Diesel Engines and Jesus

Editor's Note: I wrote the following article for FCC's quarterly mailing, a magazine called "The Spirit" which goes out to more than 250,000 homes in the Bay Area. Most people probably just throw it away, but a good portion read it. Special thanks communicator extraordinaire Jonathan "Soon to Be Papa-Of-Three" Ziman for the story idea.



I love the end of the year. I love it mainly because of all the Best of the Year End Review shows that always come on TV. I love looking back and seeing people rank the “Best of the Year” in movie moments, or sports highlights or news stories. And every year, they give awards for the best commercial.

According to the website iFilm this Honda Ad is the best commercial of the year. It features fantastic animation, a catchy song narrated by humorist Garrison Keillor, and cute animals. (BTW, if you want to look at another equally awe-inspiring Honda Ad made entirely from parts from an Odyssey Mini-van, head over to here)

But even more than that – and I know you’re going to call me crazy – but this commercial is unbelievably inspiring to me.

But first, I need to give you the back story. A few years back, Honda Motors called all its engineers and Research and Development people into a big meeting. They asked them to break down into groups and each group had to answer this one question: What is the thing in the automotive industry that you hate the most? What bugs the living daylights out of you? What is the one thing about cars that you can’t stand?

And the answer for these engineers and R&D thinkers was nearly unanimous: diesel engines.

“We hate them,” they all cried out. “They’re loud and noisy. They’re ugly. They smell terrible. They pour thick black soot into the air. Do we need to go on?”

And so the Heads of Honda gave these engineers a mandate. Fix it. Come up with a better solution. If you hate it so much, then fix it. Honda’s new slogan was simple:

Hate Something. Change Something.

And they did. The new engine is clean. It’s quiet. It’s super powerful and fuel-efficient, and it has the same emissions as a typical gasoline engine. It also has a device that changes those smelly, toxic diesel emissions into harmless, simple nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

Hate Something. Change Something.

Here’s why I feel that this commercial is so inspiring. I think that a lot of times, the only time we really change anything in this world or in our lives is if we start to get a little bit angry. When we reach the end of our rope. When we see something day after day after day and finally we can’t stand it anymore. And we say, “That’s gotta change.”

I think this is probably why health club memberships spike in January. People look at themselves and say, “I’m too overweight. And I’m tired of looking at this. I’m done.” And they change.

So what about you? What if I sat you down in a room and asked you this simple question. What is the one thing about yourself that you hate the most? What is the one thing that drives you nuts about yourself?

• Maybe it’s the way your anger rears its ugly head and wreaks havoc on those around you.
• Maybe it’s your pessimistic, negative attitude – you always seem to be a in a sour mood.
• Maybe it’s your selfishness – you spend almost all your time and energy thinking about yourself
• Maybe it’s your insecurities and how you always feel like you’re jockeying for position to get people to notice you and appreciate you.

So as the New Year approaches, why don’t you get angry? Why don’t you be like those Honda Engineers, who had just had it up to here with stinky, noisy, dirty diesel engines.

I’m going to be honest here – all the self-help books in the world probably aren’t going to help you fix your problems. Because frankly, most of our problems are deep issues that have to deal with our soul.

Thomas More, who wrote the book “Care of the Soul” wrote this profound statement

The great malady of the 20th century is implicated in all of our problems individually and socially is the “loss of the soul.” When the soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away. It appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning. Our temptation is to isolate the symptoms and try to eradicate them one by one. But the root problem is that we have lost our wisdom about the soul. Even our interest in it. We have come the soul only in its complaints, when it stirs, disturbed by neglect and abuse and it causes us to feel its pain.

Maybe it’s time to stop ignoring your soul. Maybe you’ve had that nagging sense for a while now. And if that’s you, then my advice is pretty simple. Hate Something. Change Something. And come to church. It might just change your life.