Caution, Student Driver
I was driving to an appointment and the two cars in front of me were going slower than the speed limit. When the car directly in front of me turned off, I was behind the pace-setting car, which is when I noticed it had one of those bumper stickers that read “Caution, Student Driver, Patience Please.”
The good news was that even before I saw the bumper sticker, I was calm and unfazed by the slower speed of the traffic. But, when I saw the bumper sticker, a wave of additional compassion hit me.
I thought, how great it would be if I had a bumper sticker made that said: “Child of God, Patience Please.” I certainly consider myself a student in my faith walk, as I am nowhere near being proficient. Just like the student driver, sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes I’m too aggressive and sometimes I’m more conservative than I need to be. More importantly, sometimes I worry that what I do might get in the way of someone else’s faith walk.
That’s when I started arguing with myself. So often in our society, people explain away their bad behavior or unpleasant results by blaming them on someone or something else. You’ve heard the excuses—it’s not my fault that no one will give me a job because I violently correct people when they won’t use my preferred pronouns or I shouldn’t get that parking ticket because there was a line at the courthouse and I didn’t get back before my time expired. Heck, I read an article where the mother of a young man who hurt himself trying to break into the house of a person who worked at a fast-food restaurant that wouldn’t give him extra dipping sauce is suing the homeowner.
My point is that my mistakes, errors, boo-boos and screw-ups are mine to own. If I do or say something that hurts my neighbor, I should apologize and, ideally, learn from what I did wrong and resolve to try not to do it again.
“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” - Mark 12:28-33 ESV
“If a man is righteous and does what is just and right— if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity, does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by acting faithfully—he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord God.” - Ezekiel 18:5-9
As much as I want to be given some slack for my mistakes, I can’t rationalize them away.
