Why One Calvanistic Christian Hedonist Doesn't Speed

What follows are a few reasons for not intentionally speeding. I write these first and foremost for myself. I have thought and struggled through this issue for a while now. I first wrote this list a year ago and I occasionally return to review and add to it. I have achieved no special grace in this particular area. If I did, I would not need special helps like this. However, since this simply exercise has been of help to me, I am cautiously publishing it in the hopes that it may help others. How much grace might God have for us if we were to meditate on all the particular blessings of obedience?

1. It is a form of unbelief. There are so many variables that are completely out of my control: traffic, traffic lights, the running order of my car, accidents, and unseen delays. There is so much I cannot change, but that God can, that it is a form of unbelief to speed. That is, to intentionally break the law in order to change the one factor that is in my control.
2. It would better display the glory of God in my life to refrain from intentionally speeding. This, if explained properly, shows my reliance on God’s control. First it displays my trust for God working in traffic and stoplight patterns, and, second, His sovereignty over all my life, with a perfect plan to work out what is best for me.
3. The law is a good ordinance, put in its place for our good by God through our government. Being not ethically wrong and put in its place for valid reasons (however weak or overrated they may seem) it is good and ethically right to submit to the law (see John Piper in God and the Government sermon series).
4. Practically, it would save one from having to worry about getting a speeding ticket.
5. Also practically, it is safer not to speed.
6. The habitual tendency I have to break the law reminds me of my habitual tendency to break the moral demands of God, and reminds me of what desperate need of grace I am in. However, if I never try to keep the law, I am not reminded of this.
7. As a result of 7, prayer becomes a more necessary part of every drive.
8. It allows me to redirect my problem solving energy away from a morally dubious and legally reprehensible action (speeding) toward the core of the problem: not leaving on time. This is the problem over which I have the most control and where the change should happen. It also draws attention to the consequences of poor preparation. By not speeding I will actually get places late when I leave late. This makes the procrastination all the more serious and bears direct attention to its true nature and consequences.
9. Practically again, avoiding speeding helps gas mileage and reduces ware on brakes and other parts of the car.
10. By practicing joyful obedience in an area where it is easy to obey, it fosters a heart of glad obedience for times when it is not easy. We are not called to be obedient only when necessary or when there is a chance of being caught. By obeying an unnecessary law, it bends the heart toward imitating the perfect obedience of Christ.
11. Whenever you see a police officer patrolling the road you may not feel sneaky, dirty, guilty, or resentful, but rather may feel glad. Glad that there a people enforcing laws meant to provide safer transportation for you day after day.
12. If the occasion arises, and someone ask you why you don’t do something as innocent as speeding (1 Peter 4:4), you may be able to tell them (1 Peter 3:15) of your happiness and hope in God. You may explain to them how much better resting in the will of God is than getting places faster. Perhaps something as silly and insignificant as speeding could point to something more important than cars, and roads, and driving, and laws, and the whole world.