A RECENT ARTICLE IN USA TODAY reported Miami as the American city with the rudest drivers. The data compiled by AutoVantage, an automobile membership club, indicated Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston were also in the top five. Atlanta, where I live, was ranked among the most courteous cities. But even the ATL has its moments.
One morning during rush hour, I exited an Atlanta highway at a complicated intersection in the heart of the city. My route required that I cross two lanes of traffic and immediately turn right into one of two turn lanes. Both lanes were full, so I made my turn, pulled up near a car that was already in the lane where I needed to be and put on my signal in hopes that when the traffic light turned green someone would yield and let me in. No one did. A couple drivers even glanced at me and promptly inched their cars forward in blatant refusal of my request.
After several minutes of blocking traffic I gave up on the left turn and continued straight through the traffic light, altering my route. Several cars behind me seemed to decide likewise.
What would have been the cost for those drivers to yield a little to let one of us in? Would the cost have been too much to bear? Did they presume our request for entry was an opportunistic act to be protected against? Whose lane is it, anyway?
Humans are often territorial. In the book of Numbers two men, Eldad and Medad, receive the Spirit and begin to prophesy in God’s name. When their actions are reported to Moses, his protégé Joshua exclaims, “Moses my Lord make them stop!” Ostensibly, Joshua thinks Eldad and Medad are invading Moses’ lane. Moses replies, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish more people would prophesy.”
Similarly, the Gospels give an account of John who one day says to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we told him to stop because he was not one of us.” Jesus corrected John saying, “Do not stop him. Anyone who is not against us is for us.” These are but two of many biblical examples attesting to the open, inclusive, unselfish, generous nature of our faith.
Some countries have a traffic sign that reads “give way” instead of “yield.” I find the words “give way” particularly attractive. As Christians, are we not the benefactors of a tradition that is always looking to give way? To make way? To provide and offer way? And to do so particularly in those places where no way is apparent?
In December 2015, I signed on to “An Appeal to Christians in the United States.” Historian Erskine Clarke and others who are concerned that the current political discourse calls on Christian voters to abandon our commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ drafted the appeal.
The appeal has been embraced nationally and internationally. Yet, as we approach the Republican and Democratic national conventions, I believe it fitting to lift the appeal again. I conclude this essay with excerpts from it.
A fundamental conviction of Christian faith is that God is sovereign. When we abandon that faith we surrender to pervasive fear and overweening pride which violate our commitment to the lordship of Christ. Because of fear we too easily caricature or condemn those who are different from us [and] we demonize the refugee and immigrant [forgetting that] Jesus was once a refugee in a foreign land.
Let us reject these temptations that are being promoted among us. Let us help shape the character of our much loved land by following the counsel of the Prophet Micah – to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.
PAUL ROBERTS is is the president of Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary in Atlanta. He has been married to Nina for 23 years and has three teenaged
