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“’Til Her Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away”
Sometimes popular poetry packs unintentional prophetic punch. Consider the prophets known in the lore of our nation by the name, “The Beach Boys.” Well she got her daddy’s car And she cruising through the hamburger stand now And she’ll have fun, fun, fun ‘til her daddy takes the T-bird away! Well the girls can’t stand her Well you knew all along The story of the manna in the wilderness often gets overlooked when we consider the story of the Exodus. When the story of the Exodus comes up, people usually think about Moses standing before the Red Sea, raising his staff while the wind billows out his robe and roaring waters part in front of him. That’s sensational stuff. Hollywood certainly loved it. A canyon with watery walls and fish staring out at you makes for great drama. But bread lying around on the ground? Less dramatic. Besides, the message in that bread lying around runs counter to our real cultural religion. This story of the manna outlines something very important. We have a God of abundance, so we don’t need to fear scarcity. There they were in the desert where provision doesn’t usually abound for human beings. God knew this to be the case, so when the pilgrim Israelites complained that they needed something to eat he acknowledged the legitimacy of their complaint. God sent manna. They were hungry, so God supplied what they needed. But look what happens. God instructs Moses to tell the people that they are to gather what their families need. What each person needed is exactly what would be provided. Moses told them, “Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take about two quarts for each person you have in your family.” Read verse 17: “The Israelites did as they were told. Some gathered much, some gathered little. And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.” Moses then told them that they were not to gather extra. Some did, though, only to discover that the bread had spoiled the next morning. Two important lessons lie in this story. First, we have a God of abundance and we need never fear scarcity. God knows our needs and will provide. When we live on the basis of this belief, we will always have what we need. Second lesson: hoarding always leads to spoiling. Keeping more than you need always fowls things up. Piling up extra because you’re scared there won’t be anything for you the next day says that you don’t really believe God is good on God’s promises. This two-fold premise permeates biblical thinking from Genesis to Revelation. This is the premise: God knows your need and will take care of them if you trust him. This means that no one should have too much and no one should have too little. God’s pretty insistent that God’s people take him seriously on this account. Before the covenant gets spelled out in detail beginning in Deuteronomy 12, we get repeated reminders in the 11 th chapter. Look at them. Verse 1: Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Verse 8: Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today. Verse 13: So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today. . . Verses 18-22: Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds . . . Verse 27: You’ll be blessed in you obey my commands . . . Verse 32: Be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today. In no uncertain terms, the biblical witness, from the very outset, lays out a principle which decrees that no one is to have luxury at someone else’s expense. The rest of the Deuteronomic Code spells out all kinds of ways in which the people of those days were to regulate their behavior so that the greatest good for all could be achieved. Many of those regulations no longer make sense, but the spirit of those regulations still does. Again, the whole purpose of the covenant with God and between the people of God is to love and rely on God alone, a God of mercy, love, and abundance who will give us all we need. Now, with all that in mind consider that the United States of America comprises about 4% of the world’s population. We use 25% of the world’s petroleum resources. This should make you squirm. Now I know that some people will look at me a bit like some people looked at a Brazilian clergyman who worked in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. He said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” People usually don’t like folks who tell them the truth about their habits, but it’s been pretty clear to me that we in the United States, protected by two vast oceans and the world’s best funded military have a rather constricted and privileged notion of ourselves NOT in keeping with this basic biblical vision of no one having too much and no one having too little. It comes across vividly in our driving habits. If you represent the world’s population with 100 people and the total petroleum usage with 100 gallon cans, then four people would be Americans and they would be standing amid 25 gallons cans of fuel while the other 96 would have 75 gallons to divide among them. Each American would have 6.2 gallons apiece while each of the others would have .77 of a gallon apiece – if it were distributed among them evenly, which it isn’t. Does this conform to the biblical ideal? When you consider the current situation with rising fuel costs, this just might be the