Living Counter-Culturally: What If Every Christian Started Driving the Speed Limit?
Episode Summary: In this episode, I explore a seemingly simple but profound question: What would happen if every Christian in the United States started driving the speed limit? Together with my husband, we dive into how this everyday act of obedience could become a powerful testimony of our faith. Through personal experiences and biblical insight, we discuss how small acts of faithfulness can lead to meaningful conversations about our relationship with Christ and our role as witnesses in the world.
Key Points:
Introduction
- Overview of the podcast’s mission: Seek, find, and live the abundant life Jesus promises by cutting through life’s chaos
- Rachel introduces the central question about Christians and speed limits
The Biblical Rationale for Following Traffic Laws
- Speeding is breaking the law, and scripture calls Christians to obey “laws of the land” unless they lead to sin
- Discusses Romans 13 and why laws and authorities are ordained by God
- Driving the speed limit as an act of obedience to God
Christians as Counter-Cultural Witnesses
- Driving the speed limit would set Christians apart and raise curiosity
- The early church lived counter-culturally, prompting faith conversations
- Reflecting on N.T. Wright’s thoughts on political witness
Integrity in Everyday Actions
- Poor driving with Christian symbols undermines faith’s reputation
- Christians called to lead lives consistent with faith
- Connection between claiming Jesus and living His teachings
The Concept of Willful Sin
- Exploring disobedience in “minor” areas of life
- The “little voice” that reminds us when we’re wrong
- Countering cultural norms that normalize sin
Cultural Impact and Witness
- Examining inconsistency in Christian behavior
- The disconnect between words and actions
- Call to consistency and examining hypocrisy
Practical Application: Slowing Down
- Speed limit as metaphor for trusting God’s timing
- Slower pace creates space for spiritual practices
- “Jesus take the gas pedal” reflection
Supporting Verses:
Romans 13:1-7 ESV “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Supports Christians’ duty to follow established laws
1 Peter 2:13-17 ESV “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution…” Reinforces biblical mandate to respect authority
Galatians 3:28 ESV “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Supports unity and equal treatment of all people
Topics Covered:
- Christian witness in everyday life
- Biblical submission to authority
- Counter-cultural living
- Christian integrity
- Traffic laws and biblical obedience
- Early church example
- Personal testimony
- Practical faith application
Mentioned Resource: “Jesus and the Powers” by N.T. Wright – Christian political witness and early church example
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the True Grit Podcast where we are seeking, finding, and living abundant life. This podcast is for you if you’re exhausted by the noise of the world and the chaos in your life and in your brain, and you’re wanting to get authentically and sustainably closer to Jesus while cutting down that chaos in your life.
I am your host, Rachel Gritt. I am an ADHD-er wife to my best friend, a mother of three, a multi-passionate business owner, a stepmom, a co-parent, a writer, and most importantly, I was a lost sheep. Jesus left the ninety-nine to find me, and now I invite you to seek, find, and live the abundant life our Redeemer promises with me. Whether you are carting kids around, you’re curled up with a mug of something delicious, you’re dashing between meetings or folding mountains of laundry, you are welcome here. Let’s dig in together.
What would happen if every Christian in the United States started driving the speed limit? The little bit of background that’s important is that we drive exactly the speed limit. I have for years. You started when we started dating.
The rationale for that is that speeding is breaking the law, pretty plain and simple. And as benign as it seems, scripture is very clear about adhering to the laws of the land unless they call you to sin. So, as Christians, we really have no excuse to not drive the speed limit.
The authorities on earth have been placed there by God, for better or for worse. And so it’s our duty to adhere to those authorities unless it is counter to God’s commands – like, what they’re telling us to do is counter to God’s commands. That’s a really important distinction.
One of the reasons this came to mind was that I was reading the book by N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers, which is a really interesting book about being a Christian political witness. It was talking about the early church in Acts and how they lived very differently. One of the things that N.T. Wright talks about is how one of the roles of the early church was to almost act as like the prophets of the Old Testament and call out rulers and leaders when they weren’t adhering to God’s laws and commands – warning them, basically.
