It Is FinishedSample

“Control”

Days of Thunder is such a fun movie. But it contains at least one moment of true profundity. After Cole Trickle has had a terrible accident, he’s badgering his doctor, Claire, to let him race again. She says, “You shouldn’t be driving a car anywhere. You’re selfish, you’re crazy, and you’re scared. You want to control something that’s out of control; that’s what you said to me, wasn’t it? Well I’m going to let you in on a little secret that almost everybody else in this world automatically knows: control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac.”

Though I don’t think that most people “automatically know” that they are basically unable to control anything about their lives, I do think that Claire is right in her main assertion. Control is often an illusion. Cole’s assertion that he desires to “control something that’s out of control” (his race car) is an obvious contradiction in terms. Even if he is able to control the car he’s in, he can’t control the other “infantile egomaniacs” on the track.

As Claire points out, we can’t even control the goings-on within our own bodies! We can exercise, eat right, take vitamins, use medicine, and even buy plastic surgery, but we can’t really forestall that thing we’re hoping to avoid. Everybody dies.

This urge to control goes all the way back to Eden when Adam and Even desire to “be like God,” in other words, to be in control. The result of their decision is that we all desire control and, more nefariously, have convinced ourselves that we have it. The upshot of this delusion is that, as our sense of control rises, our feeling of need (especially for a Savior) wanes. Better to acknowledge the truth of the situation, that we are perilously out of control, both internally and externally, and are just moments away from a debilitating crash.

Eyes open to the realities of life and our lack of control, we are much more likely to cry out for help. The good news of Christianity is that, in Jesus Christ, that help has come.