Lent, Walmart, and the North Carolina Squat.

Last night, Jimmy and I were stopped at a red light next to a truck so dramatically lifted in the front and dropped in the back that it looked mechanically confused. I had never even heard of a North Carolina squat before that moment, which apparently did not prevent me from having an extremely strong opinion about it.

It wasn’t subtle. Neon lights glowed underneath the chassis. The bass from the sound system hit before the truck came into view. You could feel it in your sternum before you could see it. It announced itself long before the light turned green.

And I did not ease into my commentary.

I went all the way in.

I compared it to my dog scooting across the rug. I wondered aloud about the engineering decisions. I speculated about the personality profile required to voluntarily tilt your vehicle like that. I built a full comedic framework in under sixty seconds.

It was confident. Creative. Thorough… and based on absolutely zero understanding.

That’s the part that’s bothering me. Not that I had a thought, but that I had built a whole narrative.

There’s something almost impressive about how fast we can move from zero knowledge to fully formed criticism. I didn’t know what it was called. I didn’t know why someone would modify a truck that way. I didn’t know anything about the culture behind it.

But I knew I didn’t like it, and I knew I could make it a joke.

And if I’m honest, the louder it was, the easier it felt to justify. When something is exaggerated, neon-lit, booming down the road, it doesn’t present as fragile. It doesn’t ask for empathy. It announces itself.

But visibility is not the same thing as weight.

About a week ago, Paula shared a story about her husband, Steve. It wasn’t even shareable, which feels ironic because it absolutely deserved to be.

Steve had been eating lunch in a park when a homeless woman approached him and asked if he would watch her cart while she used the restroom. When she came back, she told him she needed two things: a room and prayer.

He couldn’t offer her a room, but he could pray.

So he did, right there on a park bench. Afterward, he asked if she was hungry. They walked to a nearby market, and when she asked what her limit was, he told her there wasn’t one.

Later, telling the story to his wife, he said, “She could have been Jesus.”

He wasn’t trying to go viral. He told his wife what happened, and that’s probably where he would have preferred it to stay. Paula knew it shouldn’t.

Not to spotlight him, but because sometimes the message matters more than the moment.

When I read that line, it didn’t feel dramatic.

It felt exposing.

Because it forced me to confront how quickly I decide what carries weight and what doesn’t.

In the gospels, Jesus suggests that the way we treat the overlooked is not peripheral. It reveals something central. Feeding the hungry. Welcoming the stranger. Seeing the invisible. He ties those actions to Himself in a way that makes them spiritually significant, not socially optional.

Whether you take that literally or as moral imagination, the implication is uncomfortable.

Our reflexes matter.

The homeless woman in the park is an obvious example. But the truck at the red light revealed something subtler in me. My reflex wasn’t curiosity. It was categorization. Reduction. Humor that quietly elevated me over someone I did not understand.

And here’s the part I can’t ignore: I’ve been thinking a lot about culture lately, especially as my role at work expands. Culture isn’t built by big declarations. It’s built by micro-reactions. Tone. Side comments. What gets laughed at. What gets normalized.

And if I’m being honest, I’ve already let a certain kind of sharpness sneak in the door.

Nothing malicious. Nothing cruel.

But a pattern.

Quick reductions.
Subtle superiority.
Bonding through dismissal.

The joke at the red light isn’t an isolated incident. It’s evidence of a reflex, and reflexes, left unchecked, become culture.

Maybe this whole experience isn’t about a truck at all; maybe it’s a course correction before something harder to turn around takes root. If I allow myself to normalize reduction in small moments, it will show up in bigger ones:

In meetings.
In feedback.
In how I interpret someone’s misstep.
In whether I correct to build or correct to feel competent.

There’s an old warning in Scripture about small words setting large fires. Systems thinking would say the same thing: early inputs determine downstream outcomes. Hardness doesn’t appear overnight. It compounds, and if I’m honest, I can see the early signs.

As Lent approaches, I’ve been asking what actually needs recalibration in me. Not publicly. Not symbolically. Just honestly.

It’s probably not sugar. (I already outsource my pancreas to an insulin pump, so let’s not pretend that’s the spiritual breakthrough!)

I think it’s criticism.

Not cruelty. Not outrage. The subtle kind. The quick comment. The internal eye roll. The confidence I feel when I reduce someone in under three seconds.

My work requires discernment. I am stepping into a season that demands clarity, pressure testing, and honest feedback. But clarity and criticism are not the same thing.

Clarity builds.
Criticism elevates me.

And if I’m honest, I like feeling sharp, but sharp and hard are closer than I want them to be. Maybe this isn’t about a truck at all. Maybe it’s about how quickly I build narratives, how efficiently I reduce, and how comfortable I am being sharp in ways that feel intelligent in the moment but leave something slightly hardened behind.

I don’t think I’m becoming cruel, but I can see how easily that kind of sharpness, repeated often enough, could calcify into something more rigid than I intend. And maybe what happened at the red light wasn’t random irritation but a small interruption — the kind that shows up before a pattern has fully set, while it’s still possible to turn it.

When Steve said, “She could have been Jesus,” it didn’t require me to reinterpret every stranger as sacred. It simply forced me to confront how quickly I decide what carries weight and what doesn’t, and how confidently I act on that decision.

Maybe Lent, for me, isn’t about giving something up in a visible way. Maybe it’s about paying attention to what’s already forming beneath the surface — the reflexes that feel harmless, the narratives that build themselves in seconds, the small reductions that quietly shape how I see people.

Meanwhile… I’m learning that the stories I construct almost automatically are not neutral; they’re formative. And the way I narrate strangers may be shaping me more than I realize.