What would a political witness look like today? It would be advocating for the things that Jesus calls us to do – care for the poor and the widows, treat them fairly, care for the foreigners in our land. The early church in Acts lived very differently where they shared all resources. No one was in need of anything because everyone gave essentially to the church everything that they had. It was from a shared pool of resources.
That was very countercultural and I would imagine likely stirred a lot of conversations about why they were doing that. It allowed conversations to be had with people who weren’t Christians to ask why, and then they were explained the gospel and what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. I think that if every Christian started driving the speed limit, there would definitely be questions like, “What are you guys doing? Why are you doing this?”
It’s always funny when I see someone driving really poorly and they’ve got a church bumper sticker. You’re not practicing what you’re preaching. It’s like that TikTok or Instagram reel we watched where someone was saying how confusing or irritating it is when someone is taking on an identity that isn’t what they look like or how they act. They’re claiming a different identity on the inside than they are on the outside.
It was what seemed to be a gay man basically saying how funny it is that Christians are having a problem with people identifying as one thing while being another, when Christians have been claiming Jesus but we don’t see that in them at all. That’s related to what comes to mind when someone with a Christian bumper sticker is speeding all over the road and cutting people off and just being a jerk to people around them. You’re perpetuating a really poor reputation of Christians.
It’s not about perfection, obviously. It’s about that willful sin. We all know when we’re speeding because we’re like, “Oh crap, is there a cop?” There’s that little voice in your head that’s like, “Oh this is wrong, I shouldn’t be doing this,” but we’ve gotten to the point where it’s just excused, and that’s really dangerous. We’re supposed to live counter-culturally.
What I’ve heard before is, “God hasn’t convicted me of that yet.” But it’s in the Bible that we’re supposed to abide by the laws of human authorities that are placed above us as long as they don’t cause us to sin. And driving the speed limit isn’t sin. It’s pretty black and white what scripture says. It’s not really up for debate.
Also Christians who during the pandemic – I don’t want to get into the whole mask debate, but at the time when masks were mandated by state governments, people who were like, “Oh well, technically it’s not a law so I’m not sinning by not doing it.” That’s not upholding the spirit of what we’re supposed to do. We’re imperfect, we’re going to sin, we can’t avoid it completely, but just doing something because you can get away with it is silly.
I was talking about the speed limit specifically in regards to people who are very much celebrating the treatment of people who are here illegally right now. Literally on the White House social media pages, the official verified social media pages for the White House, there are videos mocking illegal immigrants. I think the title of the video I saw was like “deportation ASMR” and was a video of someone being chained up, dragging chains along the ground and then chaining them up to put them on a plane to deport them.
On Valentine’s Day, there was a post that said, “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.” So many people are celebrating this, and a lot of them claim Jesus. The point I was making was if any of these people who are like, “Yeah, you broke the law, you’re not allowed to be here, being here is breaking the law” – if they ever speed, they’re hypocrites.
Obviously God talks about some sins having greater consequences than others. Like if you cause a child to stumble, it’s better for you to tie a millstone around your neck and cast yourself into the sea. But at the end of the day, sin is sin in the sense that it is an action that separates us from God.
In Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is no Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” What he’s talking about, I believe, is Christians, those who believe in Christ. Someone could probably make the argument that they may or may not be Christians, so we don’t have to treat them the same, but what we do know is that they’re all images of God. Humans are made in God’s image, so we should treat people in general as if they are images of Christ.
Putting this in more modern terms, it’s like there is no Republican nor Democrat, neither immigrant nor citizen, nor is there homosexual and heterosexual. We’re all one in the image of God, so basically, act like it. We should all treat people as Jesus would treat people. We are not supposed to be the ones enacting judgment on people.
That’s another sticky one that I see people, especially online and Facebook groups and things, because Facebook groups can be hotbeds of malice and gossip and all kinds of awful things. But I’ve often seen even in Christian groups where someone posts something about blatant sin that they’re engaged in, and people try to lovingly come alongside them and be like, “Hey, you know this isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing. God calls us to a higher standard.” And people will jump in the comments and be like, “You are not supposed to judge. You shouldn’t be judging them.”
