The Face of Fear

I’m having a hard time writing this article. First off I don’t want to come across as some sort of holier-than-thou internet spokesman. “Look at me! I HELP THE HOMELESS!” So allow me to remind you what started this whole chain of events: I caught myself judging a pan-handler; judging them to the extent that I cooked up an imaginative world where there was a sinister group of people with nothing better to do than stand on street corners in 95 degree heat in order to collect money… just because. I didn’t want to help a pan-handler because I wanted to believe they were debasing themselves as part of a game. THAT is what started this. So to reiterate: I’m really a jerk. [edit: for anyone new to the blog here is the posting that spawned this one.]

The next reason I’m having difficulty writing this article is because I’m trying to come up with good answers for some inevitable questions that people may have. And the bottom line is that I don’t have any really good answers. Questions like: Do you think this is really going to change anything or are you just doing this so you feel better as a Christian? I really don’t have a good answer to that one. I very well might be doing this in order to pay penance for being a jerk. I very well could be that shallow and this might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up.

I’m also afraid that writing this article might make me lose sight of the humanity at stake in this operation. I met a guy. He’s homeless. He’s trying hard to straighten out his life. He very well may have lied to me for an hour over lunch today and I very well could be the sucker of suckers. But at the end of the day there’s a homeless guy out there and judging by some of his stories there are a lot of people just happy to curse at him for that reason. Correction: There are hundreds of thousands (650,000 in 2009 numbers) of homeless people with a lot more folks happy to curse at them for it. I am afraid that this article could detract from the plight of these PEOPLE. Not numbers, people. Lots of them but today I want to focus on one: The one standing in the median of HWY 175 and Dobbin road who was very worried when he saw me walking down the middle of the street to the median on which he was standing.

I was coming back from ferrying around some of my children and decided that it was a good opportunity to swing by Target to see if anyone was pan-handling. Yesterday the 3 or 4 times I drove by there was no one there but today on the first shot I saw him. A skinny white kid with a black baseball hat on, a small sign that I didn’t get a chance to read as I pulled in. I was conflicted because a: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had my chance – and – b: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had no choice. I pulled into the parking lot with a million what-ifs going through my head. I got out of the car into the hellish heat (95F with really high humidity, not a cloud in the sky, just after noon, mid-July in Maryland) and started walking down the hill playing through any number of possible scenarios in my head. As I approached the kid I saw his backpack on the ground slumped up against a street sign as well as a couple empty water bottles. Surprisingly the kid walked away from his backpack to the other end of the median as I approached. When I called to him and asked him if he wanted to grab lunch he froze. I saw the look on his face go from fear to shock to gratitude in less time than it took you to read that sentence. And that change was amazing and I instantly remembered something my parents or some teacher had told me regarding dangerous animals. “They are more scared of you than you are of them.” The kid quickly agreed, asked if he could grab his bag and then guided me over to the crosswalk. I had planned on walking back up the hill. The smart homeless kid knew that there were more and better restaurants across the intersection – ones that did not involve walking up or down large hills in the sun. I asked him his name and he told me it was Sam.

I had been afraid that I would have to force myself to not talk and endure a bunch of awkward silences but that wasn’t the case. Sam was quick to start up chatting and immediately told me how he had been frightened that I was going to cuss him out or beat him up. He was animated, well-spoken, very polite, and a bit defensive. He had quite a bit to say about the people who judged him and even more to say about his history. We sat down in Chik-Fil-A and he explained how he got to where he was: Christian High School student, kind of a wallflower, started hanging out with some drug users, found out he really liked heroin, finished school and got kicked out of his parents’ house, just came off heroin last year and has been on methadone since, has a job, currently pan-handling to pay to get his car (in which he’s living) tagged and titled, and generally trying to get his life put back together. The longer we sat and ate the less defensive he got and the less he talked about people judging him. He got comfortable enough to confess that he was going to grab some cigarettes before he headed back out and that he really needed to kick that habit, too. He seemed genuinely shocked after lunch when I handed him a couple bucks and wished him well. I think I did pretty well with the whole “less talking more listening” thing but he did ask about my job so I did talk about the Army a little bit. So what?

And that’s the big question I’m trying to answer right now: So What? At the very root of all of this is my desire: that other people who call themselves Christians will do the same thing because I believe it will help make you a better Christian. I know it’s definitely restored my focus on the dignity and humanity of the people around me and caused me to look more at those around me as I think Jesus Christ would look at them. But what else? Do I have an endstate? Do I have an all-encompassing plan to start up a church ministry in my own community and spread the love of Christ on an industrial scale? No I do not. I will champion Social Justice. I will wholeheartedly support David Batstone’s “Not For Sale” campaign, I will volunteer in my church’s outreach and ministry programs. I will do all these things as part of a greater movement to spread Jesus’ love. But in this little aspect I’m going to do it alone. Call me selfish (Greg, you could do so much more GOOD if you applied yourself) if you must – and I very well might be – but this one is for me.

So maybe I’ve answered my own hard question with a bad answer: This might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up. However, for one kid out there that bandage came in the form of an air-conditioned lunch, a couple bucks for cigarettes and anything else he might need, and an hour of someone listening to him. My Jesus-shaped bandage will hopefully motivate others to make themselves feel better by helping others, loving the unlovable, showing kindness where it is unexpected, and maybe even providing wisdom. I’m strangely comfortable with that.

P.S. Dear Sora, remember when I told you to focus on acting like a good Christian instead of trying to be a good Christian? I said something along the lines of, “Just get out there and help the people around you, do kind things for them, love them, and be wise and try to answer their hard questions. If you do those things your heart will follow the same path.” I don’t just say these things.