I hate cars. While they are clearly a necessity, they are just as clearly evil. I guess that makes them necessary evils. I can’t think of too many other significant investments in life that we purchase knowing full well that each time we use it, it will decrease in value. Every day the car becomes less and less valuable whether it drives around or sits in a parking lot. There is no joy in buying a new one, and usually no joy in selling an old one. When buying a car, a scratch is just a little nick that is hardly worth mentioning. When selling a car, that scratch is worth hundreds of dollars. Thousands even. The whole task of buying or selling a car is a game, and an awfully frustrating one at that. I hate the game.

Still, we do need a car and really can’t get by without one. We deemed it time to get a new one and it is sitting outside right now. I started thinking about the cars I have owned and noticed that we could trace the eight-year history of my family through these vehicles.

The first vehicle I bought was a Chevy S-10 pickup truck.

Through my college years I ran a painting business in the summers to help cover my tuition costs. I purchased the S-10 as my company vehicle. It was a great little truck and I still miss the flexibility of a pickup. I have some great memories of driving that truck with Aileen in the passenger seat and our puppy perched between us. The windshield leaked, there was no air conditioning, the interior was spattered with paint and the stereo needed a severe beating most days to convince it to work. Worst of all, the vents would never close properly which made winter driving perilously cold for the feet! But we loved it. We were young, newly married and almost carefree. We had no money and could afford nothing more elegant, for I was in school studying computers and Aileen was working only part time. Unfortunately that little truck came to an untimely end on an icy highway overpass near our first home in Brantford, Ontario. Even then Aileen was pregnant with our first child and we knew that the truck would soon need to be replaced, for there was no room for a third person, no matter how tiny he was.

State Farm was kind to us at the demise of the S-10. Still, it was not worth much and we had, quite literally, no money. It seemed that our best option, and quite possibly our only option, was to get into the leasing game. Relying on a long-time family friend who was and still is a high and mighty in a leasing company, we used the proceeds from insurance to put the down payment on a lease of a slightly-used Toyota Corolla. For some reason we got a purple one that, but for the color, looked a great deal like this:

That little purple Toyota was a barebones model with little in the way of features. I can’t imagine that Corollas come any more scaled-down than this one! It rattled and banged and bounced a lot, but did well for us. We placed my son’s car seat in the back and Aileen would often ride beside him, cuddling and comforting him while we made long drives to the cottage or to visit my family in Atlanta. We had that car for three years before the lease expired.

Based on our positive experience with the previous car, we went with another Corolla. I was now working a good and steady job and we felt that we could afford a little bit more this time around. The new car was several model years later and was at least a package or two more advanced. It had two car seats in the back as my daughter was born soon after we acquired it. Aileen would sometimes squeeze between them to read to the children or to play with them. But the car began to get a little too small. We had a boarder living with us for several years and it was a tight squeeze to get all of us into the car on the way to church. We knew that it was time to move to something bigger.

The next logical step was to get a minivan. We went with a Ford Windstar because of its affordability. I had been laid off twice and had begun my own business which was still fairly new. It was crucial that we keep our costs down. We once again went with a basic model with few exciting features (I wouldn’t have believed a model existed that had power mirrors but only a tape deck instead of a CD player). Because we work from home, we kept the mileage low and never ran into any expensive repairs. In fact, I don’t think we have ever done anything beyond basic maintenance on any of our cars so far.

Another lease has expired and now we’ve got a new car to go along with our new baby. This time we went with a Dodge Grand Caravan. As usual, we have leased a car that has already been on the road for a year as this tend to keep the costs reasonable. This van is hardly a luxury vehicle, but is at least slightly more advanced than the Windstar and I sure will appreciate cruise control for those sixteen hour drives to Georgia! We went with this one because it is big and we are constantly running out of room when we embark on family vacations. I think the next logical stop is a full out cargo van. And I don’t ever expect to get one of those! This at least gives us two more seats to fill.

And so, as I looked at the already rather long list of vehicles we have owned, I can see how God has provided for us. I can trace the growth of my family and the growth of financial stability as God has blessed my business. It is a fun and not entirely pointless retrospective.

Not too long ago, I was faced with the question of whether God is active in sending people to hell, or if he is passive, choosing instead to allow unbelievers to send themselves their through their free will. “God does not send people to hell,” the common saying goes. “They choose to go there themselves.” When reading The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor I found that he has also faced this question. Here is his explanation. I found it very convincing.

