Is It Sinful to Break the Speed Limit?

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All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is it sinful to break the speed limit? Yeah, I think for the most of my life,

01:34

I would probably have said yes to this question, that it would be sinful to break the speed limit, but then

01:40

I'll be honest, after COVID, COVID caused me to rethink a lot of my basic, you know, assumptions about the purview of government.

01:48

So I would say that before COVID, my basic stance towards the government was that we should obey the government unless they're asking us to sin.

01:57

And then, you know, after COVID, I had to refine my impulses at that point and ask, you know, more serious questions about the nature of the scope of government authority.

02:09

And I've, you know, I, you know, before COVID, I was thinking through a lot of those things, but I just had never really applied it to speeding until after COVID.

02:19

So after COVID, I think I've basically come to the conviction that I don't think it's a sin to speed anymore.

02:28

Okay. Well, yeah, I think for me personally, I've just always thought it was sinful to break the speed limit and, you know, probably for the reason that most

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Christians would assume, you know, like Romans 13 says that we should submit ourselves to the governing authorities.

02:47

And so this is one of those areas where the government is, you know, as far as I've understood, they're not necessarily asking us to sin in any way.

03:00

I think there, I think the speed limit is, is, I don't know that I would say it's arbitrary from like a logistics.

03:08

Yeah. From like a logistics standpoint, it seems to for, you know, in most areas makes sense.

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I mean, I'm sure we've all run into roads before where we're like, Hey, it feels, it really does feel like the speed limit needs to be higher here or lower here or whatever.

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But then for the most part, they seem to make sense just from a, yeah, like a practical level.

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And, you know, there's obvious, you know, there's no like, Hey, if I go 65 on the interstate,

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I'm sinning, right? There's no Bible verse that says don't go 65 on the interstate or 75, whatever.

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So my understanding has always been like, okay, you know, the government's telling me to do this.

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It's not inherently a sin to do that. It seems, it seems for the most part to make sense.

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So I'm just going to do it. And, and, you know, I think God's probably honored when

04:04

I do it. So, so what, what is your response to that sort of position then if you've changed?

04:10

Well, that's definitely been my intuition. I mean, I think I was growing out of that intuition before COVID completely, but then for the most part, that's been my intuition as long as they're not commanding you to sin and, you know, just do what they're saying.

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But then I definitely had to rethink this topic after that. But let me, when

04:30

I mentioned this, I mentioned this online in a couple of polls and people assume that I'm just saying that because I want to speed or something like that.

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So if I, if I'm saying, you know, no, I don't think it's a sin to speed anymore. Everyone just kind of does the knowing nod, wink, wink.

04:47

Oh yeah. You just want to justify your driving fast kind of thing. You want to go 76 on the 75.

04:52

I got it. No, so like, no, but the thing is like, I drive like an old man. So, I mean, I really, I really have for many years thought that speeding even like I've taken it so seriously that I normally try to drive under the speed limit because I don't want to, because I mean, there's a lot of value in just not like being on edge all the time and, you know, looking over your shoulder for cops and just like feeling like you're violating your conscience and just doing something wrong.

05:19

I just don't think it's a good practice or habit to just sit there and violate your conscience as a pattern of life.

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And so, you know, I drive like an old man. Most people are like mad at me for driving too slow everywhere I go.

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And I still drive like an old man, you know, you see what I'm saying? Like, so I'm saying no, but I'm not saying that because I'm like just recklessly violating speed limit.

05:43

I drive the speed limit still. But not because I think it would be morally wrong not to do so.

05:50

So I think one of the things that's happened is like with the stuff that happened with COVID, it really caused me to crystallize some of the convictions that I was developing.

05:59

And, but I really believe that the government essentially, you know, has the authority to do basically four things, give or take.

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The government has the authority to bear the sword and punish violations of property rights. It, the government has the authority to praise those who do good.

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That doesn't mean monetarily finance, like give them money. It just to praise like virtue, right?

06:20

Praise those who defend the rights of others. Government has the authority to settle disputes and then just basically organize armed resistance against foreign invaders.

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So I think the government basically has a responsibility to protect like, you know, property rights, bear the sword to protect property rights and or rights to capital punishment kind of issues.

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Settle disputes, praise people and organize the armed resistance. But beyond that, I just think a lot of what's happened is we've adopted just certain expectations of nanny state.

