I was at Walmart looking for something, like everyone else. I wandered the aisles, keeping one eye on my loud and demanding child sitting in the cart and the other on the aisles around me, watching for a deal that would make my life simpler and easier and more affordable. I went down the row filled with detergents. So many choices. I didn’t have a preferred brand, but I was drawn to the bottles and boxes that looked higher-end, like they were nontoxic, natural, organic. Like they would actually be bringing forth goodness into my life, that my children would smell fresh and clean and chemical-free as they wandered through the earth. The sprigs of lavender pictured on these types of bottles, the sense that I was making the correct purchase in a world full of lurking evils and carcinogens—this all flashed through my mind in a few seconds. The mental load of consumerism is a hell of a burden, one we all take on willingly.
I looked at the prices and decided that I didn’t need to buy anything that day. I still had half a jug of detergent at home, and we could wait just a bit longer. At the end of the aisle, as I turned to head off toward another section, I saw a screen. It was a monitor showing me and my cart and my child as we wandered through the aisle. Filming in Progress, said the monitor. Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted.
I looked around and then back at the little image of myself on the screen. It was as if I were a little god, watching those made in my own image prowl the aisles of Walmart. What else could such a god see? In an instant, I knew: God could see all the people, day after day after day, who didn’t have enough money for soap and who took it quietly when they thought no one was watching.
