For the record, and regardless of your preferred method of information reception, I’m going to do what I do every Sunday morning. I’m going to start tapping away at the keyboard until I’m done. And when I’m finished, I’ll find an image that fits the eventual message, copy and paste the text into the media streams that normally deliver it for me, and then go about preparing for the rest of my day, which promises to be long.
Admittedly, I do have an agenda this morning. Perhaps the previous paragraph is already a noticeable wink toward it. But first, something I see more often than I prefer.
Every now and then, I pull up to a stoplight and find myself behind or beside someone who has stopped a car length from the line. For some reason, it happens a lot at the light at the end of the off-ramp from southbound US-23 onto M-59. People approach that light, sometimes stopping fifteen or twenty feet from where the front bumper belongs, leaving a stretch of perfectly usable pavement in front of them. A.J. Hurley was at my home on Friday evening. Over a whisky and cigar, I shared with him how frustrated I get when I see this, especially when every second matters at particular intersections—and that’s an intersection that matters, the light being relatively short. Twenty feet makes a difference there.
But no matter the light, the practice makes no sense to me.
That said, I assume there may be explanations for the behavior. What those explanations are, I don’t know. Perhaps those drivers have depth-perception issues. Or maybe they’re simply overly cautious, having been rear-ended and shoved into oncoming traffic at some point in the past.
Whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that the whole point of the line is to tell you where to stop your car. It’s the appointed place. It’s where the law, the road, and everybody else’s expectations meet. And I would think it’s more dangerous when someone ignores that normal expectation. The person behind you might expect you to stop in the appointed place. If you stop a car and a half length before it, you’re more likely to get rear-ended.
I drive a two-door Jeep Wrangler, which is relatively short. Admittedly, I’ve sometimes been tempted to simply pull around (even going onto the median if necessary) to park in that unused space. I’ve confessed this sinful inclination to my wife. Rest assured, I’ve never done it. I’ve only imagined it. Plenty of sins have had long and satisfying lives in my imagination while being denied a body in the real world. I’m grateful when the Holy Spirit keeps them there.
Even so, the thought arrives because it feels like a ridiculous, almost rude, waste of space. It feels as though someone came all the way to the place where the decision needed to be made and then refused to complete the approach.
This is right about the time in my writing when the skimmers start getting irritated.
I know this because some people don’t like that I tell stories in my writing. They hear an opening about lines at traffic lights and immediately want to know why I have not already made the point. They would prefer the thesis statement in the first sentence, the conclusion in the second, and the whole thing finished before the coffee cools. They want the truth in a line. Even better, a meme.
I understand the instinct. We live in a skimming age. We skim headlines. We skim articles. We skim emails. We skim the terms and conditions when we buy a car. We do the same in our mobile phone contracts, pretending to accept responsibly. We skim because there is too much to read, too much to answer, too much to carry, and too much demanding our attention.
So, in other words, skimming has become sort of a survival skill.
Again, I get it. Still, skimming has a cost. A skimmer gets the icing. A reader gets the cake. A reader can savor the truth, having received it by patience, observation, memory, humor, discomfort, recognition, and whatever other tool the writer employs in his narrative. A reader is brought to and led through the ordinary world until the ordinary world gives up something worth seeing—and then a reader understands that worth.
That’s why I often begin with the everyday things. I begin with the odd driver at the stoplight because the odd driver at the stoplight might be relatable to you. It might even be you. I begin with the useless gap in traffic because the senseless gap in traffic might become a way of seeing the senseless gaps in your own life. I begin with something small because small things have a way of carrying larger truths.
And this is where I would expect Christians to be more tolerant of the method, because Jesus Himself taught this way.
The Lord certainly spoke plainly. He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). There were times when the truth came directly.
And yet, again and again, Jesus taught by making people listen and watch something happen. He told them about a man beaten and left half dead on the road, while religious men passed by and a Samaritan stopped to show mercy (Luke 10:25-37). He told them about a younger son who wasted his inheritance, a father who ran to welcome the lost boy home, and an older son who resented that father’s grace (Luke 15:11-32). He told them about a sower scattering seed on the path, the rocks, the thorns, and the good soil (Matthew 13:1-23). He told them about a Pharisee and a tax collector who went up to the temple to pray, and the one who went home justified was the one beating his breast and begging for mercy (Luke 18:9-14).