preliminary warnings that Daddy is just about ready to take our T-bird away. When we consider our vocation, the fact that we were put here to tend and take care of the Creation God has entrusted to us, nothing gets more personal than the way we Americans get from point A to point B. Except in places like New York where you can actually live without a car, the way we have constructed our society makes a car a necessity. In most of the neighborhoods and subdivisions in suburban America, you can’t even get a stick of butter without getting into a car and burning fuel. This arrangement puts us at a tremendous disadvantage currently because most of our cities have been constructed on the assumption that we’d always have cheap oil. Shoot, I remember when I was in high school out on joy rides with my friends in my 1962 Chevrolet Impala, getting about 13 miles to the gallon, pulling up to an Esso station (yes, “Esso”) and in shock pulling out again because the gas cost 31 cents a gallon. Make no mistake. I’m a redneck from the word go, and when I hear the word go, my impulse is to floor it! My dream car growing up was a Chevy Malibu SS 396 and I can spend hours telling you about the cars I’ve owned. Automobiles are engrained in our culture, dictate the structure of our communities, and have even shaped our very psychology. Nevertheless, I think that if we don’t learn some discipline and apply some biblical thinking to how we function in our American, car-oriented society, Daddy’s going to take the T-Bird away. Geologists know. Geologists have known. Since the late ‘60’s the folks who explore for oil and know where the raw stuff lies in the crust of the earth have known that the world has only so much crude oil. Stated simply, oil is a finite resource. I minored in Geology at Appalachian State University and I’ll never forget the section we did on the various layers of rock, the strata that make up the earth’s crust. The layers of rock that lie beneath us bend and curve causing hills and valleys and mountains. In some places the layers make A-shapes when viewed edge-on. These are called “synclines.” Sometimes those synclines are permeable rocks, or rock layers through which liquid can flow. Sometimes they’re impermeable rocks, or rocks through which liquid cannot flow. Oil forms when organic material like trees and animals die forming layers over which dirt collects. Over millions of years, more and more dirt collects until it’s a heavy layer of rock. The rock squeezes the organic material until the oils in the fossils come out. If the rock pushing down on the organic material is permeable, the oil just goes away. If it is impermeable, like granite or some kind of metamorphic stone, the oil collects in the apex of the syncline. Oil companies look for the impermeable synclines and try to drill into the apex. The downward pressure from the rock layer helps push the oil through the drill pipe and you get crude. In 1972 my geology professor pointed out that there were only so many impermeable synclines in the world. In 1972 he said that if we don’t learn to conserve, prices would skyrocket. In 1973, we experienced an Arab oil embargo that threw the US into an economic mess. In 1977, Jimmy Carter addressed the nation and said, “Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.” At that time, the US was importing about 30% of its oil and Carter sent to Congress a comprehensive energy program. Carter, as we all know, was defeated by Ronald Reagan in a landslide largely because the Reagan campaign so effectively painted Carter as an incompetent, pessimistic chicken little and Carter did much to conform to the image. “The sky’s the limit,” we were told and Carter slunk out of the White House. Most of Carter’s energy policies were scrapped and politicians since then learned their lesson. Never, ever, tell the American people that they would have to cut back on their luxuries if you want to be elected – and today, we’re importing more than 60% of our oil with no meaningful policy to deal with kicking our habit. Indeed we are a nation of oil addicts every bit as in denial as the most abject crack user. Abiding by the notion that no one should have too much and that no one should have too little doesn’t even figure into our thinking when it comes to our cars. We don’t think our driving habits come under the scrutiny of our Savior. So, when it comes to our driving habits, how do we live out our biblical vocation of tending to and caring for Creation? Try this on for size. If I drive 75 mph rather than 65, I can reason that it has only a small impact. My car, for example, gets about 42 mpg when I drive 65. When I drive 75, it gets about 36 mpg. When I use ten gallons of fuel, I’ve only gone 360 miles rather than 420. To go the same distance, I have to use one and a half more gallons of fuel. That doesn’t sound like much at all. One and a half gallons of fuel translates to just $4.50 at $3.00 per gallon. However, if there are around 150 million cars on the highways at any given time during a work day and just half of them exceed the speed limit in the conservative manner I just described, then at least 75 million more gallons of fuel have been burned. Put positively, if just half of the speeders on the road were to drive the speed limit, we could save about 37 million gallons of fuel every day. That’s a lot of gas. And let me emphasize something: those