Tuesday, September 7, 2010

What are understeer, oversteer and how do they relate to the Church?

I didn't pick that title to be flippant, I'm trying to establish some kind of coherency between driving a car on the limit and how Christ's work through the Cross and how that affects the Church today. Pretty neat challenge, but I think I can pull it off, so once again dear reader I ask you to bear with me as I sort this out.
The word understeer comes from the British, as do most arcane words that deal with driving a car all out. In NASCAR they call it 'push' or as Kyle Busch might say 'tight'. You see the driver turns the steering wheel to turn into a corner and the car hardly responds plowing ahead happily towards the wall apparently unaware of it's impending doom. Because the car won't turn the driver is forced to lift off of the gas and even possibly tap the brakes to transfer enough weight to the front tires and off of the rear tires, all the while slowing down, to get the car to finally take a set and turn. Now all of this happens in tenths of seconds, sometimes longer if you're dealing with snow and ice where it can seemingly take forever, but by transferring the weight of the car towards the front of the car the driver increases the amount of traction or grip that the front tires have and decreases the amount of traction that the rear tires have and in a perfect world gets the car to turn albeit slower than he'd like and with a lot of excess wear on the front tires. There are innumerable ways to correct this condition but I won't even try to start that discussion here, just suffice to say that when an Indycar comes into the pit and they add some front wing it's because the car is understeery (my word), or in NASCAR when they come in and take out a spring rubber or add or decrease wedge it has to do with the balance of the car, tire pressures make a big difference too, but I digress.
So how does understeer relate to a church? Well in my opinion an understeering church is a church that's "Always done it this or that way." And the reasoning behind this is that the congregation is comfortable with exactly what it does each and every Sunday. Hopefully the Gospel is preached and people's hearts are reached but more than likely the 'always done it this way church' is a pretty boring place to visit filled with bored people and ineffective preaching. We've all been there, somewhere in the peanut gallery some older man is snoring softly with his eyes seemingly open and his head and neck at perfect attention, while his wife using 'the elbow of God' wakes him from his siesta every five minutes or so, to which he returns again with a yawn and an over the glasses glance around to see if anybody noticed. Understeering churches like understeering cars are more comfortable to attend/drive because you can usually see the wreck coming way ahead of time and either bail or curl up and wait for the hit that's coming. And in the case of the church that hit can take many forms, from the loss of a beloved Pastor to loss of members due to apathy or old age, the reasons are as myriad in a church as they are a Formula One car.
The second most prevalent condition in the way a car handles is oversteer. Another arcane word from our friends across the pond that deals with a car that turns, or oversteers, too much when the wheel is turned. Personally I like a car with a bit of oversteer dialed in, it's a heck of a lot more fun to drive too, what with the tail always dancing around a bit and the nose going just where you point it. In NASCAR parlance an oversteering car is loose or even sometimes 'fast' cause the driver barely has to turn the wheel to enter a corner and therefore doesn't scrub off near as much speed as an understeering car. Think of the difference between and understeering car and an oversteering one is the with understeer you see what you hit, and with oversteer you don't. Now a big problem with a car that oversteers too much is that you have to stay way ahead of the car when it comes to applying the throttle, it's the proverbial egg under the gas pedal condition that can get you into big trouble in a hurry if you aren't careful. Now the descriptions I've given are very basic, and quite often a car will understeer through one part of a racetrack and oversteer in another, or do both during the same corner! There is, according to Carroll Smith, 'no such thing as a perfectly balanced car.'
I would also submit that an oversteering church is a church that seemingly changes direction every couple of years, that has huge growth at times with things like the prosperity gospel which seems to be overtaking the evangelical church at this time. There's never a mention of God's wrath, only his benevolence and grace. Hell is absolutely a taboo subject and original sin even more so. And so these congregations are literally steered in whatever way seems best to them, and whatever direction they take they do so with the front of the car working much better than the rear, that is there's no power there, no true redemption, just wish fulfillment on who God is. Not on who he actually is. Isiah say's the angels call him 'Holy,Holy,Holy' not nice, nice, nice. I like C.S. Lewis' description of Aslan the lion in his Chronicles of Narnia,"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe?  'Course he isn't safe.  But he's good.  He's the King, I tell you." 










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