Reflection on the Middle Finger

I flipped a man off the other day in a McDonald's drive through.  After an initial re-check in his rear view mirror, he stormed out of his car and proceeded to menacingly approach my car, all while yelling a string of profanities peppered with the threat of breaking my finger.  I simply told him, repeatedly, that he should get in line next time.   For a split second, I thought about what I was going to do if he got closer to my car, but surprisingly, I didn't flinch or move or express any interest whatsoever in this man’s aggression.  I was numb.  ‘So this is life when you are hurting’, I thought. 

You see, this McDonald’s had two lanes for ordering.  At the end of a long single line of cars, you could pick between the two lanes.  As you get closer, you rely on the car in front of you to make their choice before you pull forward.  This man had driven past the long line of cars and swooped into the right lane opening in front of me.  I can’t say I was furious.  I was simply agitated at this blatant lack of regard for those of us in line.  I rarely crank up that lever of profanity, but this day, it felt right.  He looked in his side mirror and I let him know that I was devoid of love for him, that I thought he was a scoundrel, and that I hoped he would be screwed in return for screwing me out of my place in line.

I’m ashamed to admit that this is sometimes how I think and feel, but I don’t typically respond in this way.  I was having a really bad day.  Not an excuse for my behavior, but a reason nonetheless.  As my brother so eloquently put it, I was “marinating in the pot of self-pity”, that was “flavored with excuses and kept hot with justifications”, or simply engaging in some “stinkin’ thinkin’”.  I felt like a failure, that I wasn’t good enough and my faults were too big to overcome.  I felt frustrated and sad.  All I could think about was who I wasn’t, my weaknesses, my distracted and sporadic mind and the negative impact I was having on my family because of these weaknesses.  I knew things would get better, but they’d only get better because I would forget or choose to ignore the depressing reality at hand.  Emotions seem silly when you recount them, but they were very real at the time.

My reaction to a relatively minor inconvenience was a reflection on me, and I knew it.  I was hurting.  I found some other jerk besides myself to focus on for a minute and I was almost relieved to have the reprieve to my own personal suffering.  I needed to be angry at that man so I didn’t have to be angry at myself for those few seconds.  When the guy got out of his car so quickly, I suddenly realized that I had given him that same reprieve.  We were two strangers, broken men, colliding in a brief moment in time, grasping at an insignificant, fortuitous opportunity to redirect our negative emotions on someone other than ourselves.

Mark 12:31 says to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’.  What this situation reminded me of is just how difficult it is to love your neighbor when you don’t love yourself.  Luke 6:45 says that ‘what you say flows from what is in your heart.’  Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that our response to the brokenness and ugliness of hearts around us is an outward facing mirror to the world.  We want to let people see just how ugly they really are.  

What I learned is that in this warped pursuit of justice, we really just let people see how ugly we really are.  That middle finger was actually a mirror facing me, showing me my own ugliness and pain…a real-time reflection of my own soul, not the soul I was intending to condemn.  Sometimes those who offend or hurt us are just hurting, broken people desperately wanting to keep the focus on other people’s brokenness rather than their own.  Responding in kind only confirms our own need for the same.  I am called to a higher standard, as are we all who claim to follow Jesus, and it starts by loving myself and who I am created to be.  It’s a life long journey.