Object Fixation
If you plan to run your car in a potentially dangerous setting like a drag strip, autocross course, High Performance Driving Event outing, or public road among serially distracted drivers piloting three-ton death machines with window stickers, listen up: When planning your course, look at the place you want to go, not the place you want to avoid. Driving a vehicle at speed generates constant sensory input and high demands on a person’s hand-eye coordination, and when these are combined, curious things happen. Looking at the thing you don’t want to hit (a curb, a tire barrier, a Nissan Armada) triggers a subconscious effect that influences the zillions of little muscles in your arms to actually steer toward it. It’s called object fixation, and it has resulted in countless track day crashes, as well as gray hairs on driving instructors.
Discussions on object fixation fill track days and drag strip nights, and probably the hushed environs of therapists’ offices too. Fixating on one particular problem is a common human experience. Some call it a vice, a pet sin, a cross to bear, or a thorn in the side. The Bible calls it vomit.
“A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him… ‘A dog returns to its vomit,’ and ‘a sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.’” (2 Peter 2:19, 22)
These are harsh words, but Peter is making an example out of people at the time who had given up fighting the pull of sin and given in to just crashing into it. They called it freedom. In some ways, they’re right; with no conscience telling a person what to avoid, there is freedom to go ahead and crash upon any object or sin. But a better description is “enslavement.” The object has even more control now.
This hurts. The object is in the periphery, gloating, but the thing in focus now is the destruction it’s caused. Again. A dog will return to its vomit again and again, but it’s still vomit. Nothing seems to change.
Dustin Daniels, author and founding pastor of Seven Places Ministries, Inc., openly describes his journey with the object he fixated on: lust. He wrestles with his own movement toward the thing he tries so hard to avoid: “If we want to learn how to walk in freedom from lust, we must call our behavior exactly what it is – sin. It’s not a ‘mistake.’ We didn’t ‘mess up’ or ‘slip up.’ No, we willfully and consciously chose to sin.”
If the pull and appeal of a sin or vice has become too strong, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere. Maybe all Christ followers should “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Only grace through faith in Jesus can provide the correct perspective to view sin, volition, and enslavement. A support group, 12-step group, or accountability partner is a great place to start. Lean on people who look at Jesus, the one who can correct a course and give new life, even after a crash.
If you’re at least casually familiar with the AC Cobra and its countless replicas made by Factory Five and others, you can imagine them dominating at a drag strip. A fat V8 with 425 horsepower (or maybe much, much more) in a car weighing around 2,300 lbs can make a drag-strip hero out of any driver. But Factory Five roadsters are also highly competitive at tracks with turns. They dominate at autocross, wheel-to-wheel road racing events, endurance racing, and budget racing series, and they even have their own spec series. You can probably race one virtually on any gaming system. Just remember: when you’re going around a corner, look at where you want to go, not that wall you’re about to hit.
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