A Sad "Morality" Tale

Someone I know recently re-posted the following story on Facebook, which was "Liked" by a number of others. At a time of intense political debate people may get caught up in the moment and say things they don't really mean, but I still feel it's important to share the story and my reaction to it:


The $50 lesson.....


Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.

During our friendly conversation, I asked their 12 year old daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents - liberal Democrats - were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed with pride!

"Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" I told her.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her parents aren't speaking to me.


Before I try to explain the deep surge of emotion that this story evoked in me, allow me to try to summarize what I understand the message of this story to be, to make sure we're all on the same page. Because on the surface this is a dig at "liberal Democrats," but in reality it is a dig at homeless people.  


The crux of the story is that when the neighbor suggests that the idealistic twelve-year-old earn some money and then give that money away to help the homeless man, the girl comes to the "logical" conclusion that the homeless man should just do the work himself.  The author, as I understand it, suggests that liberals are wrong to throw other people's money away on homeless people because homelessness is the result of unemployment, and unemployment is the result of laziness. As the 12-year-old so innocently perceived, giving away someone else's money to a homeless person is idiotic because the homeless person could fix his own problem if he got up off his lazy homeless behind and got a job.  This is how I understood the moral of the story.  Please correct me if I am wrong.


This story deeply offends me.  Offends me enough that I feel compelled to write something in response. If this were merely a swipe at Democrats or Obama or any other political entity, I wouldn't worry about it - that's politics, and politicians can defend themselves. But this is a swipe at homeless people, and far too few people speak for them.


So let's talk for a minute about homeless people.  First of all, stereotypes aside, homeless people are men, women, mothers, brothers, sisters, children. Statistically (and in my experience) many homeless people are single mothers with children, who are fleeing abusive partners, or have lost their jobs, or just can't afford rent, food, and childcare and don't have family to support them. Most of these women are temporarily homeless and hunker down with their children in shelters, trying to give them as much security and opportunity as they can under very trying circumstances. They are unfortunate women and innocent children caught in a bad situation.  


But of course, the story wasn't talking about mothers with children, was it?  We're talking about the shabby bearded man who mutters to himself while he "hangs out" at the grocery store. Let's talk about him. It's estimated that 20-25% of homeless people have a severe, debilitating mental illness (compared to 6% of the general population), especially schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Among the chronically homeless (those homeless for more than a year, or who are homeless for significant portions of consecutive years) that number is even higher. These are people whose disease incapacitates them to the point where it is hard for them to get and maintain a job. They may have problems with hygiene, with interpersonal relations, with good decision-making, and they are far more susceptible to disease and addiction. In addition, it is estimated that 23% of the homeless are veterans of the U.S. military.  Among homeless men, that number is more like 33%.  Almost half of those are Vietnam veterans.


It would not be implausible that the homeless man hanging out at the grocery store could be a schizophrenic Vietnam veteran. To suggest that he wouldn't be homeless if he would just go get a job is both ignorant and offensive. Do we think that people want to be homeless? Do we think these people are so lazy that they would rather sleep on the street, or drag their children to shelters carrying all their worldly possessions in tow rather than work for a living? Who would choose to live like that? This attitude seems especially insensitive at a time when opportunities for employment are lower than they have been in many years.


Maybe we think that they are merely suffering the just consequences of their bad choices? Maybe they deserve to be homeless because they chose to get addicted to drugs, or alcohol, or they chose to get pregnant as a teenager, or they chose not to do well in school, or they chose to get a mental illness, or they just plain chose not to work hard like you did.  As someone once put it, perhaps we feel "the man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just." The author's implication that the homeless are merely lazy certainly suggests that he believes this to be the case. 


It makes me sad to see people who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ endorse such callous attitudes about some of the most downcast and vulnerable among us. To assume that the solution to homelessness lies in the homeless ceasing to be lazy and becoming gainfully employed suggests an ignorance of the causes of homelessness as well as an ignorance of homeless people themselves. To those who adopt such an attitude towards the homeless, I would ask, do you know any homeless people? By name? Have you asked them their stories, learned about their lives, expressed even the slightest interest in who they are and how they came to be where they are? You might be surprised at what you learn.


This is beyond politics. You may hate Obama and the "liberal Democrats", you may think the welfare system is broken (it probably is), you may feel overtaxed, but helping the homeless should be of first importance for all of us. Those of different political stripes may disagree on the form that help should take, but there should be no doubt that help should be given, and condescending "morality" tales that simplify this complex problem by blaming the victims and making it into a cheap political caricature show a shallow understanding of homelessness and a sad lack of Christian charity.