Give to Beggars

His name was Sandy.  He was a beggar on the South Side of Edinburgh, where I would often travel to take my math courses at the University when I was abroad.  Winters were bitter, so he always had the same red and green coat on, a funky woolen hat, and a crooked, toothless smile.

I would pass by him nearly every day, and I would have never given him notice except for the science fiction book that he carried around with him.  Finally, I asked him what he was reading.  I don’t really remember the title, but it was thick.  He was remarkably literate for a homeless guy.  I thought about giving him my book, Trisk.  (Kidding.  Kidding!)  Then I gave him 2 pounds and went to school.

The next week, I passed by him again.  It was a really cold day, and Sandy was buried in blankets.  There was a nearby Tesco grocery store, so I peeked in.  I got myself a cheesy breadstick and got him the same thing.  He was grateful.  I continued on.

The next week I asked him if he believed in Jesus.  Sandy said he didn’t really pay much attention to religion.  I told him I was praying for him, and I gave him a book: “What Is the Gospel?” that I bought from my church for 1 pound.  He accepted it, albeit grudgingly.  I don’t really know what he did with it, but I don’t have any regrets about giving it to him.

One night, I was walking home.  It was dark, but he was still wrapped up next to that Tesco.  Normally Sandy wasn’t out so late (he had a charity hostel he stayed in most nights).  I was concerned, so I asked him if anything was up.  Turns out, there was something up – big time.  Immediately he started to cry.  I knelt down on the snowy ground.

“Sandy, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know man, I don’t know if I can do it, man, I just don’t know.”  His voice was trembling with fear.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

He was about to get evicted.  He told me that if he didn’t come up with 25 more pounds that night, he would not even be able to stay in his subsidized hostel for another night.  They would kick him to the curb and he would have to sleep outside in the freezing cold.

[image error] A homeless person in Edinburgh. Credit: The Independent UK

“Hey, it’s going to be all right.”

“How?  How is it going to be all right?”  His tears were free flowing now.  His voice filled with desperation.  This was a man who did not know where he was going to sleep that night.  Inwardly, I prayed.  God, give me the courage-

“It’s going to be fine, Sandy,” I said to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.  “It’s going to be fine because I’ll give you the money.  I’ll give you the money.”  And I reached into my wallet and pulled out 25 pounds and put them in his mitt.

He turned to me, wide-eyed.  “Oh, sir, thank you, thank you!” he exclaimed, reaching to shake my hand.  My hand was driven into his for a full ten second.  “You don’t understand how much this makes me happy.”

“Sandy,” I said, wearily, calmly, “do you have a job?”

“No,” Sandy said, still elated.

“Sandy, I want to help you out.  I believe in you, Sandy.  I want you to find a job.  Did you apply to be like a cashier at the Tesco, or something?”

“Oh, I would love to, I would love to, but they won’t, they won’t let me work without a proof of residence.”

“What?!”  I was completely indignant.

“Yeah, like an address?  You need an address to work here.  And I don’t have a permanent address.”

My hatred of useless, big government regulations grew stronger.  But I tempered my ideological frustration and took a deep breath.  “I know a place that can help you,” I said, drawing off knowledge of a recent tour I took of Edinburgh’s charity network.  I told him of a place I remembered called Invisible Cities.  They hired homeless people to give tours of the city to tourist groups.  Evidently, they paid these people a stable wage and put them to work.  It aligned with my ideological convictions and I thought it would help Sandy out, as he claimed that he was a denizen of Edinburgh ever since he was a kid.

Sandy seemed very eager to connect with this organization.  I gave him the number of the Invisible Cities manager and told him I would check on him later to see If he got the job.  (He maintained a cell phone.)  I told him I’d be happy to give a reference.

“Thank you sir, oh thank you sir,” he said to me, beaming.

“Sandy, I want you to know that I want to see you off this street.  I would love to see you get a job,” I told him, at which he smiled his funny toothless smile and said he desired the same thing.   Weary from the whole interaction, I took my backpack and made to go.  Then, before I left, I turned back to him and said: “Sandy, I’m praying for you.”

