Back to the Drawing Board
By Ken Laue
When I was seven years old, my dad got stationed at an Army base in Arizona. The sign at the entrance read: Fort Huachuca, USAEPG. “Dad, what does USAEPG mean?” I asked.
“That stands for United States Army Electronic Proving Ground.”
“What is a proving ground?”
“When they design a new machine or device,” Dad said, “they have to test it to make sure it works properly or that it will last long enough.”
They were flying and testing drones at Huachuca way back in those “space race” days, long before the unmanned aircraft became the controversial weapon they are today. A warrant officer by the name of Mr. Kittles was our next-door neighbor. His job was working with the drones. Since my dad, who was in Army Intelligence, was away on temporary duty much of the time, Mr. Kittles took us boys under his tutelage during those periods. He saved damaged or marred wooden props from the aircraft to show my brothers and me, and he taught us how to build model airplanes that flew.
I have fond memories of spending hours constructing the balsa wood stick-and-tissue creations according to the blueprints. We’d watch as they made a successful flight or two before crashing into a tree or a wall. Then it was back to the drawing board for repairs – or in the case of a plane crashed beyond repair, a whole new aircraft. Unlike the real drones which were radio controlled, those models had no guidance save a young boy’s sense of direction and the changing winds. The back yard was a brutal proving ground indeed.
Did you know that fine-tuned motorcar that brought your family to church today or got you to work on time Monday morning was not just the product of engineers at the drawing board or factory workers and robots on the assembly line? Its prototype spent a lot of time with the test drivers out on the proving ground. The manufacturer wanted to be sure the car handles sharp curves properly and brakes without losing control. The stability system must work correctly. That machine has to stand up to thousands of miles of blistering desert heat or bitter, snowy cold. It has to take whatever punishment you put it through, and then some. Most of all, engineers nowadays want to make sure the vehicle can earn the highest crash-worthiness and safety ratings from NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) or the private insurance institutes so that, if the unthinkable happens, you and your passengers will be protected in a crash.
If you’re like me and fancy yourself a thinker, you may have spent time wondering why God would have allowed a sin-broken world. While I have some thoughts on the subject, I certainly don't profess to have all the answers. But I do know this: the simplest functions that I as a Christian am supposed to perform don't come naturally. The simplest principles of Christianity 101-A are far from easy. For example, Jesus says to love your enemies and not return evil for evil, but good for evil instead. Now, that principal looks just fine to me as I read about it on the Master Engineer's drafting table, the Bible. When I come off the assembly line as a new believer in Christ, yeah: no problem; that performance requirement looks okay to me. But I soon discover as I go through life that this function needs to go back to Engineering because it's not working right. Let that jerk driver cut me off in traffic, or that person that I trusted let me down. Worse yet, let them betray me. All of a sudden the on-board navigation system goes bonkers and I find myself pushing back, getting even, getting bitter or hating. I just flunked my coursework in Intro to Basic Christianity.
Flaws in the machine are not seen until we take it to the test driver at the proving ground. And I believe Jesus uses this fallen world as a proving ground to refine and hone us; to bang out our dents and give our spiritual suspension a total re-design so it will handle better. The work we allow the Master Engineer to perform here will carry over into Eternity. “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12).
Detroit has produced a number of classic automobiles over the decades, and the same is true of their Asian or European counterparts. Take the Mustang, the Corvette, the Camaro or Firebird, or one of my favorites, the Dodge Power Wagon. You can add your own favorites to the list: maybe the Datsun 240Z or the early Japanese 4X4 pickups. Any AMX fans out there? BMW? Audi? GTO or Dodge Challenger? A co-worker of mine in the ’70s had a Plymouth Roadrunner with a monster engine which could run all day at a hundred miles an hour on the speed-limit-free highways of his home state, Montana. Yet despite successes, automakers have produced a number of notable clunkers as well. Ever heard of the Ford Pinto, the Chevrolet Vega, the Pacer by American Motors, the Edsel, or the Yugo? I wonder… did any of these gems ever go out to the proving grounds? Well, whether they did or not, true life experience proved the most serious test driver of them all and propelled these bombs into the Clunker Hall of Fame.
Some believers try to avoid God's proving grounds because they're afraid it will be too hard, but God promised in I Corinthians 10:13 that it would never be beyond what we could bear: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” This is echoed in II Peter 2:9 where it tells us: “the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.” In our attempts at bypassing accountability on the proving grounds we may even avoid becoming a member of a good Bible-believing church. But the Bible warns against this in Hebrews 10:25: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Even good church-goers may fall into a bad attitude when God takes them back to the proving ground for refining or re-tweaking. Have you ever been there? I have. (Not something I’m proud of.) If we humans take great pains to prove the machines we invent, how much more would a loving Creator do so with His creations? Let's face it: just because we said a sinner's prayer and we're on our way to Heaven doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. We are far, far, far from being a finished product. As David says in Psalm 144, becoming the product God intends requires a fighting attitude, as it won't be too easy. “Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle…” I know I'm not the finished product. My life is still being test-driven in this proving ground world, and the Master Engineer is the test driver.