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Every time a homeless person asks a person of privilege like me for help of some kind, I am given a choice. I can affirm his human dignity, his identity as a person created in the image of God; I can assume the best of her; I can think that she is being honest, that I can really help her in some way. Or — I can reject our kinship; I can think what exploitative society wants me to think and look down on her; I can assume that she will spend my money on drugs or alcohol; I can decide to believe he’s trying to con me.
I am given a choice: to assume the best or to assume the worst.
American culture tells us to assume the worst: that “they” just want money to feed addictions that are their own fault; that they are trying to trick us into giving them stuff, when really it’s just useless and we should walk brusqely onwards; that they should have just worked harder and I’ll encourage their laziness by trying to “help”.
What kind of broken world do we live in? What kind of evil has seeped into our society when our gut reaction is to assume the worst about the poor and the marginalized? This was not the attitude of Jesus — Jesus was himself poor and marginalized for much of his life. Jesus always looked for the best in the lowly, and he always found it. We should do no less.
I refuse to live in a world that always assumes the worst and stereotypes the humblest and most disadvantaged. I cannot live my life that way. This may mean that I will in fact be conned eventually, that every once in a while my money may indeed be used for drugs or alcohol. But I cannot live in constant fear of the worst outcomes; rather, I must live in constant hope of the work of God in the world around me, most especially in the marginalized.
As Christians, we are called not to live fearful of destruction, but to live hopeful of transformation.
