David M. Hare
I grew up with a misunderstanding in my mind as it relates to how Christians serve others, and particularly the poor. While I have seen this misunderstanding primarily reflected in American conservatives, I am not blaming anyone in my life. I think that this misunderstanding led me at times to look down on others, to refuse help, and to protect my own interests. The misunderstanding is this: while the Bible teaches that we are to serve and help the weak and poor, we should only serve and help those who deserve it.
One of the first times I had to really wrestle with this bias in my own life was when I started volunteering at a homeless day shelter in Louisville, KY back around 2006. I had seen that great Will Smith movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. In this film I saw a man that was genuinely working hard, seeking to care for himself and his family, but because of situations out of his control he ended up homeless with his son. He was able to pull himself out of homelessness through extreme motivation, hard work, and the generosity of a few. As I started at the homeless shelter, I was expecting to be serving this type of person: the “deserving” poor.
As you may have guessed, this is not what I found. Instead, I found people that were often unkind to me, addicted to various substances, and most of whom would ignore opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty. I met there one young woman who was 22 years old. She said that she had parents that were willing to help her, but that she had refused because she wanted to do things on her own. She had lost several jobs because she was, “not the kind of person to work 40 hours a week.” I watched another man slowly go blind as he used government assistance to buy any kind of alcohol or drug he could get his hands on, including rubbing alcohol. I worked there with numerous homeless men who were over 300lbs. All of the food they needed to maintain such a weight came from tax payer dollars, or donations primarily from churches.
I volunteered for around a year, and.
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