Note: This post was written after I read this post and this one, and particularly the comments. A friend pointed them out to me and asked my thoughts. Since I wrote this after reading those two posts, perhaps the post would make more sense after you read them as well. Go ahead and read them, I will wait here until you are done. 
If you spend any amount of time talking to the homeless and more than three people know about it, inevitably someone will tell you that you are enabling them instead of helping them. I have been told I was being taken advantage of, been told that if I did not help them they would have to face reality and had people who claim the name of Jesus as their Lord tell me the poor or homeless should just get jobs.
Here are, as promised, in no particular order, some misc. (I have no idea how to spell that word) thoughts on the homeless and following Jesus.
- When Jesus does return to judge the living and the dead he will not send anyone to Hell because they were too generous. If someone takes advantage of me, that is between them and their God. In the interim, I will err on the side of generosity.
- Matthew 25 tells us when we feed the hungry, are hospitable and visit the sick or the prisoner (no mention is made of of what crime they committed), we do it to Jesus himself. Then he tells us that those who do not do those things will “go away to eternal punishment”. Maybe your theology can explain this away as a metaphor – mine cannot.
- There are approx. (another one I cannot spell) 2000 verses in the Bible that talk about how God expects mercy to be shown to the poor. Perhaps that too is all metaphor…
- If you give someone $5 and they buy a beer with it… so what? You would not like it very much if I gave you a fiver but told you since you are getting a bit chunky, you cannot buy any Oreos with it. A gift is a gift. If your giving is conditional, keep the money – you need it more than they do.
- I never recommend giving money and driving away. Instead, build relationships.
- This means taking them to McDonalds with you (yes, you will get some stares, but then again, so did Jesus). It means having dinner with them, not handing them a happy meal on the way home. It means learning their name, it means finding out their story, it means listening. It does NOT mean telling them that apart from God’s grace they will roast forever and it does not mean trying to fix them.
- If you cannot think of anything other than the above examples, maybe you do not have any friends.
- Loving your neighbor means wanting them to have the same chances and opportunities you do.
- Do not try to ‘help homeless people”. Try to make friends with people, try to show real love and then do what your heart tells you to do.
- Much talk about ‘homeless people’ assumes they are second class citizens. Take the same sentence, use any adjective instead of homeless (black, rich, stupid, smart) and you see what I mean… or maybe you do not.
- A lot of poor people do not change very much. A lot of rich people do not either. Loving people is often not about getting things done, but about accompanying them on a long, difficult journey.
- Do not feed someone to ‘share the gospel’ with them. Feed them because that is the gospel (or a big hunk of it, anyway).
Yes, I sit in court with people; yes, I help people get into housing; yes I help people with HIV get treatment. But, before I do any of that, I eat in the soup kitchen next to them, I learn their children’s names, I sit next to them on the sidewalk and honor them as people… not homeless people, not as poor people, not as a project or a good deed… people.
When I look into their eyes, I see Jesus. Loving people is an act of prayer.
Note number two: If you have huge problems with me and my theology, feel free to leave a comment, but I would much rather eat a meal with you at the soup kitchen and us work it out like brothers or sisters. I will even let you have my cookie.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Hugh. Your heart and experiences have a lot to teach the church.
What are your thoughts about why Jesus says we will be judged based on our treatment of the poor?
I think a lot of people feel guilty focusing on the what and miss the why.
In my opinion, our treatment of the poor is where the rubber meets the road with how we really understand ourselves in relationship to God. Do we see ourselves as better than others or do we recognize our own poverty before God?
I think our treatment of the poor also gets at the heart of how we see God. We too often forget that Jesus was poor and itinerant for the 3 years of His public ministry. We too often view Jesus as the “triumphal” Christ that takes us away from suffering rather than the Jesus that enters into the reality of the human condition. If we can’t see and relate to Christ in the poor or the homeless than I wonder how well we know Jesus.
@Corey-
Jesus was born to a teenage mother, under suspicious circumstances. He grew up in a backwater hick town. Before he was three he was a political refugee in a foreign country. The man who raised him was a blue collar craftsmen. We are told he was homeless during his ministry and his expenses were paid by others. If the Lord of All – He Who spoke and the universe leapt into existence – chose to enter humanity in these circumstances, I think there is probably some significance there.
I think the message of Jesus is that of God before him: Be merciful, as God is merciful. As I Am, you be. Like children who mimic their parents, we are to mimic the compassion we see in the Father. Instead, we are like rowdy kids, fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat.
thanks for your thoughts on this, hugh. that’s what i think god’s been trying to teach me through this whole thing. homeless and poor people are just that. people.
peace.
@Jeramie-
Exactly. Homeless people are people, just like the rich lady in the pew on Sunday, and of just as much worth.
As Bart Campolo says, if we love God and love people, nothing else really matters.
Thanks for weighing in.
When I was homeless, I was not an addict and have since had a professional agency take the stigma of mental illness from my record. I had no family or safety network on which to fall. (I keep thinking, in this economic environment, how that must be for so many others.) I have a Bachelor’s degree, hence some education and ability but once I was down there was so little opportunity to get up again. I needed help. I prayed all the time. I believe differently than a lot of people about God but I know without a shadow of doubt that He helped me do everything, even sleep when it was illegal to do so.
How do you live in an illegal situation? Being homeless is illegal. Where can you sleep at night? Where do you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?
People shunned us, that’s true. Others would talk to us. I wanted one opportunity, just one opportunity, to be able to work again, really work, not day labor where you’re again caught in a trap. I wanted an opportunity to take a shower in a timely manner, launder my clothing, eat, sleep and go to work. I used to pray, “Oh, please, Father…”
Finally I got sick. A very caring individual at Horizon Health Center helped me get into the Community Medical Respite Program at Raleigh Rescue Mission and it took off from there. In sickness, health and help. I know it was a loving hand from the unseen.
It’s now a new journey to begin, a year later, to know how to help others. One step at a time, God willing. I look around me all the time and wonder how many other people I come in contact with on a daily basis have been homeless. But then, Christ was homeless, too, wasn’t He?