I was going around a round-about near home the other day and got a little cut-up by someone overtaking me from the left to get to the exit before me.
My initial reaction was anger, but that familiar and beautiful sense of conviction and desire to please God came over me and I said ‘God bless you’ to myself. A thought suddenly hit my mind – the natural reaction was anger and a probable road-rage incident, so why would I shun that to obey the words of my Lord Jesus who said to bless even your enemies, those that persecute or do you wrong?
My response was beyond the natural, it was unnatural or more precisely transcendent to the naturalistic paradigm of man as animal and every creature being driven by instinct. Putting aside the obvious impossibility of all Christians manifesting some strange mental illness that makes them not kill competing members of their species, we can say that this reaction was more correctly beyond the natural – it was therefore supernatural in its contrary standing.
The very fact that someone can act in a non-natural, non-instinctive way by choice to obey a higher morality expressed in the Word of God proves its truth and God’s reality. Otherwise we would all be bound by instinct and unable to act in a way that is truly loving, selfless and godly or even be able to acknowledge or comprehend such a way at all – i.e a transcendent God is there because we can conceive of Him.
You could argue that animal trainers are able to train animals to act against their instinct, like someone who works with big cats that don’t attack them, but the source of training came outside of the animal itself – a superior intelligence had to will for that animal to act in a different way in order to train it. God has willed that man believe in His Son Jesus Christ, and that in believing they would be transformed, so people like me can have power over sin and act in a God-pleasing way and not simply live a life of sin by following the desires of my flesh. Praise God for that bad driver!
