Our Contribution
Carbon fiber winds up in strange places these days. Sometimes, using body panels made from the stuff results in huge weight savings. For example, side mirrors. Think of the motors, lights, heating elements, and cameras in a modern side mirror, and imagine chucking all of that and replacing it with a simple carbon fiber unit. That could eliminate a good 10 lbs of dead weight hanging off the side of your car.
You can also buy carbon fiber mirror caps. These little fellas are replacement pieces for the plastic panels on the outside of the mirror unit. Weight savings: measurable, but negligible.
Then there’s carbon fiber appliqué. It’s available from practically any eBay Motors store and most car parts stores in a roll, like duct tape, wrapping paper, or toilet paper, any of which would match the functionality of this garbage. You can find it covering gauge bezels, running down the length of a car as racing stripes, surrounding the infotainment system, or on the roof, sometimes surrounding a heavy sunroof, which… nevermind.
These three options are interesting to think about because they illustrate three different ways people think about sin. If sin is dead weight on a car and God’s mercy removes that weight, what role do we play in trying to remove some of that sin through carbon fiber mirrors? Our efforts are like:
Replacement carbon fiber mirrors. We can’t solve the whole problem of our sinful nature, but we can cut out really sinful parts and replace them with things that are less sinful.
Carbon fiber mirror caps. Honestly, our efforts don’t do much, but even a little bit of improvement is better than nothing.
Carbon fiber appliqué that we stick over our sinfulness. Maybe it makes us feel better, maybe we do it for show, but ultimately, it can’t remove sin. We just end up adding weight and mess to the whole thing.
Each has their merit. Like A, Jesus urges people to cut out sinful areas of their life in (Matthew 5:27-30). But this can only go so far. Hey, you could take off your mirrors, hood, bumpers, etc. until you’re a Caterham, or a kart, but the mere existence of a car results in some sort of weight. Just like merely being alive is an indicator of sin. Like B, sometimes cutting out a few grams of sin – in a car that weighs 4,000 lbs – hardly feels like progress. Like C, we know that even our best efforts to remove sin from our lives cannot change our sinful condition, and many times we just make the problem worse.
But there is hope, and his name is Jesus. By living a completely sinless life and dying a sinful death, he took away all of our dead weight and gave us new life. We couldn’t have gotten this life on our own. “If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.” (Galatians 2:21)
So, where does that leave us? We should want to be better people, right? Sure. Some circles have a popular saying: when a person gives their heart to God, they won’t be sinless, but they will sin less. Maybe. Sort of like, “So I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” (Galatians 5:16) Yet as long as “being a better person” is your primary motivator, you will only see reminders of how woefully incapable you are at improving yourself. Even this woe is merely a starting point for understanding and receiving the free mercy and grace that God gives us through Christ: “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)
God has saved you. With this mindset, you are free to celebrate by playing around with carbon fiber. Not to redeem yourself, but to glorify the God who has redeemed you.
