I have received three traffic tickets over the many years I have been driving (along with a few warnings). The tickets were for three different violations but they all had something in common. The first one happened when I was sitting at a red light in the right lane with my right turn signal on. The driver behind me began blowing his horn at me so I looked to make sure no one was coming and pulled around the corner with his car following very closely behind. A police car came out of nowhere and pulled both of us over. The officer told me that I was just fine until I pulled around the corner in spite of that “no right turn on red” sign. The second ticket took place when I was in the left turn lane. The light was green and the car in front of me had pulled into the intersection waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so he could complete his left turn. He began his turn so I pulled up to take his place, but then he suddenly stopped to allow a speeding car to fly through the intersection as the light turned red. He completed his turn leaving me in the middle of the intersection with a red light. I made my turn as a police car hit his light behind me and gave me a ticket for running a red light. The third ticket was for speeding on an interstate highway when I was concentrating on traffic without keeping an eye on my speedometer. The common factor of these tickets is that in each case I paid more attention to the actions of other people than to what I should have been doing myself. I reacted to someone’s complaint; I assumed what someone else was going to do and I fell into the “everyone else is doing it” trap. If we aren’t careful, being influenced by others can not only cause us to break man’s law, but it can cause us to break God’s law as well.
God warns us, ““Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.” (Exodus 23:2) But even in the mundane act of driving in traffic we are tempted to forget that warning and join the crowd. For the sake of our own safety and the safety of others, we do need to be aware of what drivers and pedestrians are doing, while following traffic laws (doing what is right) ourselves.
God created each of us uniquely with our individual DNA, our personal reaction to our environment and the free will to do right or wrong. As a result any comparison with other people is always false and misleading. Reacting to someone else’s words and actions by following their lead can get us into deep trouble sometimes. God, on the other hand, is without fault and is the same yesterday; today and forever so following His lead through His word and the prompting of the Holy Spirit will always guide us to do what is right. We are in the world but we are not called to be of the world.
Please don’t misunderstand. Our relationships with other people are an important part of life. We just need to put our relationships in the right order. Jesus said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40) When we concentrate first on how much God loves us and on our love for Him, then we can love others without allowing them to lead us astray.