Joe's Toyota and the Laws of God

     Joe pulled out of my parents' driveway, four cylinders whining and tires squealing their protest. Joe had spent all summer busing tables at the steak house, saving to buy high performance tires for his old Toyota. Joe dreamed of European sports cars with 12 cylinders. I dreamed of Detroit muscle with dual exhaust pipes. Unfortunately, Joe had a junker import and I had our old family sedan, which served a decade before as the family hauler.

     A half hour later, Joe showed up on my parents' porch, scratched and bruised. "Those new tires are good...but they're not that good." We jumped in my old sedan and ran down to the bend in the road, where we pushed the Toyota off its side and back onto its "performance" tires. Joe learned a valuable lesson that summer evening when his adolescent love affair with cars ran smack up against the cold hard Laws of Nature. Joe attempted to "break" several of the Laws of Nature that day, and found that these laws just can't be broken.

     Like Joe and me then, today's teens and adults relate to cars because they form such an essential part of modern society and pop culture. Most know auto basics. But when asked what type of oil or what size tires are recommended in the owners manual many simply don't know. While it is obviously important for all drivers, many have never read their owner's manuals. And like Joe then, even less know the limits to a car's handling.

     What is true of a young adult's knowledge of their car's owner's manual is even more true of their knowledge of the Natural Law, God's corollary to the Laws of Nature. Many adults would have a hard time putting their finger on just what these two sets of laws have in common, or even where one ends and one begins.

     Joe's youthful mishap on that curve is a perfect place to start to lay out these laws of God and their implications. The Laws of Nature are those laws that regulate the physical world, like gravity, friction, the mass and inertia of an object, etc. The friction that Joe's new performance tires generated on the road surface, in response to his turning of the steering wheel, just could not overcome the forward momentum or inertia of that old Toyota. No matter how much Joe wished it, that old Toyota was not an exotic sports car. In reality, an exotic sports car might well have negotiated that curve, but the weight, tires and handling of a sports car are different from a rusty old Toyota. Both cars always obey the Laws of Nature.

     If Joe had been unfortunate enough to slip over the small cliff just beyond that curve, he would have learned another difficult lesson. Old Toyotas can't fly. Now some things made by man can, i.e., helicopters and planes. They obey other Laws of Nature, like the Laws of Aerodynamics. They do not break the Law of Gravity. Nothing can. But the lift produced by the shape of their wings makes enough upward force to overcome gravity. One Law of Nature is used by an man to overcome, not break, another.

     No matter how many times Joe may have tried to "break" the Laws of Nature by attempting to drive too fast through that curve, the result would always be the same. He would wreck every time. Fortunately for him, it only took three or four such events for the reality of these Laws to settle in, and his driving record improved considerably afterwards. He realized he simply could not break the Laws of Nature.

     Now God made these Laws when He created our world and set it in motion. These Laws were necessary for life to exist and flourish as He willed it. They are still in effect to this very day, and every single time we attempt to break these Laws of Nature, there will be physical consequences, like that rusty Toyota's dents and Joe’s scratches and bruises. Sometimes, unfortunately, there can even be death as a consequence.

     What we fail to remember is that God, just as He made those Laws of Nature to govern our physical world, made Natural Law to govern ourselves and our human world. Natural Law is that Law that God has written on each of our hearts, and it can be summed up in the Ten Commandments and the Great Commandment. It governs our duties to God, made clear in the first three commandments, our duties to each other, made clear in the last seven commandments, and our duty to love, found in the teaching of Jesus Christ.

     Just as with our attempts to break the Laws of Nature, Natural Law cannot be broken, and attempting to do so brings consequences. These consequences can be both physical and spiritual. For instance, I can jump off a ten foot ladder, and convince myself I am flying. But the reality of my attempt, lacking some kind of equipment with which I can utilize the Laws of Aerodynamics to overcome the force of gravity on my (considerably large) mass, is that I will quickly learn I was not flying but falling. I will obey that Law of Nature every time, regardless of my own mental attempt to say that I'm flying.

     Natural Law is the same in this regard. Be it attempts to "break" the prohibitions against contraception, adultery, homosexuality, or any of our other "modern" sins, these behaviors will always have grave consequences, usually both physical and spiritual. Even if pop culture insists on calling these sins flying, they actually constitute a long hard fall, and the sudden stop at the bottom is not pleasant.

     Physical consequences of these attempts to break Natural Law range from STD's to unwanted pregnancies, abuse of woman and children, and divorce, to death by disease and even suicide. It is not flying, and it is not a good trip. Yet these consequences are nothing compared to the most important reality of all. The temporal effects of these sins are just that; they exist only in the physical world, in space and time. The spiritual effects are by far most serious, because if done knowingly, these things can lead to Eternal Death.

     Young adults need to see the Natural Law for what it is. Just as the Laws of Nature allow us to live, and breath, walk about our world without floating off into space, and thus to live a happy life, Natural Law allows us to Live, and Breath, and attain Eternal Life, by our assent to it and faithful attempts to live according to its dictates.

     The study of science has allowed us to describe the Laws of Nature. But we don't have to know the Laws of Aerodynamics or Gravity to live according to them daily. Likewise, our properly formed consciences lead us to live according to the Natural Law, even if we could not do a doctoral dissertation on it. These laws are written on our hearts, simply because we are made in God's Image. The Church is charged with handing on a proper respect and understanding of the Natural Law, and again a comparison to the Laws of Nature can help us understand the necessity of the laws of the Church.

     In the early days of the auto, as the numbers of drivers increased, there started to be more and more fatal accidents due to head on collisions and wrecks at intersections. Two simple man made laws helped to prevent these dangers and save lives. First, the law was made that all drivers would stay on one side of the road. In the USA that is the right side. Then stop signs were invented, so that intersections would be safer. These were man's laws, but obeying these laws has become just as essential to highway safety as obeying those Laws of Nature that Joe tried to break.

     Curiously enough, these laws worked, and traffic fatalities dropped. The argument could be made that these laws violated the personal "rights" and "freedoms" of the driver to do whatever they pleased behind the wheel. But obeying these laws, in reality, gave greater freedom to the driver, because in obeying them they would live.

     Here is where modern Catholics, and especially young adults, need to sit up and take notice. There is open dissent on certain issues in our day, such as the issues of contraception and homosexuality, or even women in the priesthood. However, the laws of the Church, those laws that seemingly go far beyond what is written in scripture, which may even seem to be old and outdated laws of men, are much like the stop signs and lines down the middle of the road. At first glance they appear to take away freedom, but like those simple traffic laws, they were inspired by God's Wisdom, to make our lives safer and happier, and to help us avoid those physical and spiritual consequences of sin. At first glance, it may seem that they are no more part of Natural Law than stop signs and white lines are part of the Laws of Nature. But in reality, obedience to these man made laws may be just as essential to our physical and spiritual health. In certain instances, obedience to man made laws will keep us from physical and eternal death.

     We all need to go back and read the owner's manuals, not just for our cars but for our very souls. We have to show our young adults why obeying the Natural Law is no less optional than obeying the Laws of Nature, and that the consequences of attempting to break the Natural Law are far more to be feared than the physical consequences of failing to negotiate the curves.

     The owner's manual of our souls can be found in God's Laws written on our hearts, in Holy Scripture, and in the teachings of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. First these laws must be learned. Then they must be lived and obeyed. Unlike Joe's old Toyota, we have the sacrament of Reconciliation to pound out the dents when we've gone astray of the Natural Law. We've got the greatest source of high octane Grace known to man in the Holy Eucharist. We must make use of these as often as possible, and keep ourselves and each other on that HighWay that leads to Eternal Life.