THE HEART OF ROAD RAGE

Road rage can be ugly and sometimes even deadly. What is your road rage level these days? Has that level changed since last year?

Let's look at some causes of road rage. Anger is certainly a cause of road rage but we need to go further back to the cause of that anger. Is it a long-burning bitterness, a deep-seated unforgiveness, a guilty secret which cannot be shared, retaliation toward overpowering authority? Any one of these things or a number of others can cause anger which comes out in an encounter with another driver. The fundamental problem is that these issues have not been recognized and properly dealt with through admission, repentance, confession and forgiveness. You can make a road rager take anger management classes but the deep seated answer to his anger is a change of heart through an encounter with God through Jesus Christ. The new birth means a new heart to deal with road rage.

Perhaps the cause of road rage is impatience, the absolute necessity of making that next appointment, of reaching that destined goal even though you have not allowed yourself enough time for unplanned encounters. Those unplanned encounters with those "stupid" drivers is cutting into your all important schedule. Well let's look a little deeper into this impatience. Impatience does not leave room for the sovereign rule of God in unplanned circumstances, or for the greater goal that supersedes the planned destination, or for the rest and peace of God in traffic jams and accident snarls. Those who have a new heart in Jesus Christ need not panic or get angry in uncontrollable and unforeseen circumstances. A rise in anxiety is a cause to call upon God for His peace and patience which passes all understanding.

Let's look at one more. Road rage is caused by a sense of privilege and entitlement. We have so much in this country and that can make us feel entitled to those things instantly, always and at all times. Anyone who gets in the way is stepping on our privileges and needs to get out of the way. I have a right to an open highway, an open way through the traffic, no one's destination is more important than mine. Again I must go back beyond the cultural conditioning that has caused this sense of privileged entitlement to the selfish condition of the individual heart. That is the fundamental problem.

The anger, the impatience, the sense of entitlement that rises in our hearts in a traffic jam or in any other circumstances is not somebody else's fault, it is God's call to us to conformity to Christ in a deeper way through repentance, confession, forgiveness and new grace to become what we are in Christ. For the unbeliever these things are a call to come to Christ for a new heart, but for us God calls us in many ways each day to a deeper fellowship and fuller conformity to Jesus.

You are not likely a full blown road rage candidate but be alert to those calls to sanctification in your everyday life. There are plenty. God's plan is to make you like Jesus in every way. What an exciting privilege and challenge.