This week I’ve been studying the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:29-37)

Today I left my lane to drive around a homeless guy because I was too impatient to wait for him to finish crossing. I was leaving a shopping center, he was crossing my turn-only lane. He looked about 60 years old; he was stooped over in the old-age, sore back sort of way which left him looking straight at the ground; he shuffled at about 2 feet every 10 seconds. The cars in front of me started driving around him instead of just waiting. I did too.

Stop and wait for him to cross so my van stays between him and any impatient drivers behind me? No.

Roll down my window and ask, “Sir, can I help you?” No.

Get out of my van, take him by the arm and help him up the curb? Of course not.

I drove around him.

In lots of the spam that I get, the body of the email is filled with random nonsense so that the email will not match any spam-identification patterns used by spam filters. If you skim through such a stream of random words you can sometimes find something interesting, such as “Christian angry compassionate.”

Mull that one over. I like it. I don’t think it describes me per se but I know some people who could be described this way. Generally I’d say it seems to apply to some of my politically active Christian friends.

And my personal 3-word description for what motivates my politics right now? Probably something akin to “Christian dismay abrogate.”