Sunday, May 4, 2008

Road Rage

Yesterday afternoon I noticed a lady with a baby stroller was beginning to walk across on a busy intersection. The pedestrian light was turning red as the light to turned green for the cars and myself. Yet I noticed she was still walking extremely slow as not hesitating about incoming traffic (she was about little over 1/2 way to the other sidewalk) which forced me and others cars to stop middle of the intersection. She immediately became furious because of this and started directly pointing fingers at me saying, "I have a baby! Stop!" with possibly mixture of some not-so-nice words (though I can't confirm because we had windows up). Now I must tell you I was nowhere near hitting her or her baby as I just accelerated off the intersection line and stopped. While I remained in position I also pointed the finger towards my green intersection lights to prove that I had done nothing wrong because I HAD the RIGHT away. To my mind she was the one did wrong for not crossing the sidewalk on time and not only that, being negligent about protecting her little one especially from all other dangerous incoming cars. Now, she did not appeared to be insane or a crazy person, only typical mother with a nice red stroller.

She eventually walked across and I drove past her. I was amazed and perplexed by her reaction and my conscious was not settling well within me. Because for one, I thought I had obeyed the law. Two, she clearly felt like she OWNED the road and it didn't matter whether the pedestrian light is red or green, she was going to have her way and everyone else is going to follow and adapt to her. But there was something in me, just didn't feel right. I know that I needed to show grace but I just kept thinking, 'that lady is lucky that I'm not a gangster."

Last night I was reminded of Jeremiah 17:9 which was the devotional for that morning. It says:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?

I realized that even if I was right in that I had the right away, (which may not be correct because I believe all pedestrians have the right away, right?) I couldn't get past the fact that being right was all that it mattered because I had obeyed the law in my own terms. What really shook me was her response to it. Imagine you did something right and you clearly knew that other person was wrong yet that person is telling you that you are wrong. How would you respond to that?

Perhaps the Pharisees felt the same way. All their life, they thought they've obeyed the law and that to them, that was their righteousness. So imagine this person called Jesus who totally turned their life upside down by revealing to them, they've not only been ever so wrong but they are not even close to being right. To the Pharisees in their narrowed minded man-centered view, they became furious just like I became furious, because they could not see beyond their hopeless view of self-righteousness. It is one thing to be prideful that you had obeyed the law, but it's another thing when someone else telling you that you are actually still wrong despite your feeble obedience to the laws.

I was shocked. This time, not so such with the road rage incident but the realization of my sinful heart because it resembled so closely to the Pharisees. Am I that right? What a fool I was that moment. But should I be all that shocked? Someone once said, "you are FAR FAR worse than what you appear to be." I am! I am! I am far worse but the sobering thing about this incident is that, it's just a scratch from the surface of my sinful heart. It's true, our hearts, and my sinful nature of my heart is particularly desperately sick and needs continual and daily mortification of sin by the power the WORD and His Holy Spirit (Romans 8:13). Thank You LORD for saving a wretch like me!