G-Dog: Christian Love in Action

Homeboy Industries provides the tools needed for hurting young people to heal and to gain their footing. Father Boyle focuses both on the practical skills and services needed to find a job (free tattoo removal, education, employment services, legal services, mental health services, job training, and jobs) and the emotional support needed to help provide healing from very hopeless, difficult life situations. Bonding and love and compassion is central to the work that Homeboy Industries does.

You can’t calm yourself down if you’ve never been soothed.–Father Boyle

Many of the leaders of Homeboy Industries are former gang members themselves. Their experiential knowledge of the tough experiences that many L.A. youth deal with works as a benefit in their outreach.

Most powerful of all, though, is Father Boyle’s complete absence of “white Savior” mode. He said this amazing thing which has continued to stay with me and which is changing my mindset toward the poor and disenfranchised:

It’s about kinship, it’s about somehow seeking after compassion that stands in awe at what the poor have to carry, rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.

Wow. When I heard this, I thought of how often I do the latter instead of the former. I thought of how often I assume that everybody had the same starting point in life. And yet, if you are struggling to survive, suffering abuse and neglect and hunger, living on the edge all the time, without any hope or vision, what would that be like? Wouldn’t you do really desperate things sometimes? Wouldn’t it be hard to think clearly? Wouldn’t it be a wonder that you managed to survive at all?

The idea of kinship with the poor is very central to Father Boyle’s thought. He said this too:

There is no longer “us and them.” Only “us.” The measure of your compassion lies not in your service of those on the margins but in your willingness to see yourself in kinship with them.

So often when we try to help someone, we do it to feel good about ourselves. We do it to emphasize the great distinction between the one we are helping and ourselves in a privileged position. But if we see ourselves in the eyes of the poor and the suffering, if we realize that we share a common humanity and that we are more alike than we are different, if we realize that we are all beautiful and broken at the same time … it changes everything.

I admit that this is a growing edge for me. I’m so grateful for leaders like Father Boyle who are out there showing the way to truly love our neighbor.

You can read more about Homeboy Industries here.

Photo source: IMDB.com

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