Going to Walmart is a kind of spiritual challenge for me.
One I often fail.
Almost every time I am there--for almost any purpose--I begin to realize certain things. I begin to react certain ways. I begin to see the darkness that is still lodged within my own soul...and how much I still need to grow.
It starts with the older man who is stands near the door. He's got a growth on the side of his face the size of a baseball. I'm disgusted, horrified, and repulsed. I want nothing more than to get away.
Then I step further into the store. It's never clean and tidy enough for me. I think I deserve better. I mean, what's wrong with these people? Why can't they keep their store clean?
Next I might see the mentally challenged person walking by and move steadily away. I see the woman screaming at her child and inwardly criticize her parenting and often her whole person. I see people mindlessly stocking shelves and think about how small their world must be.
And I feel better than they are. I just know I am better than they are. In those instants I t
hink to myself how glad I am that I am not like them, that God has singled me out for purposes far beyond what they could understand.
Sometimes I guess I want nothing more than to get out of there because I have more important things to do than waste my time with people and places that are so...beneath me.
It hurts to have to admit these feelings, these thoughts. But they happen. And they are a part of my sorry fleshly existence.
But what right do I have to make those assumptions? To propose these claims? What does make me any better than these people?
There's nothing, because I'm not. As a matter of fact, my thinking these thoughts may actually indicate that I am a great deal worse.
In reflecting on this experience, I felt convicted about my thoughts and told a friend of mine that "Christ died for these as well." But I think that's even a little light. To say that Christ died for my Walmart companions as well as me implies that He died for me first. That I'm somehow special and Christ added them into the deal only as an afterthought or something.
But I don't want to say that. I can't.
So immediately after saying that to my friend, I added: "Maybe especially for these." Maybe it is the often proud upstart Joshua R. Ziefle that was the afterthought.
Perhaps all the while it is Jesus who would spend his time with the employees of Walmart, while I the spoiled seminary kid continue to live in my world of make believe, thinking I am too good for such a place. Too blind to really see anything at all.
It's alarming how pride and sin can sneak in slowly and destroy us. Take us from the loving and humble souls we are called to be in Christ and make us into the most rigid of legalistic judges.
You see, I need to remember that Jesus is one of those people in Walmart.
And then I need to fall to my knees.
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