Cash for Clunkers: “You Are What You Drive!”

While watching Cable news over the weekend, I couldn’t believe my ears. In arguing the merits of the “Cash for Clunkers” program, one commentator asked another “Isn’t it irresponsible for the government to encourage people who have just lost or may lose their job to buy a brand new car?” The other responded “I think it would give someone a better self-image to have a brand new car to drive, especially a nicer car, like a BMW, they might not afford without help from the government ($4500 trade in for a ‘clunker’). “After all,” the commentator said, “You are what you drive.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, isn’t this how “earthlings” define their self-worth—by what they drive, what they wear, what they do, where they live? Without knowing they were created to bear God’s image, they bear the image of those who are “earthy” (1 Cor. 15:48), and identifying themselves by earthy standards!

I don’t drive a luxury car or live in a ‘status’ home, but such labels don’t affect me. Why? because I am no longer “earthy”—I am “heavenly”—“for the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). Nor will I use such labels to judge my brothers and sisters in Christ, for “I have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them…” (2 Cor. 5:16, NLT).

I don’t drive a clunker: I drive a Focus. But it has nothing to do with my self-image. His image in me—not self-image—is what matters to me…“Just as we have born the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49). By the way, the car that defines me hasn’t been invented yet!