I Hope I Will Not See Anybody

You sat in the car for about forty seconds and looked at the other cars.

Not consciously, at first. You pulled in, turned off the engine, and your eyes went along the row nearest the door checking for anything you recognized. A particular blue one. The one with the sticker in the back window.

And when you did not see any, you got out.

That is the thing this article is about, and it is not about groceries.

You changed where you shop about four months ago. It was a sensible decision and it works: the same amount of food comes home for meaningfully less, and nobody in your house has commented on any of it except that the bread is different.

And every time you go, you scan the parking lot.

And once, in the third week, you did see somebody. A woman from the school. And you had a short bright conversation across the end of an aisle, and you heard yourself explain that you were just picking up a couple of things on the way past.

You were not. You had a full cart.

That sentence has been sitting in you ever since, and I do not think it is because you told a small lie to somebody you barely know. I think it is because in the moment you heard yourself do it, you found out what you actually believe about where you shop, and you did not like the answer.

So no store is going to be named in this article, and no brand, and nothing about groceries at all. I am not going to talk about what is good value or where to go.

This is about being seen.

Not with respect of persons

There is an instruction in James about a way of looking at people, and the example he uses is uncomfortably close to a parking lot.

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. (James 2:1, King James Version)

With respect of persons.

The phrase means sorting people by their outward standing. James goes on to describe it exactly: a man comes in with a gold ring and good clothing and gets the good seat, and a poor man in shabby clothing is told to stand or sit somewhere out of the way. And the whole passage is a rebuke of that sorting.

Now here is what I want you to see, and it is not the obvious application.

That sorting is a system, and it does not only run in the people doing the seating. It runs inside the person being sorted, too, and once it is installed it keeps working with nobody else in the room.

Nobody in that store has ever assessed you. The woman from the school was buying her own groceries in the same place, in the same week, with her own reasons. There was no judgment happening. But you had already sorted yourself before you got out of the car, and the sorting was so automatic that you produced an explanation for it out loud without deciding to.

That is what James is against. Not just the man giving out the seats, but the whole business of ranking people by outward standing, and you have been applying it to yourself in a parking lot for four months.

And notice how he frames it. He does not say it is unkind, or unfair, though it is both. He says do not hold the faith of the Lord of glory that way. The sorting is treated as incompatible with what you believe, which is a much stronger thing than calling it impolite.

The sorting is against the faith you hold and not merely unkind, and outward standing has never once been how anybody is ranked. James 2:1 refuses the whole business of respect of persons, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody scanning a row of cars before getting out.

The explanation is the problem

Here is the practical half, and it is about the sentence in the aisle.

The explanation is doing more damage than the encounter.

Notice what happened. Nobody asked you a question. She said hello. And you supplied, unprompted, an account of why you were there, and the account was not true.

That is a defense, and a defense requires a charge, and the charge came from you.

And it does something to you afterward that the encounter itself would never have done. If you had simply said hello and talked about the school for a minute and moved on, there would be nothing left. Instead you produced a small false sentence about yourself, and it stayed with you for months, and it has made the store into a place where you might be caught.

So the real cost of the last four months has not been the shopping. It is that you have been rehearsing, and a person who rehearses becomes a person who is hiding, and hiding is exhausting in a way that no amount of saved money compensates for.

And here is the part underneath it, said plainly. You have decided that where a household shops is public information about how that household is doing, and that yours has come down in the world, and that this is a thing to be managed.

Where you shop is a fact about a store. It is not a report on your marriage, your husband's work, your competence or your standing among the women at that school.

And the cart, incidentally, was full. Which is the thing you were embarrassed about and is also the point: that house got fed that week.

Where you shop is a fact about a store, and a full cart has never once been worth less for costing less. The written word refuses to rank anybody by outward standing, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has been rehearsing a sentence for four months.

Go, and have nothing ready

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the whole of it.

Go where you can afford this week and do not plan what you would say if you were seen.

Go. That part you were doing anyway.

And this time, do not check the lot.

Park, get out, and go in. If your eyes go along the row, and they will out of habit, notice it and go in anyway without finishing the scan.

And then the real instruction: have nothing ready.

Do not prepare a sentence. Do not have an explanation waiting in case you run into somebody. If you catch yourself drafting one in the aisle, and you will, stop the sentence in the middle, because the drafting is the whole activity that has to end.

And if you do see somebody you know, say hello and talk about whatever you would normally talk about, and do not mention why you are there. There is nothing to mention. Two people are buying food in a store, which is what everybody in that town does every week.

The moment where you would have said something about just picking up a few things: let that moment pass in silence. It will feel like a gap. It is not a gap, it is simply the absence of a defense, and nobody but you will notice it.

And here is what you will find over a few weeks. The scanning stops on its own once it stops being fed. It is not a decision you have to keep making. You take away the rehearsal and the whole apparatus quietly loses interest.

You are able to walk in with nothing ready, and being seen has never once required an explanation from you. James 2:1 will not hold the faith with respect of persons, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who does not finish the scan.