Why I will never drive a luxury car

Maybe this will come across as judgmental, but whatever, it’s what I think, and it’s really just a personal thing, not something by which I look down on others. You may not believe me, but yeah.

So there are a few reasons why I’ll never drive a luxury car. Not just buy, but drive, even if it’s given to me. I’m strongly influenced by a particular experience I had a few years ago that burns in my memory. An acquaintance of mine visited the church I was going to. She saw a number of really nice cars in the parking lot and that bothered her quite a bit. The (mostly non-Christian) friends she hung out with were really into social issues and the poor. They’d never drive luxury cars; they’d use their money for the causes they believed in, that they valued. Contrasting that attitude with the church parking lot, where she saw all these nice cars made her ask herself of the people there, “where is their treasure?”

I’d classify this person at the time as either a struggling Christian or a non-Christian. And the luxury car thing was enough for her to never come back. You could rightly argue that she was too quick to judge. Absolutely true. At the same time, you can’t say it’s completely unfounded. In general, what you spend your time and money on says something about what you value. And in general, if you spend extra time or money on something, that says something about what you treasure.

I’ve heard all these things about what it means and doesn’t mean to legitimately stumble someone and whatever, but all I know is, empirically, I knew a person who really needed to be in a church community, but a snap impression she got based on the cars people were driving turned her off. My suspicion is, other people we need to reach might feel the same way. And they might be the ones at fault, being too judgmental. But my philosophy is, I want to remove as many barriers as possible for the unchurched to come to church. It’s one thing to challenge fellow Christians; with non-Christans, let’s lower the bar and get them in church first before we quibble with them.

Also, I think there’s a grain of truth to what they think, and I’m lucky in that, for some reason, I just don’t care about cars at all. So I just can’t in good conscience do something that is easy for me not to do and empirically causes unchurched newcomers to be turned off. Even if we’re justified in this case, I don’t want to be a part of it, since it’s so easy not to.

My other reason is, and I’ve said this before, but I don’t like being a slave to my possessions. Creation is good; the things God gives us are good. The thing is, we can own them or they can own us. If I had a really nice car, I know I’d be constantly worried about it getting scratched or dinged or stolen or whatever. My concern for my possession would own me, and that’s not right. As opposed to how I am my car now. I remember about a year ago I ran into a wood support as I was backing out and left a huge puncture in my bumper. My car is so old and beat up, I didn’t care at all. There’s so much freedom in that. It’s something I’m loathe to give up.

Lee has said I should just get a new car and scratch in right away; it’s just a car. He’s lucky in that he can be healthy in thinking that way. I can’t. Probably because I’m so cheap; anything expensive overburdens me.

So yeah, no luxury car for me ever.