That’s not what that means. That doesn’t mean don’t hold people accountable. It means when you are holding people accountable, you better have in mind that – I forget what verse it is – but like, “I am the chief of sinners.” I am not perfect in any stretch of the imagination, but we’re all called to hold each other accountable as believers.
There’s definitely a lot of traps that the enemy can catch us in. Misusing what the Bible says is a pretty common one, especially in politics. Not looking to God for how to handle this situation, but trying to use our own judgment and will to decide what to do. That’s basically when every king or ruler in the Old Testament totally failed – when they went and decided this is what’s right, this is the best course of action, and this is what I’m going to do.
And trying to take control themselves – I mean, that was the first failure of humanity. Adam and Eve trying to take their future into their own hands and not trust that God was in control and had the best outcome for them.
That’s a tough one. It’s really difficult, especially when things really make sense to you, to try to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak, especially when it seems like it could be in line with what God wants. You and I have had conversations about the current political climate and how we’re kind of worried for what our kids are going to be walking into as adults. But we’ve also talked about how trying to control the environment and have so much fear around it and work so hard to make sure that a certain outcome is achieved isn’t necessarily trusting God.
There is a difference between being a good parent who’s being a good steward of the children that have been entrusted to you, and trying to do it on your own and putting yourself in God’s position, which is so difficult for me as a person who’s very anxious. There are so many examples of people in the Bible who are in that place of anxiety and God telling them you need to wait, you need to just trust me and wait. Which sucks. It’s super fun. But that’s what God calls us to do. He calls us to do hard things. Wait upon the Lord. Be still. Be courageous. Do not be afraid. These things are not the easiest.
It’s tough. It’s really tough to wait. It sucks. Especially when there’s people around you who you respect that completely disagree. And they’re like, “No, that’s not a smart thing to do. Here’s what you should do.” That’s where it gets really complicated too – when you’re looking to receive wisdom from someone who’s older and wiser than you, and they completely disagree, but in a way that you’re feeling confident that to take action would be taking control of something that should be in God’s hands.
It’s really tough to push back and say, “No, I’m going to wait, even though it might look foolish. I’m not going to take control of this, and I’m going to trust that God has the best course of action.” There might be circumstances where God’s not asking you to wait and you should just pick. God can work with whatever decisions we make to get his ultimate outcome, so there might be multiple paths forward.
That was a really new concept to me when we started dating. I pretty much always had the view there’s one right path forward and I gotta make sure I choose it. And so there was so much fear and anxiety for me around that. And I think you probably were the first one to introduce the idea of there might not be a right choice in some instances. There might just be different outcomes.
Obviously you and I married the wrong people, and so there’s a very big difference between completely ignoring what God is trying to tell you and there being two God-honoring options. Well, I think even saying that it’s like the wrong – we married the wrong people isn’t necessarily true. It was an option that we chose. It was a painful option. But God still used it. And we don’t know what would have been the case if we didn’t marry those people. That’s very true. Sometimes I wonder. Who knows what would have happened? I mean, God knows what would happen, but that’s ultimately the only person who knows.
Knowing what choice to make and when is really tough and frustrating. Really the only thing I think we can do is do our best to understand God’s character and do a lot of prayer and listening – a lot of listening. And it’s easy to say, but I don’t think people actually spend the time to do it. At least I didn’t in the past. Like, “Oh, I’m just gonna pray about it and we’ll see.” It’s like, what does it actually look like in practice? Are you actually sitting down and getting quiet and praying and then taking some time to listen, or are you spending some time to think about it?
I think until I encountered the concept of listening prayer and started using that regularly, I genuinely had no idea what trying to get direction from God looked like. I grew up in the church, I went to Christian school the majority of my life, and yet I still had no idea how do you actually do that? And so listening prayer was really the first time that I was like, “Oh, this is a lot easier than just like, ‘Okay, God.'” I’m waiting for a feeling maybe, or what am I looking for here?
It’s difficult because I think a lot of Christians believe that God speaks, but you can’t actually talk to him. Like that seems very esoteric, like woo-woo. Everyone even in the Old Testament that was blessed by the Holy Spirit and anointed to speak for Israel talked with God or at least received his direction. They had to receive some way.