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And so, I mean, just you can imagine the kind of situation where the government decrees that everyone has taco

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Tuesday, every Tuesday. And you know, you might ask, well, is that morally wrong to have taco

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Tuesday? You know, why not just submit? It's like, well, no, you don't have the authority to tell me to eat tacos every

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Tuesday. You don't have the authority to tell me to eat or to wear a certain color shirt, you know, every day that you want me to, or like your authority doesn't extend over.

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So, I mean, you think about it that way, you don't have the authority. I wouldn't complain if we had taco Tuesday every

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Tuesday. But then it's like, what, what, what authority do they have? Do they have the authority to protect your rights or to command you just to do arbitrary things, right?

07:34

Sure. Do they have the authority to like, in the name of safety to force you to put vaccines inside of you?

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Do they have the authority in the name of safety to force you to stay in your home and not work your job, like to keep you safe?

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Do they have the authority in the name of safety that command how closely you can stand, you know, to other people.

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Do they have the authority in the name of safety to command that you put a seat belt on in order to protect yourself? Do they have the authority in the name of safety to command how fast you're able to move your body?

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So what you put in your body, how close your body is in proximity to other people, like what goes, um, uh, where you, you, where your body's allowed to go even.

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Right. And then like how fast your body's allowed to go in the form of a car and what you have to do. So I think we've just accepted a lot of like, um, victimless victimless crimes.

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Like when a person speeds, there's no crime there that they committed. I mean, there's no, like there's no, uh, there's no victim in that crime, right?

08:28

So it's a crime without a victim. It's basically a crime of, uh, you were unsafe, right? And so when you accept that kind of logic, you can put that over into the

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COVID stuff. We've been prepared for a long time to just respond to, we're commanding you to be safe.

08:43

Um, and, and I think what really like as you read through the Bible, one of the things you're going to find is, you know, you have, like if you consider the ox, it was been, it has been known to Gore kind of scenario.

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I think that has application here, like meaning, like if you're going to keep an unsafe ox, if it kills someone, you get, you're dead.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. So I think the way that speed limit should actually function is they should be speed recommendations.

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And if you break those and someone dies, then you're going to have the whole weight of the law come down upon you because at that point you're, there's a victim.

09:16

Does that make sense? So what I think they should be is more speed recommendations. Um, and I mean, the thing is, everyone treats them as speed recommendations and like there's pressure on you.

09:26

I mean, you know, basically if I, if I drive 69 miles an hour on the interstate, I have no shortage of people that are riding on my tail, blowing the horn at me, you know, flashing the lights at me.

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There's some sort of expectation that I at least go, you know, 75. Sometimes they want me to go 90, you know, in order to be happy.

09:47

So, I mean, you just kind of have to, um, so there's an expectation you do it. And I mean, at this point, I mean, it's, it's like, you know, if you are speeding and you get your ticket, you pay your fine, you move on, you know, and if you do it enough, you lose your license.

09:59

So I think, you know, at this point it's more just like, um, okay. Right. Do you want to deal with the hassle of getting a ticket?

10:07

You know, like, you know, I mean, you could think about it that way. Like, it's just about like, all right, like I pay my ticket then

10:14

I guess, because I was going too fast because you're, you're engaging in any state, um, safism, you know, here.

10:22

So being a helicopter mom, um, so, you know, and I think it's just, you're making a calculated risk there to say, is it worth it?

10:30

But I mean, I think everyone knows like if your wife is, you know, having a convulsion or something, you're going to speed in order to get to that hospital and you're going to risk paying that fine and you're not doing anything morally wrong there.

10:42

You know what I'm saying? So we all have that category for like some sort of scenarios that can come up.

10:47

Like if you were to start, you know, if you were in a dangerous area of town and then, you know, the thugs pull up and start shooting at you, you're going to break every traffic law that exists demand because there's nothing objectively wrong about doing it and everyone knows it.

11:02

Right. Right. Yeah. And, and whatever you have to pay at the end of that, to get out of that scenario you're going to do, you know, so does that make sense?

11:11

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I know I've definitely, um, I've been in situations before where I've seen someone else get pulled over, uh, for, you know, presumably for speeding.

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And then the first thing I thought in my mind is like, Oh man, I'm really glad they didn't get me. You know?

11:30

So it's obviously like a, yeah, everyone treats it like a recommendation for sure.

11:36

Everyone does. And especially, especially in, and you know, some areas of the, of the country, at least in the

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U S or, or much, much worse than others when it comes to, um, you know, how they view it is.

