A Lesson from Driver’s Ed

I found out the other day that my old high school no longer offers Driver’s Ed. While this wasn’t devastating news, it was still quite surprising.

Driver’s Education was one of my favorite classes. There was the driving simulator where we pretended to be put in dangerous situations while we pretended to drive. There were the Chevy Corsicas and Chevy Luminas we took turn driving around the mean streets of Strawberry Plains. And there were the two driving instructors.

One of the instructors was high-strung guy who called me by my full first name, but instead of saying “Matthew” he said “Maffew.” The other one was so laid back he was almost comatose. I liked them both even though I did get yelled at a few times.

There was one thing that happened in that class, though, that made me really angry. It involved a police officer who came into our class to talk about drunk driving.

During the first part of his spiel he asked how many people had never tasted any alcoholic beverages. Several of us raised our hands. He seemed surprised by this.

He then asked how many people had never tasted any alcoholic beverages–including wine coolers. This time only me and another guy raised our hands. That is when he made me mad.

He looked right at us and said, “You’re lying.”

I remember the rest of the class laughing. I remember shaking my head. And I remember him replying, “Yes you are!”

The thing was, I wasn’t lying. Up until that point in my life I had never tasted any alcoholic beverage. And I still haven’t. It was an aggravating thing, but that incident made me realize something.

People expect people to act like other people.

If a lot of people do a particular thing or act a particular way, some expect everyone to do a particular thing or act a particular way.

People expect people to act like other people so much so that we begin to expect ourselves to act like other people. In other words, we tend to go along with the crowd.

This wouldn’t be a problem if the crowd generally went a good, God honoring way. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Which is why Christians aren’t called to go along with the crowd. We are called to go along with Christ.

People expect people to act like other people. But Jesus expects His people to act like Him.

Thankfully He doesn’t leave us to our own devices to do this.

He expects His people to act like Him and empowers us to do so by His presence and His strength.

And for this I say “Hallelujah!” And that’s no lie.

Do your high school have Driver’s Ed? If so–what was the best thing about it?

 

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