Several years ago I attended an evangelistic crusade. The preacher wanted to affirm the loving-kindness of Christ and at the same time affirm the reality of hell. The two appeared incompatible to him. So he explained, “God does not send people to hell. They choose to go there.” This statement has a certain attractiveness to it. It affirms the reality of hell but appears to take God off the hook in terms of being personally accountable for the actual damnation involved. But is this a biblically accurate explanation of the tension? I think not. The statement is distorted in several ways.

First, it uses the term people in reference to God’s final judgment. The Bible does not generally use the term people with reference to God’s judgment. The term people is used to describe what we have in common with each other as created beings, without any reference to our moral character. We talk of the people in our neighborhood. Our coworkers are people. People make up a crowd gathered in a football stadium, or an entire city or nation—the Chinese people, for example. No moral distinctions are made. Nothing is known or stated about any individual’s moral goodness. It is people we see dying of starvation. We are moved because we see them as fellow human beings made in the image of God.

When speaking of God’s final judgment, the Bible uses a variety of terms that reflects the substance and foundation of or moral nature. We are called the “righteous” or the “wicked.” God’s judgment is not on people but on the wicked. So we read, “The wicked will be cut off from the land” (Proverbs 2:22) and “The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blessed the dwelling of the righteous” (Proverbs 3:33)…

When we hear about a planeload of people dying in a crash, without knowing any of them personally, we grieve. We think of their pain, the sorrow of their families. Suppose, however, that we know what young twelve-year-old Susan knows—that her father, the man in seat 23C, has been molesting her for two years and plans to do so that evening when he gets home. If we did know this, we might weep in relief that a wicked man is no longer alive to destroy an innocent young life. Our ability to sympathize or grieve over someone’s death and judgment is largely guided by this judicial sentiment.

When we speak of God’s wrath coming on people rather than on the wicked, we invariably sense a oneness with them rather than with God. But this puts us in opposition to God and the righteousness of his ways. Therefore, this difference in the language we use is important. We ought to take our cue from the moral and judicial language of Scripture; that God loves the humble but opposes the proud (James 4:6), that he honors the tearful (Isaiah 38:5) but warns the obstinate (Isaiah 30:1), and so forth. The judgments of the Lord are right, true, and truly praiseworthy. The people of God will rejoice when God brings an end to the wicked. This is not beyond our current judicial sentiment. Law-abiding, peace-loving people rejoice when the corrupt are judged and removed from power or the violent are judged and removed from the presence of the community. How much more will we say of the perfect Judge, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty…for rewarding your servants, … and for destroying the destroyers of the earth” (Revelation 11:17-18).

The wicked do not choose hell. It may be more accurate to say they choose to reject heaven. If we reject God and his supremacy, if we live to deface his glory, then heaven is the last place we would enjoy. But the wicked never choose hell. They go there against their will, “weeping and gnashing [their] teeth” (Matthew 25:30). In all of his judgment, God, boldly and without apology, takes an active role, not a passive one…The wicked do not leap or fall into the lake of fire. They are thrown into it, on purpose, according to the perfect righteousness of God. “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). Sobering, to be sure. May it also be motivating.

King for a Week is an honor I bestow on blogs that I feel are making a valuable contribution to my faith and the faith of other believers. Every week (or so) I select a blog, link to it from my site, and add that site’s most recent headlines to my left sidebar. While this is really not much, I do feel that it allows me to encourage and support other bloggers while making my readers aware of other good sites.

This week’s King For A Week is Pure Church, the blog of Thabiti Anyabwile. Until recently Thabiti served as an elder with Capitol Hill Baptist Church, but he has just been called to pastor a church in Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands. He describes his blog as “A contemplation of all things church… and a desire for an increasingly pure church reformed by the word of God.” Among the excellent articles Thabiti has written is a series on “Things I Learned While at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.” An ex-Muslim himself, he is currently in the midst of writing a series dealing with how to witness to Muslims.

In the coming days you will be able to see the most recent headlines from this blog in the sidebar of my site. I hope you will make your way over the site and look around.

I continue to accept nominations for King of the Week. If you have a site you would like to nominate, feel free to do so. Thanks to those of you who nominated this week’s honoree.

There are many things in life that are easy to do poorly but are much more difficult to do with excellence. It did not take me long as a parent to discover that it would not be difficult to raise children, but that it would be exceedingly difficult to do it with excellence. In the six years since my eldest child was born I have looked often for help and advice in becoming an excellent parent. Unfortunately my wife and I have received little mentorship in this area. Thankfully, there are many books written about this topic so we have often looked to these resources to provide the wisdom and training we know we need.