Solomon as Driver’s Ed Teacher

The ability to drive a car is a necessary skill for most people in industrialized countries. As a result, it has become a rite of passage into adulthood.

I’ve taught three children how to drive and every one of them experienced not only changing abilities but expanded knowledge. Shortly before they started driving they showed little awareness of the network of roads and locations around our home, even when traveling on familiar routes to familiar places. I would ask them what direction we were heading or where I should turn, and they usually had no idea.

They were just along for the ride. Since they relied on someone else to drive, they didn’t waste mental capacity on such things.

But when they got behind the steering wheel that changed quickly. Suddenly, the maps inside their heads expanded to include virtually the entire metro area and surrounding counties. Learning to drive gave them a new dominion. They grew in their knowledge to accommodate their new powers for a larger realm. It was a profound transformation. When they took on adult responsibilities they transitioned to adult thinking.

So, let’s think about how a child develops when he learns how to drive.

When a parent sits in the passenger seat next to a son or daughter they’ll typically rehearse a few principles.

• The pedal on the left slows and stops the car when pressed.
• The pedal on the right increases engine power and thus speed.
• You only use your right foot on the pedals.
• You turn the steering wheel the way you want the car to turn.

When the new driver tries to apply these and other instructions for the first time the results are not pretty. The instructions are true and the new “driver” may remember them all accurately, but the results are a jerky, frightening mess. The problem is the youth has new immense power available to him, far more than he’s used to. Going forward happens with more speed and stopping happens more abruptly.

But if you find a relatively safe place, and practice small things, progressing from one level of difficulty to another, you eventually become a driver.

Does that mean the driver remembers the rules of operating an automobile more accurately than he did before?

Mostly not. It means that, when he gets into a car, it becomes part of his body. He no more needs to remember which pedal to push at which moment than he needs to remember how to swing his arms to balance as he walks. He “just does it.” Maybe there’s a brief adjustment when he has to drive an unfamiliar vehicle, but in general he controls the vehicle with almost as little thought as it takes him to control his legs and feet when he needs to walk somewhere.

Thinking about how the steering wheel works while driving would be like going into a flower shop to pick out roses by first imagining a red patch and finding a flower that matched it. It would be like thinking out where each foot needs to go to move from the couch in the living room to get to the kitchen sink. Functional human beings don’t operate that way.

Of course, a car doesn’t become a biological entity that attaches to you, but through the controls and the neurological adaptations to those controls, it becomes an extension of yourself. You turn left or right or stop or speed up. You don’t think about making the car do those things unless something goes wrong and it doesn’t respond as you expect.

As a result of the process of guided practice, you develop new abilities that in turn require and elicit new mental capacities. Suddenly, you become more aware of where you live and how that relates to places you need to travel to.

So what does this have to do with Proverbs? Is Solomon a driver’s ed teacher?

I contend that the process of becoming a driver is similar to the process of growing from an infant to an older child. A baby has very little control over his extremities. He actually becomes curious about them as if they are alien things (thus babies put their hands into their mouths). But as they grow, they bring their hands and feet under their dominion.

At first they gain control over their hands and feet learning new skills. Think of a baby’s first attempts to crawl or walk. These movements are hesitant and exploratory—not unlike someone trying to drive for the first time. But invariably, learning the skill of crawling and then of walking means they stop having to consciously control their hands and feet. The first faltering steps involved in learning to walk give way to running. The child no longer needs to think about placing one foot in front of the other. Worrying about that would slow him down or even trip him up.

The child is able to “drive” his own body.

And if a toddler’s growth is like learning to drive a car, much more is the growth spurt that marks that transition to full adulthood like learning to drive. Young men and women sometimes change so rapidly they feel like aliens in their own skins. Voices change, muscles change, and they become aware of new desires.

It is not uncommon for a young man to become somewhat clumsier for a time until he learns to “drive” his new body.

But this second stage of development is different than what happened earlier. A child grows from infancy to toddlerhood with only the beginnings of moral awareness taught to him by his parents. A teen learning to drive has to also consider the ethics. A young child who runs when he should walk isn’t risking as much as a driver who hates being constrained by the speed limit. Controlling one’s impulses takes on new importance because of the potential consequences. Paying attention to where one is and who is around you becomes much more important for a driver than it has been for a child walking. Bad habits of hurrying, not paying attention, or trying to get ahead of others involve more dangerous risks for a driver. Similarly, the bad habits, attitudes, and vices of a young adult can have more severe consequences than those of a young child.

But with these more severe consequences come a new way to address the problems: You can talk to a young adult going through this process. Just as learning to drive is an opportunity to break bad habits and learn better ones, becoming an adult gives you a chance to leave childish ways behind and get better at piloting yourself through life.

That’s what Solomon is doing in Proverbs. He’s using words to help a young man drive the mysterious highway of indeterminate distance and road conditions that is his future. He wants to help that young man master himself to navigate to his final destination.

Related Link: If You Don’t Learn To Obey Orders You Will Never Be Free; Here’s Why:

Mark Horne is the Executive Director of Logo Sapiens Communication.