I’m always a little suspicious when a government that owns a car company (GM) also regulates the car companies with which it competes. Truth be told there’s a reason the government had to buy GM and prop up Chrysler (twice) while Toyota win awards. Of course, if Congress is holding hearings on the topic it must be because of the deep public need and not because of the cameras. Smile. The game continues.
The greater truth, though, in all of this is that nothing is perfect and the expectation of perfection will always bang its head against the wall of reality. It is not possible to produce millions of cars and expect each and everyone of them to be made without flaw. We may think, in our culture of entitlement, that we have a right to a perfect world all the way from the highest level of government to the car in our garage but frankly we gave up that right in Eden and we’re just going to have to live with it for now. Cars with bad gas pedals are just one way the whole creation, as St. Paul says, is groaning in its unnatural state.
This is a lesson worth learning not because we need to be passive in the face of human brokenness but rather to give us true insight about the world we live in and each other. It’s all flawed at the primal level and it colors everything. If you understand that you can understand why we Orthodox say “Lord have mercy” so many times. We need to and if we somehow found a way to do it perpetually we would still not begin to cover the reasons why.
We’re all angels with dirty faces. We’re all people designed for so much more constantly coming to terms with everything less that is inside of us. The promise is that one day we will shine with eternal light but for now even the best of us seem to wander in shadows. In a thousand ways we mourn the loss of Eden. We become frustrated with the invisible hand that keeps us somewhere less then heaven. We fear the end of our breath. Each day is just enough a mixture of glory and annoyances to remind us of what could have been.
Still, the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overpowered it.
The Beautiful Path 