Sometimes I feel really guilty when I shy away from panhandlers instead of hearing them out. I'll think back to a church lesson I heard when I was a child. The details are fuzzy since the church days have ceased, but I think it was the Good Samaritan parable. A homeless man goes to person to person seeking aid and is turned down until a Samaritan gives him a bath and a meal. Would you give a homeless man a bath and a meal? the preacher asked the circle of kids. No, said the kids. If Jesus stood on your doorstep, would you invite him in for a bath and a meal? he asked again. Yes! cheered the kids. The message was to be nice to everyone in case one of those people was the baby Jesus, because you sure didn't want to dismiss the baby Jesus. If you do, you go to hell. And every time to this day when a homeless man approaches me and I give him a sharp No!, I'm all what if he was the baby Jesus? And I feel guilty.
Though I don't think the baby Jesus would stand in the unlit part of the Murder Kroger parking lot at 12:30 at night and tell me to come here, because he has a question he wants to ask me.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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5 comments:
i used to feel the same way. Then I moved to an area where they had no problem bugging the shit out of you until you either gave them whatever money you hoping to save for the washing machine and drier in the apartments or you got mean. There just ain't enough quarters.
Hmm. It seems weird they'd be harping on you to hedge your bets because it might be Jesus and not because at one time this homeless person was someone's child and you should do it out of the kindness of your heart. Though still, you were at the Murder Kroger and in SF there was that German chick stabbed in the throat by a homeless guy she was nice to. These people need to regulate themselves!
The good Samaritan was all about loving your "neighbor" and identifying who those neighbors were. The parable showed that the Samaritan, who at the time was not spoken to by the Jews, helped someone he was under no obligation to help, because he wanted to. The injured man's fellow Jews just walked by.
Your preacher misapplied this story in providing you with an example to further his point.
Give when you can, because you want to. Don't feel obligated because it's Christmas. You should feel this way year round.
No baby Jesus was injured in the explaination of this story.
Thanks! Like I said, I was a child so I could have gotten it wrong.
I do donate to the homeless, just not directly. I'll leave clothes under the park bridge where they sleep, or I'll give my used stuff to a foundation, but I prefer to not interact with them. So it's still iffy if I'm a good person or not :P
I'd say you could always ask them if they're Jesus, but it's possible that many of them would say that yes, they were.
I think like that sometimes too!
At my worst I just ignore them. Or call out as I breeze by, "I don't carry cash."
But then I left a dollar in someone's bedding in a bridge once. I hoped to have made that person smile...
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