11:53

Yeah. It's functionally not a speeding limit. It is like a recommendation. And, and for some, even, even at like 70 or 75, they think it should be 10 or 15 miles per hour faster than what it is.

12:06

Um, so, but yeah, I, I, I do understand the whole, um, uh, looking back at COVID and, um, the react, the reaction that is probably appropriate for the government and sort of being forced to rethink some of these areas that we've kind of set aside as, um, as, you know, settled, uh, sort of theological ideas.

12:37

It probably, it probably is time to look at some of these. Now I am interested, um, and understanding, you know, like, all right.

12:47

So they're recommend their speed recommendations. If we make them speed recommendations, you're still saying,

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Hey, if you, if you harm someone, uh, and you're going over that speed limit, you should have the full weight of the law thrown at you.

13:02

Um, you know, if it's just a recommendation, why, why do you feel like, and it's just an arbitrary recommend, you know, it's not like a, uh, uh,

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I mean, we're talking about like trying to find what's the safest and trying to find a speed limit that is a good balance of safe and still practical.

13:23

Right. Um, so you could say like, Hey, everyone go five miles per hour, but then that's not practical, right?

13:31

You're never going to get anywhere. So, so I guess kind of spell that out a little, a little bit more for me. Yeah. So you have the oxen on the

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Gore kind of scenario. You have the build, the parapet on your roof scenario. And what you have there is like, no one, you don't have like a building inspector coming along and making sure that you have the fence built, uh, upon threat of, you know, fines and everything else.

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So you don't have that kind of scenario. What you have is you have like a reasonable standard of safety. So like you, you, you know, you, you have like the government,

14:05

I do think has a job to establish some sort of reasonable standard of negligence in certain situations.

14:11

Okay. Okay. Right. So like there are certain actions you can perform that are so insane to the point where you're just asking to kill someone.

14:21

Right. And so then you can't like, if you're going to engage in those, you can't just cop out and say it was an accident.

14:27

Right. You know, so like when we talked about the pit bull episode, um, if you can imagine like, you know, having pet poisonous snakes in your house that are crawling over your floor, the person walks inside and, you know, gets bit, you know, surprise, you know, you know, so like at some point like that, like, so what that violates is

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Tommy little Tommy, the poisonous snakes never bit anyone before. They're nice snakes, man.

14:58

They never bit anyone. Right. So like you're violating like a reasonable standard of safety.

15:04

Right. So you're doing something so fundamentally negligent that you're putting people's lives at risk.

15:10

So I think the government has a right to kind of establish those reasonable standard of safety.

15:17

I can, and there's, I mean, some of us arbitrary, sure. But I mean, I think a government has a, you know, responsibility to do that.

15:23

So you don't build that fence. Your neighbor goes on the roof and falls off. Then what's determined is you can't like that's intention.

15:32

Like, so you with the murder equation, right? Like there's an intention there behind it.

15:38

So if you're going to put their life at risk, you bear blood guilt. At that point there's some, like you're rejecting this reasonable standard of safety.

15:45

So you do that with you to do that with a fence. It's like, all right, you can't cop out and say, you didn't know, you know, one could have known, right.

15:53

But the box has been known to Gore. You can't cop out and say, who could have thought that that could have happened because it's already happened.

15:59

Okay. Right. Well, he's just shouldn't have gone around my ox. Well, you should have got on my end up, you know, once there.

16:08

So, because you saw that like, this has happened once before. Right. So, so there's a, the same thing with the speed limit, you can have speed recommendations like that to where they're just establishing like a reasonable standard of safety and you violate those things.

16:27

And like the punishment on the other side of that is going to be like no mercy. Right. So like you're going 70 mile per hour into 30 mile per hour zone, no mercy.

16:38

Right. Like, uh, but then that requires you have a victim though. Does that make sense?

16:43

Yeah. So you need a victim. So like instead of having all these laws that have no victims, like biblically speaking, you need a victim to have a crime.

16:52

And so you can't have scenarios where like, it's not just to have scenarios where there's victims crimes here, you know?

16:58

So, um, or pre -crime or something, or, uh, whatever it's like this, it's not, that's not the way it works.

17:05

You know, it's not the way it should work. So in this scenario you have a speed recommendation, you're going a hundred mile per hour on the interstate, you swerve, go into oncoming traffic, kill a family, you're dead, man.

17:17

You know, we're getting the rocks out. We're getting the rocks out. Okay. Fair enough.

17:49

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