I sometimes give money to bums

I sometimes give money to bums April 28, 2016

homeless

Sometimes we do things on the basis of an intuition and only later are we able to verbalize what that intuition was, and why we felt compelled to obey it.

When I was about 19, in my second year of college, I had one such experience. I found myself living in an apartment in Wichita, Kansas. Near my apartment was a video store where I worked part-time in order to afford my liquor, which, because I was a bona fide alcoholic, required a substantial sum of money.

One day, walking out of the video store, a man pulled up in this junk-heap of a pickup and called me over. He looked scared, or at least that’s how he struck me at first. His family, explained, was stranded out on the highway in a separate vehicle. They were driving through town on their way to somewhere, and had blown a tire.

He told me how there was a highway patrolmen waiting with the stranded car, and that the officer was threatening to tow the vehicle if the family didn’t come up with some cash right quick to have the tire repaired. He was broke, of course, and so he was driving around looking desperately for a few bucks.

I was from a small town and I had never really had a stranger just walk up and ask me for money, so naturally I gave him $20. I had it right there in my wallet, after all.

He drove away and that was that. I still had more than enough to meet the demands of my habit.

A few days passed, and again I was finishing a shift at the video store. Again, I walked out the door and the same guy in the same pickup, motioning for my attention. I think: “What a nice guy. He wants to pay me back.” I went over to greet him.

To my dismay, he delivers the exact same story he delivered last time, and asked for a ten-spot. He obviously had no idea whatsoever that this was a repeat conversation with the same pushover kid he had conned last week.

So this time I knew full-well what was happening, and knowing this, I began to look the guy over. He was ragged, and still had a convincing look of desperation about him. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair greasy. He smelled bad, or at least his cab emitted and unpleasant odor. When he spoke he stuttered and sputtered and repeated himself. He shook when he motioned.

In short: he was “on something,” or else needed to be on something soon in order to fight off the withdrawals he was experiencing.

Thus, I did the only thing that made sense: I took out my wallet and gave him another $20.

Of course, I hadn’t really had time to think, and so I did my thinking after the fact, while I was walking home. I was a bit confused, because according to everything I’d ever been taught—according to the only “code” of right and wrong I had been exposed to all my life—it was wrong to give him that money.

And I don’t just mean that it was unnecessary or unwise—I mean that, according to the morality I was most familiar with, I had just committed a flagrant act of irresponsibility.

He was a druggy, was he not? He had lied to my face as well. I had not only rewarded his lies but had probably also paid for his next hit of whatever. If he was unemployed, then perhaps I was also enabling his unemployment. Heck, the guy even had a truck…and gas! So he was driving around, using gas, pulling up to people and asking for money. Ridiculous behavior.

Yet—and this is the point of the story—at that moment I had acted on the basis of one of those irresistible intuitions that don’t make rational sense. Only this last week, as I’ve been thinking more and more about Francis’s “Year of Mercy” thing, did I remember this moment. I remembered exactly how it felt—and this time I was able to understand it.

I was, as I already said, an alcoholic. There was an ugliness about the world as I knew it then that oppressed me every hour of every day and which had convinced me that the world was insane and that I was impotent to do anything about it; that people were cruel and shallow, that work, which I was doomed to for most of the day every day for my adult life, was stupefying and mindless, that life in general was meaningless, and that this was all simply something to endure.

So I endured it, with the help of a steady flow of booze.

Taking that into account, there I was, confronted with a man who was, in all honesty, much like myself. He was existentially and socially lost, clearly; so was I. He was jonesing for some substance to dull the pain; so was I. He was broke; so was I, for the most part. In short, he was a bum; and so was I.

As Christians we talk about how you have to see yourself in your neighbor in order to appreciate their struggles and, as a result, to love them more deeply. The tough part of that is that, if you are me, your neighbor has to be a real deadbeat before you start to see your reflection in him.

