The Christian Case Against Driving

Or: The Spiritual Case for Taking a Walk

This is Clusterhuck, my newsletter about faith, culture and a flourishing future for all! I’m glad you’re here. I can only do this through the support of my readers, and I’m grateful for every one I’ve got. If you’d like to join, just click here. You’ll get a free seven-day trial, including access to all the archives. 

---

My wife’s gotten very into taking long walks, and she’d be the first to tell you it does wonders for her mental health. Me, I’m more into driving. It’s very cowboy of me, I know, but driving is fun. Rolling down the open road, music on the stereo, wind in my hair, the promise of freedom beckoning from the vast horizon, born to be wild. 

At least, this is the idea being sold to us by truck commercials and the auto industry at large. It worked on me for a long time, so much so that I feel a little silly about what an easy mark I was.

Because when I think about it, the times where I’m actually relishing the thrill of driving are few and far between. Well over 90 percent of the time I spend in a car is spent in traffic. Well, not in traffic. As traffic. As one cog in the machine of congestion, getting annoyed at drivers I do not know and will never see again, just like they’re getting annoyed with me, as this huge, rumbling financial investment rapidly depreciates in real time beneath my butt. 

This little lightbulb moment helped kick off a series of revelations that are slowly turning me, against my will, into an anti-car guy. It sucks! I don’t want to be an anti-car guy. Like I said, I theoretically like driving.

But a little thought, research and reading have pretty well convinced me that there’s a moral dimension to driving, and most of America is on the wrong side of it. I want to look at the case against driving or, at least, against driving very much. And as much as it pains me to say it, I also want to look into why it might be time to look into the spiritual practice of walking. 

Driving in America Is Deadly

The downsides of driving in the U.S. go way, way beyond annoying traffic. Although it’s not a matter of common knowledge, we have far and away the deadliest roads in the industrialized world.