Why I Ride: A Theological Response.
When I tell people that I have chosen a bicycle as my primary form of transportation I often get queer looks, as if I had just made a category mistake. Surely theology tells us about the nature of God, and to live our neighbors, but about transportation? Yes. About transportation, too.
Theology is talk about how we relate to God (or better, how God relates to us) and how we ought to relate to the world and each other in the world. Theology affirms a life in the world that reflects the character of God (righteousness of God in bible-speak) in the ways we interact with each other and the earth. Theology demands that we act ethically, and also observes that acting ethically requires others. Life happens with and amongst people.
Several years ago I became concerned about how the automobile changes the way we interact with the earth and how we are lead to interact in our communities. I noticed that communities that were built assuming cars as the appropriate means of transportation tended to isolate people from each other. No longer did houses face the streets with porches from which people are invited to linger; instead the houses are dominated by their garages and the houses tended to face toward the fenced off back yards, away from neighbors. I also noticed that such amenities as parks, grocery stores, and coffee shops are too far from most new homes to walk (or ride), and it is often unsafe to try as there are no sidewalks in many of these new “communities.” So then, I observed that some newer neighborhoods, designed to be car friendly, were made people un-friendly. While these neighborhoods are certainly made to be efficient, they are thereby made in such a way as to make neighborliness almost impossible: efficiency is the enemy of neighborliness.
So I moved from the suburbs into Portland, into the Buckman Neighborhood, and I got rid of my car. By bike (or on foot), one’s relationship to the city changes: my range is smaller - beaverton is truly another city. But that’s okay, because i no longer have to go far to get what I need: the park is two blocks away, the grocery store is seven, and the coffee shop is one block away. Whats more, when I go to these places, i have time to see: the scenery is no longer whizzing by at forty miles an hour. I find that moving slower gives me more time to appreciate.
While on a bike, or on foot, I am not isolated from other travelers: I can greet people, I can (and have) talk with neighbors and strangers, riding along side them, while on the way to work or the store. It is easy to stop and talk, something that driving in a car - encased in tons of metal, radio drowning out ambient noise, and moving at high speed - makes practically impossible.
I was talking with my friend Ian about this recently, here is an excerpt from an email:
Friday, as I was biking up to Multnomah for a meeting with a student, I happened across Nate Meenen near the Sunnyside environmental school. So we stopped (in nearly the middle of the road, hehe) and chatted for a while, as we didn’t get much time to talk a Critical Mass the week before. A great conversation, there in the sun: later that night he came over and I helped out with his forthcoming blog.
The moral, of course, is that neighborliness, and community, is aided by having a transportation method (not to mention urban planning) that allows for spontaneous conversations with neighbors and or strangers (I met Mark Ginsberg - a local bike hero - as I was riding home form MBC the other day - he was riding to work - another good conversation). Riding is not just about protecting and preserving the terra firma, but also about re-creating neighborhoods where people know each other and talk to each other.
Of course, biking is also better for the terra firma. The Bible says that we are to be care-takers of the land - that we live one it, but do not own it. Driving has an enormous environmental impact, in addition to an enormous social impact.
I choose, then, to ride my bike because it connects me to people and to the earth in a way that being in a car cannot.
Being on a bike tends to make me more aware of my world and other people, it also makes me more aware of myself. I am healthier because I ride: when I ride I feel the weather, feel my legs working to pedal, I earn my hunger and enjoy my food more: I experience myself as a person with a body; as physical and mortal. And this is a good thing, for this is how we are created.
Is driving a sin? No, truly it cannot really be compared to stealing or killing another. The actions of getting in a car, turning the ignition, and transporting oneself from here to there - nothing in this set of actions constitutes sin. But driving does, it seems, change the way we interact with the world: it leads us to treat others as less-than-persons, as objects: and this is a sin. And so I choose to ride as my primary form of transportation: it is for me a theological choice.
And, lest we forget: it is also more fun to ride.
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