"There was a crooked man, who "drove" a crooked mile..."

A crooked house in our neighborhood post-tornado 2011; if it leans there's something WRONG!

 

This week a little light popped up on my dashboard to tell me my brakes needed work.  Really?  They seemed fine to me.  We checked the brake fluid.  I had some.  But since they are pretty important, we took the car in to our Christian mechanic’s shop.  He checked it out and sure enough, the front pads were bad.  When I got back into my car last night to drive it away from the shop, I was stunned.  I could stop.  Like almost instantaneously.  Without dragging my heel on the pavement (just kidding).  I had adapted my driving bit by bit to the brakes’ demise, that I didn’t even know they were almost gone.  This is not my first time to do such a thing.  A few years ago, they found my car was seriously out of alignment.  They asked me if I had not noticed it drifting to the side of the road.  No.  Never.  Then I realized I had begun to keep my hand on the left side of the steering wheel, applying pressure to the left automatically to keep it from drifting right.  Bit by bit, I had adapted without ever consciously thinking about it.  It took someone else stepping into the driver’s seat and saying, “Oh, my goodness.  What is wrong with your car?” for me to even notice it.  It also happened when Nathan’s mom realized I was running without any shocks.  I like to blame my state of oblivion on those bumpy country dirt roads and my dad’s assortment of old VWs.  We just went places.  To this day, my car is all about getting me somewhere, and that’s about it.  There is no love lost between me and my Corolla.

How does this happen?  Well, the main reason is no one else ever drives my car.  And two, I don’t know enough about normal cars to notice abnormalities in mine.  Things get twisted or off-kilter, and I just adjust accordingly.  This is so human of me.  Many Christians go through life, limping along in their unbiblical worldview.  They bump along oblivious of the fact that they have contradictory beliefs or messed up behaviors.  How is this possible?  We look on and think, “Surely they know that’s not normal?!”  But they seem completely oblivious. And then to our horror we find that we’ve been doing the same thing.  We sit under the Word on Sunday, and we’re stunned when Scripture shows us how messed up we are.  Just like me with my car, there are two main reasons for this:  one, no one speaks into our lives in these areas, including God.  We’re not in the Word, we’re not under authority, we’re not in relationships of accountability with other Christians, and ignorance is bliss, I suppose.  Secondly, we don’t know enough of what ‘normal’ Christian life looks like to with which to compare our own.  Our ignorance of Scripture is appalling, and the lack of godly mentors who truly live biblical lives in relationship with us is telling.  We become dangerous Christians, whose mouths have no ‘brakes’, whose behavior is off-balance and ungodly, whose thoughts are completely misaligned.  And we just adjust.  We run around crooked, thinking that we’re normal.  God help us!  It’s time to take these lives of ours to the ‘shop’:  let’s get in the Word.  Let’s get in relationship so others can help us see our need of growth.  This Christian life was meant to be a life of joyful balance that actually functions well in the home and the workplace.  It’s time for a little (or a whole lot of) discipleship!