Jesus could have summarized each lesson in a sentence. He could have reduced the Prodigal Son to a doctrinal claim and the Pharisee and tax collector to a warning against spiritual pride. Instead, He made His hearers walk through the scene. He brought them into what today’s skimmers would call irrelevant details, making them stand on the road, in the field, at the house, near the temple, beside the wounded man, beside the angry brother, beside the seed that failed, beside the sinner who had nothing to offer except a quiet plea for mercy in darkness’s corner.
But here’s the thing. Like it or not, a story slows us down. Yes, it requires our time. But in the same way Jesus understood, a story is sometimes the only thing that gets past the gate we set up to protect ourselves from confronting something we might otherwise avoid. It gets past our efforts to avoid being corrected. A story lets us nod along until we suddenly realize we have been implicated. Nathan understood this when he came to David with the story of a rich man, a poor man, and a beloved little lamb. David burned with anger against the man in the story, and then Nathan said, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:1-7). The story is what Nathan used to help lead David across the distance he’d placed between himself and truth.
In that sense, here’s where the story of the stoplight can make each of us stop and think. The driver who stops a car length from the line has become, in my mind, a small parable of stopping short. He’s near the appointed place—the location he should be occupying. He can see the line. Everyone else can see the line. The whole intersection is arranged around the expectation that he will move to the line. And yet he sits back from it.
We all live this way on occasion in normal, everyday life.
We know we’ve done wrong, and yet, we stop short of saying it out loud. We come near to forgiving someone but stop short, preferring instead to continue rehearsing the details of the person’s offense. We see our talents and treasure and understand faithful stewardship, but we stop short of actually engaging in it. We confess God’s Word as the sole source for faith, life, and practice, but then stop short of letting that be true in our lives.
We leave gaps in so many places. For whatever reason or excuse, we sit back from the line. Meanwhile, the place of faithfulness sits in front of us, visible and empty.
Again, the skimmer, if still with us, is reading and thinking all of this could’ve been stated simply and plainly. The reader—who also happens to be the deeper thinker—knows why the stoplight story helped. And yes, this is absolutely true. Neuroscientists have long understood that readers are this world’s critical thinkers. That’s because genuine understanding that leads to betterment is a process that takes time. On the flip side, a skimmer’s chief tool is not his brain, but rather, his eyes. They use what some neuroscientists have labeled the “F” pattern of reading, which means a skimmer scans a line, then another, before scrolling down, hoping to find a word that attracts their attention. Then the process starts again. A line. Another line. Then scroll. The point is that, by default, skimmers look for things that already make sense to them. That inhibits a skimmer’s ability to grow beyond the self-protective boundaries I described earlier.
But again, readers are engaged in a longer, slower process that expands—and actually strengthens—their cognitive abilities. They’re the ones who can see the driver sitting back from the line and recognize themselves. I dare say, they’re the ones who, once they’ve felt my temptation to drive up and onto a median to pull my Jeep into the gap, can understand how the Holy Spirit fights the flesh in even the simplest moments.
That’s the benefit of storytelling. It does more than state the truth. It gives the truth room to approach. It lets the hearer live with the matter for a while. It gives the conscience time to wake up. It teaches without sounding like a scolding lecture, even when the teaching finally becomes sharp.
Jesus knew all of this before neuroscience was even a thing. That’s because He knows us. He knows that we can defend ourselves against a single sentence or meme. He knows that a story can lead us to the line before we realize where we’ve been going.
So, I will keep noticing the cars that stop too far back at red lights. I will probably keep wondering why they do it. By God’s grace, I hope to continue resisting the urge to drive my Jeep onto the median and dropping into the gap to make a point.
I’ll also keep writing this way, regardless of anyone’s criticism, if only because the world is full of little parables. Some are found in vineyards and fields. Some are found beside wounded men on roads between Jerusalem and Jericho. Some are even found at a traffic light, where someone has come toward the line and stopped short.
Again, a reader will understand. A skimmer will be irritated, and most likely, have already moved on. But if he stayed, perhaps the next time he sees that empty space at the light, he’ll think about the places where he has done the same. And for me, that’ll always be worth the extra paragraphs.
Cruciform Stuff 