I received an email not long ago that left me shocked and petrified in a way that I haven’t experienced in some time.  It started light and easy.  A warning.  A good message:  never use text messaging while driving.

I agree 100%.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have, in the past, utilized the text feature on my phone while behind the wheel.  Guilty.  But I’ve never experienced any pain, suffering or injury.  I have veered into the shoulder area and/or crossed the sacred yellow line a few times, but never actually had an accident.  And I would say, before this email, I was about 85% on the side of being against texting while driving.  In my head, from my small swerves and questionable attention to detail, I had surmised that this was a habit worth avoiding.  At least as long as there wasn’t anything urgent or pressing, anyway.

But when push came to shove, I would pick that phone up and text away if I really needed to communicate at that moment.  (What did we do before cell phones, anyway?)

You see, the idea that I could really, really hurt myself or someone else had not become a reality for me just yet.  It hadn’t hit home.  And while I didn’t want that realization through a collision or a trip into a ditch, I knew in the back of my mind that I really shouldn’t test fate with this.

I knew it.

But I didn’t.  Not really. Not until that email.  

And it changed my mind.  In just a few, quick moments, I was completely and utterly convinced that sending text messages while driving was a serious error in judgement.  Pain and suffering would occur.  Maybe worse.  Maybe death.

What was that email, you may be asking?  Remember how I said it started out nice and easy?  A warning and a plea.  A reinforcement of a great idea.

It did not stay that way.

What appeared after the sharp warning and heart-felt message were a handful of pictures showing the carnage of a trunk and rear tires that used to be a car.

Look at this for a second.  Let it sink it.  Deal with your reaction to something so bizarre and awful.  Not in a public-service-announcement kind of way, but in a try-to-feel-what-I-felt kind of way.  Because I glossed over these photos.  Sure, it’s bad, but I’ve seen some pretty jacked-up cars both in pictures and in person.  It’s almost as if the vision is so surreal, we can’t actually calculate or handle it.  I didn’t.  I just thought to myself man that’s pretty bad.  Shouldn’t be texting and driving for sure.  I really need to buckle down on that.

But the worst was yet to come.

What followed those pictures was a warning of upcoming, graphic content.  It basically said not to look if you had a weak stomach or if you were eating.  I figured I was fine to look.  How bad would it really be?

Worst possible images.  The worst.  Period.  I almost lost the lunch I hadn’t eaten yet.

Graphic somehow doesn’t describe these photos.  It’s one thing to see people mutilated and killed in a war or action movie.  That’s not comfortable or fun, but it’s handleable in my mind because it’s not real.  I know it, you know it, and my brain can deal with that.  But these were real.  These photos were brutal.  They were horrible.

I won’t get into great detail, but they showed the man who had been driving, now in three separate pieces, and they didn’t hide anything.  It was, without doubt, the most horrifying thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.  And I only saw two of the photos for a brief second.  I couldn’t handle any more.

It’s quite easy to say, with no hesitation, that I will never text and drive again.  It can wait.  I can wait.  The other person can wait.  Yet, I still find myself having to actively coerce myself not to do it.  Why?!!?  The first couple days after seeing that email terrified me so badly that I wouldn’t even consider picking up the phone with my hands on the wheel.  For that matter, I was hesitant to even mess with the stereo or heater/AC controls.  It really messed with my mind.  Factor in the small fender bender I had and the death of an aquaintance due to a car accident all happening the week prior to this email, and I was a poster-child for defensive driving.

I was scared to death.  Scared of death…and paralyzed by it.

If you know me at all, you know that is not the way I live or interact with anyone or anything.  Sure, I get nervous or fearful from time to time, but not like this.  Not this way.  Not to the point that I can’t function in normal circumstances.  But here I was, driving under the speed limit, heart beating a bit faster, constantly trying to fend off anything that could happen.  I started thinking I might never get back to normal.  I thought I might end up, at 30 years of age, being one of those people that drives 10mph under every speed limit.  I thought I had at least 30-40 more years before that point!

I can say now, however, that the tide of my fear and anxiety has receded.   My mind is back to normal (that could be a stretch).  I’m back to some semblance of regularity.  And while it’s good to be able to drive in a sane fashion again, as I said above, I find myself having to resist the urge to pick up my phone while driving.  I have to tell myself “no.”  As a matter of fact, I just put my proverbial foot down on myself when tempted to return a text only a couple of hours ago while driving.

After the complete pendulum of emotion and conviction, how in all of creation could I possible even consider doing something that I was so completely convinced not to do?  How could my guard drop so simply?  What happened to my solid foundation?  My convictions?

I suppose it has everything to do with fear, it’s ability to shock us into action, and it’s inability to keep us there.

Fear has this power to stir us up, get us moving and really change some of our habits and activities.  Yet, if you think back to changes that have been made from a motivation of fear, you discover that those changes never last.  They are never deep, lasting changes.  They are simply temporary, and usually paralyzing.

Take relationships, for example.  You get hurt by someone you care about, and you are fearful to ever commit to a person or group of people again.  Paralysis.  But, over time, you open yourself up again, make new connections, and move on with life.  The shut-down is only temporary.  The fear subsides and you return to what you were wired to do in the first place:  building relationships.

I think our relationship with God is viewed this way by many.  Too often, believers or not, we reduce following Jesus to fear-mongering and threats of a fiery demise upon death.  We paint the whole of the Gospel with only one color:  condemnation.  And while there is plenty of evidence of an eternal separation from God without Jesus and language of a lake of fire, a closer examination finds Jesus not talking much about hell at all.  Instead, He speaks of new life and a new kingdom here on earth.  He speaks about how that life in that kingdom look.  He emphasizes what can be had, not what’s to be avoided.  (Matthew 10:7, Matthew 23:13, Matthew 25:34)

Life, not fear of death.

And as powerful as fear is as a motivator, it doesn’t last.  Sure, I can frighten you with vivid images of hell and an eternity of burning and fire and brimstone.  I can scare myself, to be honest.  But, if we are truthful, that fear might motivate a change for a few days or weeks, but it will eventually wane, leaving us with a belief system built on a fear we no longer possess.  What good is that?

Hell is real.  Separation from God is real and it’s awful.  A life encompassed in the darkness of sin is a life lost.  But what if we started seeing our salvation not only as an escape from a horrible eternity, but, more importantly, as an entrance into a wonderful, new reality?  An invitation to a New Kingdom instituted by God, opened up through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and lead through the workings of His Holy Spirit?  Then, instead of having to be reminded of how scared of hell we are, we can be reminded and motivated by seeing God’s grace and love at work in our lives, affecting those around us.  That is something to live for!  That is something that moves people day by day, year by year into the places God has called them.  It is in the knowledge that God has opened up life to each one of us that I gain my strength to do what He has asks of me.  (John 1:16-17, Acts 20:24, Romans 3:24)

Fear will only lead to complacency.  It will only cause you to figure out what you can do to avoid punishment.  What you can do to simply get by.

God’s grace is totally different.  It causes you respond and react not because you are fearful of punishment, but because you are eager to see what He’ll do next.  You act and do simply because you start to understand, to the full extent, how much He loves you.   You live your life not dominated by fear, but by love.  And that life, my friends, is a life worth living.  It is a life that we’ll take with us into eternity.  It’s an everlasting life.

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