There are times when I manage to disgust myself.
I’ve experienced two such times in rapid succession not long ago. They both had a common denominator, how I treated homeless “down and outers.”
I believe God has been speaking to me about it.
You’d think a man who spent 11 years teaching and mentoring men at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission would know better, but alas, not so.
In retrospect, I think I always saw myself as somehow superior although I would never admit it.
Proof positive that I had an attitude problem came in two recent encounters:
What Has God Been Saying to Me?
I was taking a stroll downtown waiting for my car to be washed. Coming toward me on the sidewalk in the opposite direction was a disheveled, mildly intimidating, apparently homeless man.
As we got closer, he asked me what time it was. Somewhat put out, I glanced at my watch and gave him the time, but apparently not in a pleasant way.
I wasn’t sure about the man, so I hurried on.
He turned around and yelled angrily, “Respect!” He added, “Do you even know what that word means?”
That encounter haunted me for days. What was I missing, I thought? Was that any way for a Christian to behave?
A few weeks later my second homeless encounter occurred when I was walking with my granddaughter in a nice part of town, and a homeless man stood right in front of us and asked for money.
My first impulse was to avoid him and move on, but my warm-hearted 20-year-old granddaughter saw things differently and confronted me about my attitude.
She wanted to take the guy to lunch and help him out in tangible ways. I just wanted to buy him off.
Once again, what was God saying to me?
Prejudging Based on Appearance
I wasn’t seeing either one of these men as individuals, I was lumping them together into an undesirable class. I cared nothing for their individual stories, or how they came to be in need.
It’s called prejudice.
Can you see Jesus behaving that way? He once said, in Matthew 25:35-40:
“‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ … ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’”
I flunked the test in both instances. Pride blinds.
Forgetting How Precious ‘the Least of These’ Are
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
I was ignoring the unique position God has given to the “least” human, lifting them above the angels.
I wrote in my book, My Origin, My Destiny, “… God gently lifts his precious creation to his lips and blows his own breath into Adam’s mouth — the breath of life. It doesn’t get any more intimate than this — God elevates Adam above every living species when ‘The Man came alive — a living soul.’ Man becomes a uniquely spiritual being, literally ‘stamped’ or infused with God’s very own image (indicating intimate relationship) and likeness (indicating similarity of character).”
Every human being is, at the soul level, equal in value and therefore deserving of our undying respect.
Sadly, I had lost sight of that critical fact: “… you always have the poor with YOU …”
Walking Each Other Home
We’re all just walking each other home,
Why not be caring and kind as we roam?
None of us get out of this sojourn alive,
Why not help each other as we strive?
Must we divide into “we” versus “them,”
We’re equal inside, so why condemn?
God created us from the same dirt,
Why be so anxious to make others hurt?
Unless you’ve walked in another’s shoes,
How can you see someone else’s views?
Don’t be so quick to judge and convict,
Why be anxious to carelessly afflict?
Why such a hurry to beat the clock?
Too busy to hear another soul’s knock?
Is my heart so bolted shut from within?
That there’s no room in my Inn?
I’m sorry for having made things worse,
For another soul, in a manner so perverse.