Getting stuck in traffic is bad, but getting stuck in life is worse …

Of all the places I’ve lived, the San Francisco bay area has, by far, the worst traffic I’ve experienced.

Traffic in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, and Dallas wasn’t fun either. Even Honolulu’s rush hour traffic can sometimes be daunting. But traffic in the bay area was a nightmare!

A key reason for the particularly bad traffic in the bay area is once you’re on a freeway and traffic gets bad, you’re pretty much stuck to sticking it out where you are. Unlike some cities, there are few parallel roads to exit onto as a means of getting around bad freeway traffic.

For example, Phoenix roadways are laid out in a grid design. So when traffic gets bad on the freeway, you can take an exit and travel roadways that parallel the freeway to get around the congestion. Driving surface roads may be slow going, but at least you’re not stuck sitting on a freeway.

The same isn’t true for bay area traffic. When I lived in the Green Valley area but had an office in Daly City (next to San Francisco), what should have been a 30 minute drive was often a 2.5 hour test of endurance during rush hour. With more than seven million people living in the region, and many of them trying to get where they’re going by freeway, you rejoiced at those few times when parallel roadways were available!

Whether it’s in traffic, or in life, we seem to like creating juxtapositions.

“Juxtaposition” means “an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.” We do this with our thinking all the time by creating thoughts or opinions that parallel a truth.

Part of the problem of creating a juxtaposition when it comes to truth is our opinions may parallel a truth, but they may not lead to the same place!

Often as we study scripture, we tend to create juxtapositions, our own thoughts that we lay alongside or parallel to God’s Word. The problem with that is we usually wind up acting off our juxtaposition rather than the truth itself.

But our thoughts are not the same as God’s thoughts. Our thinking usually doesn’t take us to where God is directing. The contrast of our thoughts to God’s are described this way in Isaiah 55:8-9:

8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

As much as we may try to run parallels with the truth of God’s Word, we cannot arrive at the same destination simply by a juxtaposition. Our own thinking at some point veers away from the perfect mind of God. To get to the same place in our thinking, we have to make our thoughts His thoughts, and our ways His ways. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Romans 12:2:

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Our juxtapositions to God’s truth looks more like “… the behavior and customs of this world …” than they do holy living. Paul addresses that in Ephesians 4:20-24:

“20 But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. 21 Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, 22 throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 23 Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. 24 Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.”

We’re called to get off the parallel surface streets of our own thinking and get back on the freeway of God’s Word, or to set aside our preference for our own juxtapositions for the actual truth from God. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5, “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.” That requires letting God transform our thinking to be like that of Christ.

How are you steering your way through life: by transformed thinking, or by creating your own parallels to what God’s Word actually says?

Scotty