18

Speed Trap.

My wife and I debated recently about police and the role they play in enforcing the law. My wife was commonsensical about it. Yet we were debating. That’s probably enough information for you to determine which of the two of us was being reasonable.

I admitted to her my argument was likely fueled by some Officer Daddy issues for me. Still I spoke frustratedly about how the human ego, plus power, never works out for the people under that power. I argued cops are necessary and mostly good. But when they’re bad it’s so bad.

Kristi agreed that there are flaws in the system(s), perhaps severe flaws, but that the alternative scenario I was implying was far from realistic.

I spoke of my specific irritation that a traffic officer can decide to give you a ticket or not, based on his or her mood. I’d had officers tell me it was my lucky day, they liked me. I argued it was too much discretion. Either take away this fickle discretion or put chips in our car that record our speed and send us a monthly bill for overages. I didn’t fully believe this simple binary, but I needed something to bolster my position since she had commonsense on her side.

“But if the speed limit is 55,” she said, “and you are going 57, you are breaking the law. Plain and simple. You agreed to the terms when you got a license, and agreed again when you got on the road with the white signs that present to you the speed limit-” she emphasized that the word on the sign says limit– “so you should accept that you are breaking the law and there are consequences. If an officer decides instead of ticketing you to warn you, in the spirit of good will, then that is a gift. But the issue remains; you are the one breaking the law. Not the officer. It’s not perfect, but it works.”

I struck back with something that sounded really philosophical. “My basic point is that moral people don’t need laws and immoral people don’t obey them. It doesn’t work well enough.”

“But it works better than doing nothing,” Kristi insisted. “Being pulled over, the very threat of it, keeps selfish idiots from assigning to themselves their own speed limit. Think of the people who would be dead if not for the system applied, flawed as it is.”

The next day I thought about how, to a ridiculous degree, the issue is that I think I’m in many ways special. Exceptional. Often not subject to the same structures and guidelines as others. I’m a great driver. Not just in the typical Confidently-Above-Average American way. I’m saying I scored 100’S on both my driving test and memorized every second of the car chase from The French Connection.

But this wasn’t really about driving. It was about me, the proverbial man in the rearview mirror and what psychologists call the Self-Serving Bias: a penchant we have for favorably excusing ourselves from the average or the whole.

A friend of mine sent me an email that next day. He had no idea about the debate I’d had with my lower test score achieving spouse. Totally unsolicited but apparently prompted by the One who sided with my wife, my friend had copied and pasted some thoughts he’d written down during Lent a couple years back and sent it to me to see what I thought about it. One section said,

“…I had to start thinking about all the things I do that are not loving. All the things I do that get in the way of love. Like speeding. That just popped in my head as I drove. How does speeding affect my ability to love? Because I am more impatient with those around me when I speed. I do little things like rush yellow lights and tailgate those who are not in the same hurry….”

He then posited the negative side affects of being a slower, more responsible driver.

“I could start judging all those reckless drivers who are insisting on going over the speed limit. Or create an inconvenience of slowing someone down in a hurry…While I didn’t feel more loving, I started thinking about the others on the road…”

My desire to see myself as special, to be seen by others as exemplary, most of the time cuts me off from the “we” and makes me a disruptive problem for the whole. Speeding in traffic because I’m a better driver than you, or slowing down because I’m a more sane driver than you, both have a way of dislodging me from you, from the us, causing problems in the same way that one special cell who does its own thing is called cancer and harms the body. If I’m exempt, I probably demand more consideration than I give.

Our desire for specialness can misinterpret Paul’s words about self-control – especially the part where we come to realize no one controls me but me. The ego can take it as a self-appointed exemption. No one controls me, and so I answer to no one. Community Immunity. Tony Stark, but without any of the genius or cash.

I’m not going to recycle. Others can but I don’t have time for that.

I’m not going to put money in the honor system cup. Enough others already did.

I’m not going to sit all the way through this speech. I get antsy so I’ll get up an refill my drink and go pee.

I believe in forgiveness but I’m not going to forgive her. That girl was rude.

“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”

I taught Kenyan Church leaders in a dung hut for 4 hours. We talked about unity and creative ways to unite those who have gotten too good at living in response to what makes them different. Then we took communion together, all the different denominations and backgrounds, under one roof, at one table. It was beautiful.

Simultaneously there was a medical team treating everything from headaches to the deleterious affects of AIDS. Women and children had waited in line since before dawn to be seen by the only doctor they’d encountered in decades.

One pastor from my session shook my hand as we closed, walked out into the midday sun, and cut into the front of a 100-yard long line.

“Brother?” I said as I walked up to him. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you and I take the back of the line since we came last, and especially since we are trying to put the Love of others on display for this divided community?” I was probably out of line, having little context in that moment. But, hey, I’m a great driver. “Aren’t you showing others that somehow you are to be favored for your position in the church?”

“Ah, yes. But you see,” he explained in his delightful accent, thumbing over to people behind him who held motionless infants, whose bodies were stuck in yearlong stoops, who were holding dirty cloths to unhealed lesions. “…I am not sick. I am ill.” He went on to explain that he had a throb he wanted to check out.

I am special. And my needs are the priority, why else would my feelings be so strong about them? Others are subject to processes and protocol. I am exempt.

The ego wants to stand out. Its slogans are “Have you noticed yet how much better/more deserved/smarter/more in pain I am than you? My circumstances excuse me.”

Convincing the ego to be subdued by what’s better for the many is something that can only be done by way of moment-to-moment rehearsal of the Golden Rule. It’s coming to believe Compassion for the other is of higher value than the priority of self. I want to be special so intensely, so earnestly. Therefore I give this energy to making something special out of you.

It’s a steep mountain for us to climb. Maybe more so for us in the West, as the subduction of the ego to the good of all others is seeming more and more synonymous with “unAmerican.” It’s in our society’s genes for us each to find a way to be a special individual, but more special than the other special individuals who comprise these United States.

I want to be the thunderstorm, but please God never a raindrop.

Perhaps this disposition is why there are leadership conferences held every weekend in every city but no one’s ever been to a followership conference. I suppose military basic training is followership training, but then those kids go and “defend America” and protect our freedom to each be the most special.

There’s no scenario where the ego is eradicated. The sense of self, and its protection, if I haven’t made this clear, are part of the human experience. To some degree a necessary one. If Tony Stark eradicated his ego completely we’d all be speaking Chitaurian right now. It’s once again about proper calibration. Turning the dial to at least 51% others and the analyzing all the ways we try to subvert this setting in favor of the self.

“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Just don’t turn your freedom into an opportunity for the ego. Instead, through love, serve one another. Because the entire Law of God is fulfilled in this sentence: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”