The Chaff

Wednesday, June 16th, 2004

Confused Again

So what’s new, right? Well, this is what’s got me this time:

We had a lot of rain lately, and the streets leading into our neighborhood flooded. Traffic was backed up pretty badly. I was behind a car that had one of those “Truth fish swallowing a Darwin fish” plaques on the back. Pretty much only a fundamentalist Christian would sport one of those. The rest of the story is based on that assumption.

So there we were, the brotherhood of mankind, trapped together in the same vale of tears. That is, until the truth-fish car pulled onto the right shoulder, zoomed past the rest of us, cut through a parking lot, and sped off down the street. For the record, at least two of those acts broke the law. Maybe three.

So here’s the confusing part. I thought Christianity, particularly fundamentalist Christianity, believed in ethical absolutism: right and wrong, black and white, no excuses, no arguments. So why would this particular fundamentalist Christian decide it was okay for him to break traffic laws, potentially endanger himself and his fellow drivers, and pretty much thumb his nose at everyone else who tried to make the best of a bad situation and patiently waited their turn?

Is there some extra commandment that says “Thou shalt not obey traffic laws”? A missing Beatitude, maybe: “Blessed are the assholes, for they shall be first through the intersection”? What could be going through this man’s mind to make him think he was more important than the rest of the world and the rules just didn’t apply to him?

Maybe he was late for church.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2004 at 8:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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