Sometimes for me, that’s like just spending time journaling and writing down what I feel like God is telling me and then going over it again and being like, “Okay, is there scripture to support this?” Sometimes it’s because I’ve read my Bible enough – it’s phrases or words that I already know are in scripture and I just didn’t think about it until that moment. And you’re like, “Oh yeah, actually God does say this. God does say to trust him and give up control of the things that we care about that are worldly and that we are aliens here.”
I think there’s a lot that is to be said for just kind of journaling it and then especially writing it down and being able to reference it again to confirm or interrogate it to make sure that it’s actually biblical. I think it’s – I was reading in Second Timothy this past week about the verse that says people get to the point where they’re not seeking out solid teaching, they’ll just want to listen to things that make them feel nice. I think in one of the versions it sounds like “tickles their ears.”
There’s also the concept where I think Paul is talking about like when I was a baby, I drank milk, but then as I matured, I moved on to food, and Christians need to go through that same process. Like when you’re an early Christian and young Christian, you do need that easy to digest and easy to comprehend milk. But then as you mature as a Christian, you do need to make that move on to solid food.
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” I think the modern equivalent to that would be keeping yourself in an echo chamber where you’re only listening to the people that agree with what you say. And that’s so, so dangerous.
Because as Christians, if we’re true believers, we have truth. But there are so many things that scripture either isn’t completely clear on, we don’t get answers to. So all of us, with our wide range of beliefs, are wrong about something. Being in an echo chamber and not being exposed to any other ideas – one, you don’t really develop the ability to measure things against scripture, so it’s like you got weak Bible muscles. But then two, you don’t get the chance to be exposed to information that might change your beliefs towards what actually is truth.
That’s where I think you gotta spend some time listening and hearing from people who have studied the Bible more and know more. It’s one of the reasons why I really like to read a lot of average text written books by theologians – not their PhD thesis but their books that are directed towards the general public. Those are really interesting. Sometimes I still have to look up words – I don’t know what this actually means. But those are really helpful.
And things that are more accessible, like the Bible Project. Tim Mackey is incredibly smart, has a lot of wisdom. What I like about the Bible Project and Mackey is he also sometimes presents the opposing viewpoint of “Well, some theologians talk about it this way” or “There’s still arguments about this thing,” and so then you have the chance to examine what he’s saying compared to your own beliefs.
And it can be challenging sometimes because he is very convincing to not be like, “Oh well, he’s probably right.” But really think about it for yourself and go read the scripture that they’re talking about and do the research, do the work – but doing the work is really hard. It feels like it takes a lot of time. It does take a lot of time.
And our lives are busy, which is one reason why we need to slow down. Hey, bring it back around to the main topic! Yeah, we gotta slow down, go the speed limit. But honestly, I think when I started going the speed limit, it slowed down the rest of my life because all of a sudden you’re not in this hurried state constantly. Just kind of like, I’ll get there when I get there. When God wants me to get there, I’m gonna get there.
It is kind of giving Jesus the wheel, so to speak. Jesus take the gas pedal! My debut album will be coming out later this year. I’m excited for it. I’ll be the first to buy it. Great, thanks. With our money. Combined finances is going to win? Is that just you buying your own album? I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, you’re a different person than – well, are you? Because we are one flesh. We are one flesh.
I don’t really like the word flesh. It’s kind of gross. What word would you use to describe it? Body? Oh, I don’t like body. But flesh just has like a weird mouthfeel. A weird mouthfeel? Yeah, it’s flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh. And we’ve reached the non-productive period of the podcast. This is where you just get to see where we start losing track of what we’re actually talking about and get distracted.
Blech. Blech. Blech, blech. Anything that’s like FL. What are some other words? Coulson, when he was in the early days of potty training, would say “flush.” And he would say it with that like down-up inflection too. It was like, “flush.” It was so cute. Flush is a similar word, isn’t it? But for some reason, that doesn’t have the same mouthfeel. It’s just a flesh wound. How about you?
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