened. It's Sunday. A few of us went for Chinese. To my surprise, this included out pastor. This wasn't bad - just unexpected, and naturally I ended up sitting next to him, and, of course, somehow I felt the urge to talk about my most recent philosophies on the "sinfulness of speeding."
I didn't go to much detail, but now I want to.

Here's my position in short. Legalism and morality are cousins, but not brothers. A moral thing may not always be legal, and a legal thing may not always be moral. Inversely, an immoral thing may not be illegal and an illegal thing may not be immoral. Moreover, the black and white nature of the law does not reflect the flexibility in moral choice.

Here's my example. The law says it is illegal to speed, but when you are speeding a sick child to the emergency room, it is not immoral. This means that there are reasons or conditions that can flex the moral position of a legal question.

Consider the law for speeding. It is illegal to speed because it is dangerous. It is dangerous you, but that is not the purpose of the law. The law is for the people around you; the law is intended to protect others' rights from the exercise of your own.

If you are cruising through a school zone where kids are unloading for their elementary school, you could reasonably pass a moral judgment on the "wrongness" of your breaking the law for speeding.

However, if you were in the middle of New Mexico where it is flat and you can see for miles in all directions that you are alone, speeding not only minimizes your separation from assistance, but also fails to threaten the safety of other drivers on the road. It would be a far greater stretch to cast a moral judgment against the latter situation.

This means that we are removing the moral element from an illegal act based on the degree to which the illegal act threatens people (including you).

Taken to the next level, we might be able to assert that a very skilled driver would need only a much smaller distance in order to similarly remain unthreatening. Moreover, an even more skilled driver might be able to reasonably speed with only a quarter mile of highway in front of him - even with some other cars sharing the same road.

Because of this line of logic, I believe that speeding is not necessarily a sinful thing. I could never really argue that it is a legal thing, and contrasting a moral thing - it is simply not an immoral thing.

However, this cannot be left at that. Speeding, like all things, bears responsibility. Caution and wisdom are not something that can be discounted. An error in judgment can be positioned as a moral wrong. Moreover, presumption in judgment can be even greater a moral wrong.

Overestimating your skill, underestimating your counterparts, or just being wrong about the landscape of the decision still bears with it the full brunt of responsibility. Though the decision may not be morally wrong, it can bear moral consequences.

Moral?

Morality, or being moral, is the state of being in God's will. That's my definition - but I think it's pretty sound.
To say, for example, "He is a moral person," means that your subject's will is currently aligned with that of God. An immoral, in contrast, person could not have his will aligned with God's. In this sense, we can use the term righteousness and moral interchangeably.

Moving on.

If a moral decision is a decision requiring one (in order to make the "right" decision) to emulate God, then let us then consider if there are non-moral decisions. These would be decisions that would not require one (in order to make the "right" decision) to emulate God.

The exception to the preceding sentence would be, not "require" insofar as the choice does not transform the non-moral decision into a moral one, such as choosing to get up or hit snooze on a lazy Saturday versus choosing to get up or be late for a commitment.

But are there non-moral decisions?

Let's find an example: Probably the most commonly used in this category is the decision of which color of socks to put on in the morning.

Is this a non-moral decision? It's hard to imagine that this is moral. In fact, it is hard to even imagine how this decision could ever be made wrong.

Granted, from a fashion-perspective or a comfort-perspective this could easily be made in error, but from a moral-perspective, how could one color over another make a difference?

Even if we cannot come up with a scenario to make sock colors moral or immoral, we can see if the logic will hold up over other questions.

If it is true that non-moral decisions exist, then it is true that some decisions do not require one (in order to make the "right" decision) to emulate God.

We can ask another question to flesh this out a little more:

"Should we emulate God in all things?"

This answer might be a trick question. It might not be fair to ask the question in this context. However, if the question is just standing there alone, the answer is clear and must be, "of course we should emulate God in all things."

A more probing answer might have been to ask in repost: "in what aspect of your life would you not like to emulate God?"

A clever student might answer: "the responsibility to judge and condemn all of mankind."

That answer is only valid because we consider the responsibility of judgment from a human-perspective. Certainly God has the advantage of knowing all things and being able to do all things. Omniscience alone would suffice to relieve that burden.

Moving on.

"A Christian wants every aspect of his life to emulate God"

Even if I want to emulate God in all things, it seems somewhat absurd to consider what color of socks God would be wearing. Surely God does not wear socks, and even if He did it does not make sense for us to wear the same type of socks for the same reason it does not make sense for us to dress like Jesus dressed.

So, maybe we have something here. Maybe sock color is a completely non-moral question that, indeed, does not require us to emulate God - we can be in a completely sinful state and still make no more "wrong" or "right" a decision in regards to the color of our socks.

To me, this is fascinating.

It is fascinating because I have always been taught that God is not just interested in the mere salvation of the individual, but also in an intimate and personal relationship with a that person.

Such a relationship would not just include the big stuff, but also the details - like socks, maybe even color.