So when I found myself face-to-face with this guy, I felt a moment of empathy. That’s part of the explanation. But that’s not the real reason I gave him the money, against all the programming that I’d received.

The real reason I gave him the money was because the law of the world, which I perceived as cruel, and which had rendered me impotent in all respects, told me not to—that I should not, no matter what he said, give him my money. And I realized that in that moment, I could tell that this omnipresent and oppressive law to go to hell. And, through my action at that moment, hell is where I sent it.

My intuition, in obedience of which I was able to confidently hand my money off to a liar and a bum, was the realization that I was not, after all, completely impotent against evil and that I did have the power to defy it in a way other than constant intoxication. Of course, I didn’t see it in this way for many years.

Two more times that I can remember, this man in the pickup approached me, and one of those times I again gave him money. The other time I was as penniless as he was and couldn’t do anything about it.

Now, if you think the point of this story is that everyone should give everyone money every time they ask for it, as a general rule, then you’ve missed it completely. That’s probably my fault, and I’m sorry. The real point has nothing to do with general rules. In fact, to hell with the “categorical imperative.” That’s the point.

What I’m dealing with here, albeit in my own weird, rambling way, is mercy, and what it means to experience mercy and to show mercy.

Mercy is power, and it is empowering. That’s why you hear about traditional societies viewing benevolence and gratuitous gifting as the most “manly” and noble of acts. The generous chief or king gives to strangers for no real reason. Just like Abraham, he showers blessings on people to whom he owes nothing just because he can. That’s Godlike—to bless not because you must but because you can and you want to.

Of course, generosity is not the same thing as mercy, but they are related, and acts of mercy are often acts of generosity, and the merciful man is also generous.

That’s lesson #1.

Lesson #2 is that the general rules I keep talking about—the ones I was so painfully familiar with and which I revolted against when I gave away my cash to a liar—are lies. They are lies, plain and simple, and you realize that when you are confronted with the bum and you see that you too are a bum. Even now, while I’m sober, I still see myself in the deadbeat.

Nothing can convince me that I am not also capable of doing what the crazy homeless guy on TV does. I know too well of what I am capable.

If you read this story and thought: “What an idiot. If people like you didn’t give bums money, there’d be fewer bums,” then let me explain something to you:

Your guiding principle—the principle of “tough love,” or whatever you want to call it—says that if we’d just let the deadbeats go hungry then they’d get a job and everything would be alright. In short, we could starve people into being functional members of society. But that’s not how it works in reality. They are already starving. They are starving themselves. They starve themselves to death. They don’t need your help, although they are certainly getting it. And it is driving them into the grave.

The man I gave that money to is probably dead. He was clearly headed that direction. So you’ve gotten your wish, although not as you meant it. There are fewer bums. Bums are dropping off all the time.

Do me one favor: Take your principles and apply them to yourself. If what you have to say about us bums does not in some way also apply to you, then you’re wrong and you know nothing about these neighbors of yours. And if you do not know them then you cannot show them love—not “tough love” or any other kind of love.

You speak as if men who do not work, men who beg, men who lie, are doing these things simply because they can, and if their lives were harder then they’d conform to your expectations.

Well, is this how you see yourself? Do you only tell the truth because lying has been made difficult? If you could, would you sit on the couch all day? Is threat of starvation the only thing that makes you behave like a healthy member of society?

I bet not. So what makes you so different? Why don’t your generalizations apply to you? The answer, of course, is that on some level you have learned to associate wealth with virtue, and you imagine that because these people do not have wealth, and you do, that it is safe to attribute vices to them which you do not have to attribute to yourself. Think on that.

Anyway, I sometimes give money to bums not because I am assured that they’re going to use it to buy some slacks and get a job. I give them money because I know that I am much like them, and if I ever behaved in the way they are behaving, it would be because I was going through hell. Thus, I can only assume that they are also going through a hell. If I can offer something to this tortured, humiliated, quite-possibly-dying-no-matter-what-I-do, shell of a man, then I will. And I did.

 

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons


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