Plumbline Author: Charles Adams
Date: September 1, 2003
Topic: How We Come to Know Our Misery

This past summer I drove over 4000 miles during a two-week trip to Florida and New Jersey. In doing so I deepened my understanding of Question and Answer #3 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Some of you listeners may remember that question. It asks, “How do you come to know your misery?” And the answer: “The Law of God tells me.”
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Now when the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism wrote that particular question and answer, they had in mind Paul’s discussion in the book of Romans where, referring to the Old Testament law—particularly The Ten Commandments—he writes, “through the law we become conscious of sin.” 2 My deepened understanding of the Heidelberg Catechism, in connection with my summer driving experience, is also related to God’s law. But it is not so much The Ten Commandments as the law of God that the Psalmist describes in Psalm 19. Starting in verse 7 of the that Psalm, we read:

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. 3

What the Psalmist is describing is the law of God that is evidenced in the structure and behavior of the world around us. That’s why he begins the Psalm by writing “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Today it’s not only the sky that evidences clearly God’s law, it’s everything on earth as well—particularly those technological products that he has called us, his image bearers, to help shape. You see; I’m an engineer. As such, I’m particularly interested in the way technological products work, behave, affect the environment, and influence us. I’ve come to understand that if you want to design an automobile engine to have 200 hp, you need to understand chemical kinetics, the physics of motion, Newtonian dynamics, and the behavior of deformable bodies under conditions of applied stress. All of these things are topics that undergraduate engineers study. And all of these things are expressions of God’s law for his creation. If I were the one assigned to write Psalm 19 today, I might begin it by saying “Newtonian dynamics declares the glory of God, chemical kinetics proclaims the work of his hands.” It may not have the same poetic ring to it, but it’s just as accurate as those original wor ds of the Psalmist.

What interests me particularly is the way in which the properties of technological products influence us. In many instances, as one author has put it, 4 they “bite back.” In other words, after we design some technological device to do something constructive, we discover, to our dismay, that it does other, not so constructive things as well—it has unintended consequences. But we also realize that those unintended consequences might have been foreseen if we had spent enough time studying the law of God for his creation and trying to anticipate the behavior of our technological creations in response to that law.

But I’m digressing a bit. Let me tell you about my 4000-mile trip. Early on a Saturday morning in July my wife and I set out in our car for Nashville, Tennessee. We arrived in about 12 hours, and, after visiting Andrew Jackson’s home, we continued on our way to Orlando, Florida where the Christian Schools International Convention was held this year. Following the convention we drove up the east coast to Williamsburg, VA, where we spent a day touring its historic colonial village. Next day we continued north to New Jersey, to visit my wife’s parents. After a few days there we headed back toward Iowa, stopping briefly in South Bend, Indiana for a night’s rest and to visit a niece of ours who had recently moved there. Finally, on a Saturday two weeks after we began our trek, we arrived back home in Sioux Center—the odometer of the car registering over 4000 miles more than it did when we left.

While the trip was productive—and, at times, interesting—it was one of the worst traveling experiences that I can remember. And it was so because of the way the technological properties of automobiles, roads, and clocks interacted with my fallen human nature. In a nutshell, the problem was traffic. But “traffic” is simply a word that we have invented to describe a complex concept by which we understand a set of peculiar, interactive properties of automobiles, roads, and clocks. The clock, because of the way it very precisely measures and communicates time, amplifies my sensitivity to the efficiency of my actions. When on a trip, it is a constant reminder of the proportion of time I am spending just sitting in the car, driving, in comparison with visiting Andrew Jackson’s home, or simply relaxing in a hotel room. And that awareness is not something I need to have amplified. You see, I’m not a very greedy person when it comes to money or material things. But when it comes to time, it seems I can never have enough.

The automobile is a technological product that inhibits us from seeing our neighbor as we should: as an image-bearer of God whom we are called to serve. The geometric, motion, and physical properties of the automobile are such that they isolate us from our neighbor. When driving, my neighbor is transformed into “that car over there that is in my way,” or “that crazy driver who doesn’t know how to signal,” or worse. When it comes to the struggle to “love one’s neighbor as oneself,” I’m at best, only an average Christian. I try. Sometimes I succeed. More often I don’t. The properties of the automobile create an enormous barrier to my success by inhibiting me from seeing my neighbor—those occupying the other cars in traffic—as whole image-bearers of God.

Finally, the nature of the highway system is such that only a fixed number of automobiles can travel on it at the same time. Of course, far more can travel on four-lane or six-lane highways than on two-lane highways. But regardless of the number of lanes, once the automobile density reaches a certain level, you have “traffic.” Put that density together with a desire to minimize time on the road, and you have competition with your fellow image-bearers. Isolate those image-bearers from yourself by having all of you situated in different automobiles, and you have the perfect conditions for the cultivation of—that’s right—“road rage.” Experience road-rage, and—if you have any Christian sensitivity whatsoever—you will come to know your own sin and misery very quickly. So how do you come to know your sin and misery? The law of God, by which he structures the heavens and the earth and all things natural and artificial, tells you of it.

Next trip maybe I’ll take a train.

For Plumbline, I’m Charles Adams, Dean of the Natural Sciences, Dordt College