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There by the Grace of God Go Those Others
Part 2: The Hardest Part
of Christian Charity
What does a Christian owe to the poor? (No, the answer isn't "Nothing!" or even "Government-sponsored benefits!") Whatever help you can give, yes, but that ain't all. What's the hardest part of Christian charity? PICK ONE-- The greatest of these is (a) Voluntary Donations to your chosen recipient; (b) Involuntary donations through your increased tax bill; (c) Compassion; (d) Pity; (e) Empathy..... (HINT: It's the one that produces neither self-satisfaction nor self-pity, but grief and terror)
Part of the shock of New Orleans for those of us who consider ourselves middle class has been in being forced to confront some aspects of life that we may normally be able to keep at bay.
One of those aspects is the terrible loneliness of the individual who is severed from the community.
When you pass a homeless person in the street, do you ever really stop and ask yourself what the world is like to him or her? I don’t mean just the problem of being without money and not knowing how you are going to find shelter or where your next meal is coming from. I am talking about the almost unthinkable isolation of being in need and completely alone.
What is it like for the elderly lady who is hobbling along behind the grocery cart where she keeps all her worldly goods? What would it be like to be her? What would it like to be alone, homeless, and ill?
We are adept in our society at the ‘us/them’ mentality. We have inherited from our Puritan ancestors the belief that we make our own luck and that what a person gets pretty much tracks what they deserve to get. But is that really true? Do you think that Martha Stewart, say, is that much more deserving of her wealth and insulation from the fears that beset those of us who don’t know how we will manage after retirement or if something happens to prevent us from working?
My friends John and Lee do admirable work among the homeless. They drive out into woods with the homeless van and distribute food and clothing to people who are living in tents or little shelters they’ve constructed out of boxes. When a hurricane threatens, they help get them to shelter.
Some of the people look like ‘Them”---you know, those who are mad, mentally deficient, unable to work because of their criminal histories, too crippled to work really but not sufficiently disabled to get any benefits….those people, the ones who are not like lucky, lucky you or I. Some of them may deserve their fates (which to me still look worse than death).
They huddle in corners till they’re driven off, sleep in the streets, try to find resting places till their more fortunate fellow citizens drive them away….hope, I suppose, for some kindness that they rarely find, for the rare charitable impulse that any of us ever feel. They live outside the community. They’re treated as trash.
I saw a homeless man sitting in the library reading a paper the other day. One of the two friends who were there with me was indignant: he smelled bad, he was obviously there to get the benefit of free air conditioning and not because he really wanted to read, and he was making it so very unpleasant for all the good, kind, God-fearing library patrons who pay their taxes.
“Fuck you,” our other friend said to her. “Fuck you.” He hasn’t spoken to her since. He says he never will again.
I felt bad for her because she was so astonished. Did she not see the terrible despair and misery and hopelessness in this (fairly young) man’s bleary eyes. It was there all right. He knew he would be thrown out soon, he knew we didn’t want him there, and he knew he could only stay for a short time where there was shelter, cool air, and a place to sit down. He looked ill---he kept coughing behind his hand, trying not to be heard.
What would that be like? What would it be like to be ill and alone? What would it be like to have no place to go? People say they want their freedom, but does anyone want it at that price?
I have been doing counseling of a sort for years; I was trained to do it. The people I talk to aren’t always the poor; some of them are quite well off. But they are invariably alone, invariably terrified, invariably incapable of finding their footing in the world. Many of them are disabled and can’t leave their homes; and---contrary to what you probably believe---there really are not programs in place to ensure that those who can’t work are sheltered and fed. Only some of them receive help and those who do are terrified of losing it.
One disabled ex-Vietnam vet came to me in tears. He was going to lose his government sponsored housing and his main concern? His Siamese cat, the only thing he owns, the only love he has managed to retain, couldn't go with him because the only place he could afford didn't allow pets without a pet fee, and he didn't have the money. I cried too (though I didn’t let him see) because why should any human being be so thoroughly reduced that he has to choose between a roof over his head and his pet? (PS.--this is for my mom---he finally did find a place that would take the cat.)
I can’t forget the picture of the New Orleans man wading through chest-high filthy waters with gigantic white dog on his shoulders. The dog was still clean and still dry. God must love someone with that spirit of compassion and that capacity to love.
In a meeting I attended the other day, a woman stood up and said that she was ‘angry ’ with the people of New Orleans. She wants to tell them, “Don’t have children if you can’t support them! Don’t have animals you can’t evacuate or feed! Don’t live in places that are overcrowded and you can’t escape!”
In short, if you are poor, have nothing. Live alone, be lonely, and have no life. If you want things, get a job. If there are no jobs for you, you must not deserve anything. Deal with it. Don't go looking for hand-outs; take some individual responsibility for your loneliness and wretchedness. Did you think that individual responsibility included the responsibility of the individual to the community? Guess again.
Right: I was going to say something about Christianity and the duties it imposes. But do I really have to?
Oh, all right, then. Part of Christ’s mission seems to have been to make the more fortunate in the community aware of that their duty extends more broadly than humankind had previously dreamed or wished to believe. It’s not just that you ought to be charitable, it is that you have GOT to. It is the premier virtue, the one thing that is always acceptable to God, and always demanded of God.
Charity includes providing for those who have nothing out of the something that we have (however much or little). The story of the widow who put all she had into the treasury is instructive; Christ, who was looking on, remarked that that little meant more in God’s eyes than the much greater donations of the wealthy men who were giving only a tiny fraction of what they had.
But the greatest aspect of charity is much harder for me and everyone else than giving money into the treasury: love. Love in the form of empathy, compassion, acceptance, and above all, respect---respect for the part of God that is in all other human beings, even the more abject.
My friends John and Lee go into the woods and look the homeless people right in the eye. They talk to them; they ask to know their stories. They reach out with kindness and, above all, respect.
Christ required love in the form of charity. Charity doesn't just mean giving to others to relieve their suffering but the empathy and compassion that ought to prompt it and the respect (the respect of one human who could at any point lose everything for the endurance of another who already has) with which it ought to be done.
That’s so hard to do. It’s so contrary to the other, nonChristian teachings of our society. Our society teaches us that you can estimate the worth of a human being fairly accurately by assessing his or her education, social status, income, and net worth.
Christianity teaches us that it isn't our business to estimate the worth of another at all, but to honor in everyone---even the most abject, disgusting, terrifying leper---the part that belongs to God. There may have been times and places in human history where people tried to live by that creed (I like to believe it of the medieaval Cathars) but at any rate, it's fallen by the wayside in this time and place.
Nevertheless---and no matter how we rationalize our failures, indolence, and greed (or how I rationalize mine)---it is what is required of us. Should we be as comfortable as we are about failing at it?
RELATED LINKS
“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: The Demands of Charity
“There by the Grace of God Goes Somebody Else”: Empathy---that pity that is akin to love
Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?
“Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew, My Honey.”
The Displaced Poor of New Orleans: It’s All Working Out so Well for Them!
