Cars and materialism

  • new-car.jpgWe’ve got a new car to replace the one that got crunched two weeks ago. And though our new car is just some­one else’s old car, we made out pretty well in the deal. It’s the exact same make and model, but two years and 100,000 miles newer — so what’s not to love?

    Well, maybe ‘love’ is too strong a word. But we do tend to get a lit­tle silly about our new acqui­si­tions some­times. Hav­ing a new car to fuss over has made me remem­ber a short news story I read years ago. That story taught me some­thing about mate­ri­al­ism that I’ve never forgotten.

    This hap­pened when I lived in North­west Indi­ana. The story was just a news brief a cou­ple para­graphs long about a woman who was killed by a train. Sad to say, that isn’t that unusual of an occur­rence in that area. Many of the towns are still criss-crossed with rail­road tracks out there and unfor­tu­nately, acci­dents are bound to hap­pen. But there were a few things that made this one unusual, and I found I had to re-read it a cou­ple times to get things straight.

    The acci­dent had hap­pened on a street that was bisected by a rail­road cross­ing. The street had got­ten a lit­tle busy, and a traf­fic jam had the cars backed up across the rail­road tracks and behind when the sig­nal started blink­ing. The woman who was on the tracks began to panic and lean on her horn, but the cars in front of her had no place they could go. The woman was so intent on mak­ing the cars in front move that she didn’t notice that the cars behind her had man­aged to pull out of the way so she could back up. She also didn’t think to just leave the car, which there was room enough and time enough to do.
    But she didn’t back up, and she didn’t get out of the car. She stayed in the car on the tracks, and she was killed when the car was hit by the train.

    Why would a grown woman have done such a thing? The arti­cle only offered two clues. The car was a gold Mercedes-Benz, and one of her grown chil­dren told the paper, “She really loved that car.”

    Now, I don’t think this woman loved her car more than her own life. I sup­pose it’s pos­si­ble, but it sounds more plau­si­ble to me that she never thought it would come to that. She cer­tainly could’ve been so par­a­lyzed with fear that she did the only thing that brought com­plete dis­as­ter — noth­ing at all. But that also seems like a bit of a stretch, given how easy it would’ve been to get out of the situation.

    What seems more pos­si­ble to me is that in those awful last min­utes when she needed to think clearly, the Mercedes-Benz had a place in her cal­cu­la­tions and it diverted her atten­tion. I don’t think she meant to die — I just don’t think she was able to turn loose of the idea that the CAR was going to get hit, which kept her from either notic­ing the way out behind her or get­ting out of her car so that her life would be spared.

    We have all sorts of mate­r­ial attach­ments. As Ortho­dox Amer­i­cans, we’re well aware of the dance we do with mate­ri­al­ism. We’re absolutely swim­ming in Things, in Stuff. Houses, cars, fur­ni­ture, jew­elry, gad­gets, favorite shirts, knick-knacks, cher­ished sou­venirs, mem­o­ra­bilia. What are the odds those attach­ments would ever trip us up as this woman’s car did to her? How likely is it that with­out any warn­ing we might sud­denly have to decide whether to really aban­don them or not?

    Maybe that’s not likely at all. But then, there’s a dynamic there that still exists even if most of us won’t die for it one way or the other. Saint John of Kro­n­stadt said, “The Devil him­self dwells in the man through his attach­ment to earthly things. He often enters into our heart as an inso­lent con­queror, through some momen­tary attach­ment to earthly things, not imme­di­ately renounced — dark­en­ing, crush­ing and dead­en­ing our soul.”

    Or, per­haps more to the point, Jesus ends the para­ble of the fool­ish rich man by say­ing, “But God said unto him, ‘Thou fool­ish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast pre­pared, whose shall they be?’ So is he that layeth up trea­sure for him­self, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20–21)”

    The good thing about cars is that they can take you lots of places. I guess I just want to make sure that I can make my way back from any­place they take me.


    Related posts:

    1. 10:09 am — “I knew some­thing like this would hap­pen someday.”
    2. Mean­while, back in France …
    3. The wis­dom of birds
    4. Schi­avo and Jack­son aftermath
    5. Feel the truth

    January 26th, 2008 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Greg 01.26.2008

    Um, that would be 125,000 miles newer than our last car. :) And I’m still in the “Lookit the cool new car we’ve got!” stage, thankyouverymuch.

    Which is odd, given that you wouldn’t let me buy the Jaguar on ebay…

  • Tanya

    Grace, this was an eye-opener. Thank you; I have a lot to think about.
    Greg — lol

  • Mimi

    Con­grat­u­la­tions on the new car. I totally under­stand the mistyp­ing, clearly you are high on the new car smell :)

  • s-p

    Ah guys and cars… I finally bought our first car that is younger than our old­est child (28 years!) about 5 years ago. I owned my first NEW car when I turned 50. I just sold my 1959 Chevy Apache pickup after it sat for 2 years because I couldn’t afford to con­tinue the restora­tion after doing all the motor/transmission change.
    It grieves me that I can­not even change an air fil­ter on my cars now. But… I like know­ing I’m going to get where I’m going now too. But yeah, Greg, it is much cooler to break down in a ’66 Jag than a Toy­ota Avalon. :)

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