figures apply if every American driver speeding were getting 36 mpg rather than 42. In actual fact, IF WE ONLY DROVE THE SPEED LIMIT, we would save hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel. What if the 8 million Southern Baptists we can find were to make that kind of commitment? What if the roughly 30 million Catholics who show up with any frequency were to make that kind of commitment? Add to that the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Assemblies of God, and on and on, to that number. The impact would be huge. What if every Christian SUV owner who didn’t need a vehicle that large, were to buy a smaller, more efficient vehicle? Did you know that SUVs, while giving the feeling of increased safety, actually have laxer safety standards to abide by than passenger cars? Plus, with innovations in the design of many smaller cars, it’s simply not true any longer that you give up safety if you drive smaller. The fact of the matter is, too, that governments will always be timid when it comes to this issue for reasons I’ve already stated. It’s just not good press for a politician to admit that high fuel prices are here to stay. Listen to all three presidential hopefuls still in the race. They all tell us they’re going to lower gas prices and investigate the oil companies. At the same time, they will preach the virtues of supply and demand. The reason why we have high prices is because the supplies are shrinking and the demand is expanding. As in the so-called war on drugs which we are losing, as long as there is a demand for the addictive substance, the pushers will do very well. In fact, national governments have little effect on the multi-national oil companies. This fact was driven home to me in June of 2006 when I heard Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio interview Lord John Brown, the CEO of British Petroleum. Inskeep was asking Lord Brown about his involvement in the energy task force that VP Cheney put together and kept the participants secret from the American public. “Did you meet with VP Cheney?” “Not on this matter.” “Or the energy task force?”
“No, no. I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t normally do it, but of course I do meet with Vice President Cheney from time to time. That’s hardly surprising, given that 45% of BP’s activity is in the United States. I’d expect to inform him about what we do.” “What have you been telling the Vice President or other American officials that you want?” “I never ask. I always say this is what we’re going to do and the consequence of what we see is the following. I’ve always found that’s the better way. In the end, governments have to make up their own minds.” (If you’d like to hear the interview yourself, go to www.NPR.org, click on “archives,” then Morning Edition and go to the June 16, 2006 broadcast. The interview is entitled “Oil-Supply Anxiety Overblown, BP Chief Says.”) I think it’s up to the American citizenry to begin to tackle this problem. Politicians are too timid. AND the American citizenry must be led by the churches. You and I need to make these choices, let people know we’re making these choices, and when we act responsibly, government will follow. It is in this arena where we need to put feet to our prayers. This is where our faith will take guts, where applying biblical principles shape our real living. This is where – ahem – the rubber meets the road. Simply uttering pious phrases will not help. Bob Sheldon currently serves the Rocky Mountain Synod of the Presbyterian Church. He was raised in Denver and went to school at Wayland Baptist College (now university) in Plainview, Texas which is just south of Amarillo. Bob had always been an outgoing person, tall, good-looking coupled with a high intelligence, articulate speech gifts, and deep spirituality. Consequently, he accrued leadership and was scheduled to lead in chapel at the school one Monday. That weekend, however, his brothers in Denver called and invited him to a Denver Broncos game. They had tickets. All Bob had to do was get there. Bob wanted to go. He had a problem, though. He practiced a strict budget and gasoline for his motorcycle to go on an unplanned trip to Denver and back just wasn’t there. Besides, he needed to be in chapel. But he wanted to go to that game. So, he looked in his tank and saw that he had right at enough for the round trip. With some luck, or divine intervention, maybe he could make it. So, off he went, praying the whole time that since he was such an important religious leader in the school community, God would understand and grant him the round trip, a miracle of energy savings. He went to the game, had a good time, and started back that Sunday night. Indeed, the gas indicator kept dropping. Somewhere near the Oklahoma line on interstate 26, it passed E. Bob prayed, “Oh, Lord, you know I need to get back to lead chapel. Please grant me a miracle.” He ran out of gas. He had to hitch hike the rest of the way to school. Former verbal piety – even current verbal piety – is no replacement for disciplined obedience. It may seem trivial, but our collective decisions in this area of our lives will have a major affect on the society in which we live. When we ALL choose to apply the basic principles of the Bible to our daily lives, things will very simply be better. It’s our choice.
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