That is an interesting approach to the problem, but just because we have an intimate and personal relationship with God (or anyone, for that matter) it does not necessarily imply it would ever deal with the color of socks chosen in the morning - fashion aside.

So that is out. There's nothing necessary about socks in a relationship. Just because we have a relationship does not mean God is involved in our selection of socks.

Then I consider the omni-nature of God. After all, He is all things, all places, all knowing and all powerful. How can all of that not include the color of the socks I selected this morning?

Now, I think we are getting somewhere.

It can't. This new point might be boiled down to simply read: Because God is God, He necessarily plays a role in all things (including decisions),; this makes all decisions God-based, moral decisions.

So is it silly to pray to God and ask Him what color sock you should select in the morning?

The reason a question like that even exists is because we (that is, me) forget that God does not get bored, has plenty of time, and can multitask the orbits of a million planets, global politics, healing a sick woman, and advising you and me on sock colors all at the same time without breaking a sweat (if God _could_ sweat).

So, I suppose we have concluded: there is no such thing as a non-moral decision, because we define moral as related to God and God is related to all things. Also implied here is: all decisions, even the small ones, have a "right" (therefore "wrong") choice.

Craziness.

Yesterday is today

Wow, what a crazy day. I swung home a little late because Kyndall is on a tour. This whole week has been late nights and early mornings. It's strange how things revert to near-bachelor days so fast.
Anyway, here's why this is such a day. I swing home and poke in the garage to get a screw driver. I am trying to put up a belt hook I bought a few nights ago at Loews. Something is keeping me from doing it - and right now, it is typing this.

In the garage, I notice a box that I brought home at Easter from home. My mom is clearing out my room in preparation to make it more baby-friendly; she found stuff and packed it into this box, and somehow I had stalled looking into until now. Wow.

First, I can't imagine anything with such a rich bundle of my life. Everything I went through was just, well, a flash back. This is just an ordinary box, too, no refrigerator box or anything. What a ball to go through.

I started on the bottom. I pulled out everything - as most was packed in shoe boxes - and went through the bottom box. There was my transformer. Remember the one that could go from robot to tape player? Well, there he was, and his robot to cassette friend was with him. Ah, Optimus Prime had my devotion for quite a season.

Totally weird and unexpected was the stomper big-rig trailer. Remember stomper? They were usually trucks, and things that looked like gear shifts were on their roofs. Anyway, what was special about this is that I can remember when I was like 3 or 4 this truck trailer was the last gift (Christmas?)

I received the trailer from Hiram Luttmers. He's the guy who bailed on his fatherly responsibilities for me when I was born. I can remember occasional visits for a while though. Then there was nothing. Nothing. This trailer was unexpected.

Then Phil Collins' Susseudio 45RPM record; it was my very first record, and I can still remember buying it this day. I thought it was surely lost, but there it was - in a Musicland bag. Man, Musicland.

Along the side of the box was a three-ring binder of paper. It was all journals I had written for My Sutherland's English class my sophomore year in High School. Man, I was a genius. Turns out I loved to write, even way back then. Mostly comedy and narrative, but - even then - I had plenty of misused commas.

The second half of that binder was a cartoon series I had created. I completely forgot about it until now. It was centered on a cat and the hundreds of ways I came up with to kill this poor cat. Some were actually clever, and then I had him join the Army and later the Secret Service. It was an interesting series - but I loved to draw even back then.

The next box had a small Ziploc bag. What was in it, you might wonder. It was astonished to remember that I had saved the collar and nick-knacks of my dog Clause after he was hit by a car. When I was younger, I can remember opening and smelling the bag to see if I still recognized the smell of my dog. Needless to say, I don't remember today.

Threatening the Ziploc bag was the protractor I had used in high school geometry. It was a horrible class that I barely passed, and it's only an irony that geometry is a common aspect of my current profession.

The next box up was Russia. How lucky was I to be able to go to Russia as a high school junior? It was People to People - this thing from the Eisenhower foundation that organized an exchange-type thing for American students to get diplomatic tours of the USSR. Can you believe I went to the USSR?

The box was full of little pins, flags, and even a soccer ball that had been deflated. There were all sorts of things. That was a pretty good time of life. Time to be young. Time to be interested in things. Man, I was naive.

On top of the box (and there was more than just this, but I don't want to dwell) was the American flag. I had kept the flag behind my TV in my bedroom at home for years. In 1992, I went to the Republic National Convention and there are all kinds of pens traded at these things. I had pins from Russia, these political pins, and some other pins that just came around. They were all on the flag hanging behind the TV. And there it was, neatly rolled on top of the box.

It's a time of remembering tonight as I read through my journals, smell my dog's collar and hum a little Susseudio. Looking back to High School, I remember how much I didn't like it. But, you know what, who really knows what I was thinking. I was turned around back then so much, who am I now to be so definitive?

What I have learned is that journals and pictures are important if you plan on really remembering much of your past. That's because, as time passes, so does your memory - no way I remember writing all that junk I just read. But I did it. And now, I can peek back in time, and kind of evaluate who I was and where I have come.