Late-Braking Change

Early antilock-brake systems were pretty lousy. Famously, cars with early ABS actually had increased stopping distances compared to the same model with all wheels locked up. Things only began to change after the introduction of Mercedes-Benz’s system, introduced in 1971.

Dubbed Anti-Bloc System, Mercedes’ latest braking technology operated just like any other ABS, except much faster. While the best out of Detroit could perform the brake-pulse-and-response cycle 2-5 times per second, Anti-Bloc could do it 13-15 times per second. Mercedes also offered Anti-Bloc on all four wheels, while the best systems on the Cadillac Eldorado, Ford Thunderbird, and Lincoln Continental controlled the rear wheels only. The proof was Mercedes’ own test; on wet concrete, the 350 SL stopped from 100 kph (62 mph) in 205 feet. Without Anti-Bloc, it took a whopping 328 feet. 

Anti-Bloc debuted on the 1971 350 SL and was soon in W116 S-class models, and just about everything else Mercedes offered. Yet the industry was slow to adopt it. Even two decades later, the technology was novel enough to warrant “ABS” decals and badges on lower-cost cars. The technology clearly saved lives, so why did it take so long to reach ubiquity?

We could ask the same question about the struggles of the early church. Key messaging, such as valuing each other equally and not creating a tiered system of holiness, should have been universally adopted from the beginning. But, as the epistles reveal, this stuff took awhile for people to understand.

Applying the goodness of God in our lives still took centuries to understand. This was the struggle of William Wilberforce, the 18th century Christian and political reformer. While most of the British people at that time claimed to believe in God somewhat, they didn’t act like it. They thought slaves, poor people, people addicted to alcohol, sexual trafficking victims, and children forced into labor deserved their awful circumstances and were responsible for solving their own problems. Everyone else who “had their lives together” were under no obligation from God to help anyone. Wilberforce subscribed to these views until a conversation with a devout Christ-follower awakened deep empathy in him. As author Eric Metaxas describes in “7 Men and the Secret of their Greatness:”

“Perhaps the most obvious sign of Wilberforce’s conversion to the Christian faith was that it changed the way he looked at everything. Suddenly he saw what he was blind to before: that God was a God of justice and righteousness who would judge us for the way we treated others; that every single human being was made in God’s image and therefore worthy of profound respect and kindness; that God was ‘no respecter of persons’ and looked upon the rich and the poor equally. Once Wilberforce had come to see that God was real and that God loved everyone, everything was different.”

Today, applying the goodness of God in our lives still isn’t universal. We are still surrounded by good causes that need our support and involvement, but we’re surrounded by even more distractions. And excuses. Jesus himself responded to some of these excuses (see Luke 9:57-62) in a way that people then and now consider radical.

God may be calling you to something radical, or he may not. But he does call each follower – every last one – to an even more radical act: deciding to try seeing each person, and all of God’s creation, as God sees them. When it’s popular to understand different people through a political lens, satisfying to see a struggle reduced to statistics, and appealing to seek a deeper meaning for humanity through art, literature, or philosophy, remember the early apostles who urged early Christ-followers to chuck all of that in the trash and radically seek a Godly understand first. Remember William Wilberforce, who risked social and political obsolescence when he committed to this radical thinking. Remember the life-saving Mercedes’ Anti-Bloc System, which Christ-followers should have endorsed loudly as a way to save lives that are important to God. 

Then, of course, remember that no amount of human effort can undo all the evil in the world. The social good we should implement is important, but only a reflection of the eternal spiritual saving that God did through Jesus and continues to do in our hearts. 

Optioning Anti-Bloc on your new Mercedes 350 SL cost $415 (or about one quarter of the cost of a new Fiat 128) at a time when the car itself was $10,000 (while a new Datsun 240Z was about $3,670 and a V8-powered Mercury Comet GT started around $2,500). It’s a good chunk of change, but it did a world of good by speeding up our ability to slow down and save lives.