Fitting In
Air bag suspension could have been a tool that brought unity to car culture. With such ride height flexibility, it could have satisfied the lowrider crowd while placating purists who insist on factory ride height. Maybe its infinite adjustability could have appealed to the tuner crowd.
Instead, it’s used as yet another demarcation of boundaries between those who fit in and those who don’t. If you build an Impala lowrider, you either fit in with the “hopper” crowd or you don’t. You’ve either reinforced the frame for tricks or kept it stock. You’ve tubbed the fenders so you can rest the frame on the ground and fit in with other ground-scrapers at car shows, or you’ll stand out by being a few inches too high. Your air compressors sit within a fiberglass display in the trunk, like the other lowriders, or they’re mounted off to the side and perhaps you don’t feel like opening the trunk. That’s a lot of division, and that’s not even bringing up the four-letter word introduced by air bag suspension: “stance.”
Something about belonging to a group, which should be a practice of unity, actually excludes some people from the group; “we” belong, but “they” don’t.
In the Bible, the death and resurrection of Jesus bought a grace into which “we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Yet Jesus himself qualified this unity with a troubling yet necessary division: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division” (Luke 12:51).
Jesus was in the middle of an urgent warning to his disciples about doing the work of God, watching expectantly for Christ’s second coming, and faithfully following God even as life seems to suddenly descend into chaos. Not long after this, his arrest and execution would test the disciples. After that, many of the people following Jesus would be arrested and executed.
Many, but not all. Some would scatter. Some would have their faith shaken and turn away. Some would deny any involvement with Jesus. Others would stop following Jesus and actually attack people still following Jesus. This is the division Jesus is talking about: when painful, divisive, agonizing circumstances shake the foundation of a person’s heart, some people might look to God for hope. Some might descend into hopelessness and lose sight of God. They would divide themselves.
God emphatically does not want this division. The unifying work of Jesus proves this. And he knows how hard it is to remain faithful and hopeful sometimes, so he filled the Bible with encouragement. Right before his pronouncement of division, Jesus told his disciples, “Do not worry (v. 22) … seek his kingdom (v. 31) … do not be afraid (v. 32).”
If you feel the natural, human inclination to place yourself apart from people, call that inclination “sin.” That’s evidence of the sin that unifies all humans. And remember that Jesus died for every one of those sins – no exceptions, no exclusions.
Chevy Impalas from the mid-1960s have long been darlings of lowrider culture. Their clean lines and broad surfaces offer plenty of real estate for gold-flake paint, pinstriping, airbrushing, or whatever you feel is necessary to stand out – or fit in.
