Cars and Signs

Here's my article for the February magazines:

As an adult, presents tend to fall into the categories of practical, edible or amusing.  This Christmas I received a book that was given in the spirit of the latter category: “Driving School” by Mark Philpott.  The book's subtitle is “Learning about life, God and the Bible through the world of motoring”, and in it Philpott looks at the world of cars and driving to see what we they might teach us about God and life.  As I read through it, I saw that some of the links Philpott makes are almost as tenuous as the links I make in these articles!!

You might ask whether drawing lessons about God from 'everyday life' is a legitimate exercise, or just trying to 'shoehorn' a religious message into a religiously neutral topic – can rallying really tell us anything about the Christian life? (see page 52 for the answer!!).  Unsurprisingly, I do think it is a legitimate thing to do for three reasons.  Firstly, Psalm 19:1 tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” - in other words the Creation bears the fingerprints of the Creator.  When we look at the universe with awe and wonder it's because it reminds us of the awesome and wonderful God who created it, so we can learn about God from his creation.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20 “Men cannot say they do not know about God. From the beginning of the world, men could see what God is like through the things He has made” (New Life Version). Secondly, as we humans are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27) the things we create and do can also tell us about God.  Amongst other things our love of sports, music and science, as well as our desire for justice and our capacity for love are all reflections of the image of God within us and can teach us about him.

But above all, I think it's legitimate because there are so many examples of it in the Bible:

In Proverbs 6:6 ants are used as an example of working hard; Psalm 32:9 tells us not to be like a horse that needs to be controlled by bit and bridle.  In Isaiah 64:8 God is described as a potter, and most famously in Psalm 23 he is described as a shepherd.  Jesus also uses the image of a shepherd to describe himself (John 10), as well as using farmers (Luke 8:1-15), builders (Matthew 7:24-27), bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13) and fishermen (Matthew 4:19) to illustrate his teachings.

In the section on Road Signs, Philpott talks about the signs in the Old Testament that point to Jesus as the Messiah and the divine Son of God, and how many people in his own day ignored those signs.  We don't just have the Old Testament signs, and the signs all around us, but we have the record of Jesus' words and actions, which were written, as John says, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).  Ignoring these signs is as disastrous as ignoring road signs.

But if cars aren't your thing, there is also 'Flight School' available, with 'Farm School', 'Battle School' and others to come!