c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) “We got a personal tour!” I messaged my son, “Including one trip around the track itself.”
“No way!” he replied. “That’s awesome!”
“I was so moved by the experience that I ordered four tickets for next May’s 500.”
“From just a trip around the oval?” he asked.
Passion, like faith, is hard to explain. It doesn’t start with a single moment, like pulling onto the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.5-mile oval and suddenly seeing at 40 mph what 33 drivers see at 225 mph in the Indy 500.
Like a good Bible teacher, our guide took us deep into racing lore, answered every question I had developed over a lifetime of observing “the greatest spectacle in racing,” and tapped a deep vein of fascination.
Like a good evangelist, he spoke from experience. He told about working on a pit crew and seeing the driver’s eyes go blank as he prepared mentally for the perilous start. He told about taking his small part _ assistant to the left tire changer _ in a large and complex enterprise.
Like anyone who has led another to faith, as opposed to frightening or enticing someone into religion, our guide didn’t “sell” racing. He brought it to life by describing the track, the long pullout lane for pit stops, the ideal groove around each turn, skid marks, dents in the foam-covered retaining walls, and the canyon of noise that erupts as 33 cars blast to racing speed.
Like any pilgrim, I already had a need for this. I just didn’t know it went so deep. By bringing the race to life, he gave wings to my passion.
Where did my need come from? Many places: from growing up in Indianapolis and listening to radio broadcasts of the race; from leaving Indianapolis and yet always being aware of Race Day; from knowing the joy of speed; from a hunger to know my roots and to share them with my sons.
This was more, then, than “just a trip around the oval.”
Now, this story probably sounds far-fetched to many readers, perhaps absurd. “Who cares about auto racing?” you ask. “Why so much passion over 33 otherwise useless cars making 200 laps at speeds beyond comprehension?”
That is the mystery of faith, and it is the reason we should tread far more lightly than we do in dealing with the diverse and perplexing faiths of people around us.
Honest evangelism never produces a single and predictable result. For conversion takes many pathways, God wears many faces, and the life of faith is many lives. Orthodoxy tries to control what shouldn’t be controlled and, in the process, makes God small and shallow.
No one “sells” God to us, as if God were a package of attributes or “truths,” requiring assent to a single acceptable definition. God reaches into our lives long before we are aware of that touch. The true guide taps a passion already simmering, a passion that is unique to us because we are unique to God.
The outcomes can be maddening, certainly confusing. I walk off the Speedway yearning to see a live race. Others might walk off uninterested, appalled or feeling a different yearning. None of us is “wrong.” None of us has missed some essential “biblical truth.” We just experienced it differently.
The only wrong thing would be to require the guide to tell a story other than his own, to scoff at other responses to it, or to shut down the track to any who see racing differently.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)
KRE/PH END EHRICH
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