How Stupid Can One Person Be?

To print this article, select file from your browser's menu, then select print.

How Stupid Can One Person Be?
by Bud Malmsten

I was in a hurry that day. [Any surprises here?] I pulled into the village Post Office parking lot, so I could run in and check my mail. "Good," I thought, "No other cars." So I left the engine running, slammed it into park, jumped out, gave the door a shove, and headed toward my mailbox inside.

About fifteen seconds later I emerged from the building and was shocked. My car was gone! How could anyone have been that quick? To steal a car in just fifteen seconds. Well, that was my first suspicion. Then I looked around a bit more, and there it was, still running, the open door was caught on the corner of the cement porch on the little building next door.

Regrouping my thoughts as I approached the scene, I realized that the gearshift had not made it all the way to "park." It got only as far as "reverse." That explains why I hadn't heard the door shut as I went in. That concept didn't register as a conscious thought until much later.

Further examination revealed that the car had proceeded backward [receded?] across the parking lot, just missing the corner of the building, and aimed directly at the gasoline pumps in front of that store. The open car door was what kept the incident a minor annoyance instead of a major disaster.

There is an important lesson tucked into that confession of stupidity:

A CAR WITHOUT A DRIVER IS A DANGEROUS THING.

Well, DUH!?! So, Bud, just how many years did you have to live to get that figured out? More that I will admit here, but way too many. But pondering that incident has reminded me often of an important analogy for life.

Think about the automobile. A finely crafted combination of parts, designed and put together for the purpose of getting people conveniently from one place to another. I would not be surprised to discover that the first auto was designed and built for the pleasure and purpose of the designer/builder.

Now here comes the analogy. I believe that the designer/builder/creator of the universe had a purpose in the creation of the human species. The first few chapters of Genesis in the Bible indicate that at least part of that purpose was a special kind of relationship between the person and the creator - namely friendship.

There also appears to have been some sort of delegation of authority to the humans relative to the operation of the planet we call home. As long as the lines of communication were kept open between the humans and the creator, the creator could always provide sufficient information for wise decisions to be made.

However, the creator valued the friendship so much, that he built into the humans the capacity to ignore the creator. This is where the automobile analogy breaks down. It is impossible to imagine a perfectly working car ignoring the desires of the driver. But in that primeval Garden of Eden, that is exactly what did happen.

All human history is the account of what has happened as a result, and it includes what God [the creator] has done to restore the original intended friendship. All the negative impressions of human nature [you can read a bunch of these in The American Partisan] are the result of the humans consciously or subconsciously rejecting the desires of the creator.

The power of a car is measured in hundreds of horses, but without a driver it is virtually useless. Unless somehow, it gets in motion; then it is truly dangerous. The power of a human is infinite, but without that relationship with the creator, the human is infinitely more dangerous.

More about the solutions in coming columns.