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NASCAR is but one sign that a truly integrated society is not necessarily one in which all races are equally represented in every business, church, or sport. Conformity to this abstract idea will never work in a nation dedicated to freedom. Instead, in a free society, all manner of subcultures can freely decide how and where they associate. Simply put, NASCAR reminds us of the creative tension that all communities, including the church, experience—the dynamic dance between unity and diversity.

NASCAR points to another tension, this one inherent in the human condition. It is a spectacle where the point is the danger, and where the danger is death itself. Like stepping into a boxing ring with an opponent whose right hook is capable of short-circuiting your brain. Like swinging from a trapeze, where the slightest timing miscue means a perilous fall to earth.

Make boxers wear protective headgear, or put a net under acrobats, and something crucial is lost. While there is choreographic beauty in a boxing match or an acrobatic routine, without the possibility of the sting of death, the vitality is sucked out. It's like playing the World Series of Poker with poker chips. Interesting, but it no longer makes the heart race when you're trying to bluff your opponent.

Auto racers, like boxers and high-wire acrobats, regularly bluff death. Most of the time, death folds. Sometimes it doesn't. But when the bluff works, it is one of the most exhilarating experiences known. There is something about coming right to the edge of life and peering into the abyss, when a split second of inattention or just bad luck can send you over the edge, that makes the heart race faster than a screaming engine and allows the mind to grasp, in the blur of existence speeding by, the wonder and grace that life is.

It is an experience NASCAR fans know vicariously as they watch the race and then hear the tales of the saints of the sport—the Jimmie Johnsons and Richard Pettys and Dale Earnhardts—how they came so close so often and eluded death's grasp.

It is exhilarating because every once in a while a driver does not elude that grasp. And the bigger the saint, the more sobering that reality. Paradoxically then, the death of the Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt Sr., not only accelerated the need for more safety measures, but also made the sport that much more appealing. It made the next race an even greater act of courage and a larger step of faith, the drivers even larger heroes who brush up against death for our benefit. And the homily that reverberates through the whole race: There but for the grace of God go we.

Thus, every NASCAR race becomes a World Series of Poker, where the stakes are not a pile of money—though there is that—but survival at the fastest speed possible; that is, sport at its riskiest, deliberately racing right up to the abyss, looking into mysterious and dark depths while avoiding the bony hand that reaches up to grab you.

Christians know this vicarious experience, certainly every Good Friday, when they contemplate once again what should have been. Our whole lives are a defiance of God's culture, and on Good Friday we edge up to the abyss and realize how close we are to falling in. But there is One who leaned so far that death grabbed him and pulled him down. As he was dragged down, we feel that we were dragged down with him.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8