Cheerful Givers

I think we all run into a moral dilemma the first time we encounter a homeless man asking for change on the streets. We can live such sheltered lives, and then reality can smack us right outside our front door. Usually, people's thoughts are that you don't really know what the homeless-in-question is going to spend money on, be it drugs or worse, so while it's okay and even admirable to buy them some Whataburger (they don't have those here in South Carolina), they hesitate to give them any money.

It's not an easy dilemma. My default approach used to be to give them five or ten dollar bills from my wallet, and I think I had good moral reason to do so. I used to rationalize, "Well, if they spend the money unwisely, then that's on them, but if I don't give them what I can, then that's on me."

There's solid biblical precedent for that -- Ezekiel 18 stipulates that "the righteousness of the righteous shall be on himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on himself." In other words, I can only be responsible for the decisions I make to give or not to give, not what someone does with my charity. Matthew 25 says that when Jesus returns, He will say, "Inasmuch as you did to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." James 2 claims, "If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Depart in peace, be warm and filled,' but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?"

I based this approach partially on my experience with the homeless. My freshman year, at a Denny's in Dallas, my friends Jesse and Austin and I sat down with three homeless guys and paid for their meal in exchange for about an hour's worth of conversation: their names were Devil, Dave, and some other colorful name. They told me their life stories, and if I were to take them at face value, then they and I have shared the same circumstances. Devil said that he was born "with a silver spoon in his mouth" and described how his life had taken a downturn with a series of bad decisions. The other two were Army veterans, with Dave leaving the Army as recently as the Gulf War. They talked about the concrete morality of living on the street -- the territorialism, the camaraderie, the daily dependency on and hope for the provision of food or warmth that drove some to God and some away. It was an eye-opening evening because I realized we had a lot in common. I think we start to get into trouble any time we think we're above a bad decision -- we are not above any vice -- so the fact that they came from the same life I was living was a humbling testimony to God's grace and a cautionary admonition to live wisely.

The next year, my friend Austin and I ran into a homeless guy under a bridge in Dallas. We decided to bring him some fast food and talked with him for a while -- it turns out he knew Devil, the man we'd met last year. After we'd talked for some time, the man looked around, and then reached into some bushes and pulled out two boxes of food. He gave them to us. We were puzzled to receive food from a homeless man, but he explained that the boxes were full of pasta and rice and other dry starches, and since he didn't have a stove, they were no good to him, so we might as well re-distribute them. It's not every day you lift two boxes of food from a homeless guy.

One of the best things I got to experience at Rice was Church in the Park. I probably only went less than a dozen times, but each time was memorable. A group of five to ten Rice students would either cook up or collect a large amount of food in galvanized steel trays, then take them across Main Street to Hermann Park where a large group of homeless people would've already congregated. What followed was not an event of charity, but a collective meal and church service, usually led by one of the students. But I got to meet all sorts of people and see the reality of their needs, but more than that, the reality of who they were. Former Marine captains, electrical engineers, drug addicts, people from all over the country. Were there deserving poor? Probably, if there is such a thing, but there were undeserving poor too.

Nowadays when I see a homeless person on the street, I try to sit and talk to them and find out where they're coming from and where they're going, and see if I can help with a few kind words. I'm making myself out to sound really altruistic, and I don't mean to -- I've just realized that with all the needs and situations and perspectives of the people out there in the streets of the world, to simplify the question down to "do I give them money or not" is unsatisfactory, oversimplifying, and kind of patronizing. Jesus lived with these people -- He was effectively homeless while He was on this earth -- and He looked at them and He loved them.

Recently, I've been introduced to some compelling arguments for not opening the wallet whenever I see a homeless person. For one thing, I'm told, we do have limited resources. We have limited time and money, and if we invest it in one thing, then we won't be able to spend it elsewhere, so we do have to be good stewards and prioritize what we do with God's resources. It's true. I mean, it's true both ways. Jesus said not to cast pearls to swine. I probably shouldn't empty my bank account and give it to the next decrepit-looking person I see. In 2 Corinthians 11:9, Paul emphasizes that it was edifying for him not to burden the church at Corinth financially -- we don't want to run ourselves or our families into debt by mindlessly giving, or make it so we're unable to give anymore. At the same time, I think there's room for error in thinking, "I can't give any money away now -- I'm saving it to support missions next summer." Who knows where you or your money will be next summer? We can severely limit what God does with us if we don't allow room for Him to guide us. I guess in sum, I think we should be wise and shrewd, but we border on self-righteousness if we don't ever allow ourselves to give.

Here's another argument, and it's a better one. What's best for the homeless? I mean, what a question. Some may only need to accrue some cash to jump-start finding a job and a place to stay or to get back to their families. But for some, they do need to hit rock-bottom. Kurt told me about when he was working with a homeless ministry in another city, and the ministry had everything for the homeless -- free education and training, a sheltered place to stay, food provisions, job connections -- and all people had to do was to pledge to give up their vices of drugs, violence, and the other things that were killing themselves and hurting those around them. But many homeless refused -- they could get hundreds of dollars a day begging on the streets, and they openly stated that they'd rather live their own lives, since they could afford to get away with it. Kurt mentioned the time he saw one of them actually take out a fat wad of bills to help pay for a pizza. By giving these homeless money, well-meaning donors were inadvertently funding people's ability to live in sin, instead of letting them hit a rough patch that might have spurred them to repentance and redemption.

I've seen some of that too. Some people would rather live on their own terms than repent and be transformed -- they like their vices and they can get away with living their lives that way. Don't we all?

But I have to be careful. Whenever I can rationalize myself out of doing something legalistic, I swing the pendulum to the lazy side. When I came to the opinion that there was nothing particularly pertinent about 10% tithing, I said to myself, it's not necessarily important that I give exactly 10.0%, and within a matter of weeks, I wasn't giving anything. Lazy. It was the same for a while with encountering the homeless -- after talking to Kurt, I accidentally made an excuse for myself not to give money away, and as a result, I began to feel relieved when I didn't have money in my pockets because then I could guilt-free say, "Sorry, don't have any cash," instead of mumbling something ashamedly and incomprehensibly when I did have some cash on me. How messed up is that? It's the opposite of love.

I think I'm ready to start giving money again. I'm going to be smart about it, and I'm going to try to see the whole picture. Whether or not there are good shelters in the area to point people to. Whether or not this person has a family to take care of him, or whether he knows that he has a God who loves him. The money is only part of the picture of loving people. But the real truth is that the money is not mine, and my life is not mine -- it'll all have to start with surrendering them to God.