The next Thursday, I came up to him again.  I asked him if he called the number I gave him.  He said he hadn’t, but that he’d get to it.  I thought this was funny.  Surely a desperate homeless person would jump at the chance to get a job?  I encouraged him to call.  “I believe in you,” I said once again.  Then I left.

I never saw him again.

***

There’s a lot of things you can take from my month-long interaction with Sandy the beggar.  I don’t know if I changed him.  In the end, only God can truly change the heart of an embittered 50-year old who lived most of his life on the street.  As you read, you can bet I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him in terms of trying to convince him to follow Jesus, to get up out of his blanket and get a move on with his life.  Some of you may recoil at some of the things I said to him, thinking them too much, too direct, and too not-politically correct.  I would only ask you, if you are this person: would 25 pounds save his life?  What was more important to share, some bills or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which affects his eternal salvation?  Or at least, if you are a secular person, the job assistance?

Here’s another non-PC thing to say: you are morally obligated to give something to beggars who ask for it.  This might come on strong.  This might inspire the typical accusation: “Well Kenny, have you ever denied a beggar assistance?”  (said often in a smug, condescending voice.)  In which I would say, “of course.”  I was a total hypocrite with regards to this rule.  Partially because I was levelling the typical defenses against this uncomfortable moral statement: “they don’t deserve it.”  “They’ll spend it on drugs and alcohol.”  “I need this money.”  But yes, I was a hypocrite.  Everyone is and has been.

But I made a resolution this July to always give something – money, food, time – to a beggar who asks for it.  And I hope everyone reading this will do the same.

I am not saying this with any disclaimers.  No easy way outs: “if you can afford it.”  “Unless you don’t feel like it.” “Not if he’s fat, he’ll just spend it on getting fatter.”  It’s very simple.  Let me say it.  You should give to every beggar who asks for it.

The reasoning is very simple, and it’s very ideological: it’s the Christian thing to do.

For atheist non-givers, I will lay out a different case.  But I think for Christians, this rule is even more obvious, and therefore even more embarrassing that Christians don’t make more of an effort to apply this behavior to their lives.  (This applies to myself as well.)  Jesus very specifically says this: “Whatever you do for the least of these [people], you do for me.”  He is saying: how you treat the poor is reflective of how you treat Jesus.  If you are stingy with your wealth, then you are stingy with Jesus.  If you are judgmental to the poor, then you are Caiaphas nailing Jesus on the cross.

Christians are expected to model Christ-like behavior.  This means, by the way, taking care of the lepers, as Jesus did.  While we aren’t gifted with miracle healing, we are gifted with the ability to work miracles through simple acts of kindness – imagine the craziness of God putting me right in that situation with Sandy in his time of greatest need.  God was giving me a make-or-break opportunity there, a place to where my faith was tested, and I had to perform.  Sandy was an angel in disguise, and I performed.  But there have been many cases where I might have been walking right past angels, and failed miserably. For those failures I publicly repent.  I want you, the reader (yes, you), to keep me accountable for the next time I encounter a beggar, that I may reach into my wallet, and be generous with my money and my time.

Furthermore, all our wealth is given to us by God, and therefore we have no moral claim to it in the first place.   We are stewards of God’s wealth, nothing more.  Discerning Christians will surely remember the parable of the miserly servant, who was forgiven in his debt to the master but then lashed out angrily at someone who owed him a much more meager debt.  When the master found out, he became so angry at the servant that he kicked him out of his house to starve.  So it is with us.  In a remarkable act of generosity, God has forgiven us of all our sins.  If we fail to be generous to those in positions lower than us, we deny gratitude for the gift God has given us.  We deserve Hell for that.

So I say to you, especially as a Christian, what excuse do you have?  Will you hold on so tightly to your one or two dollars that you model Satan rather than Christ to someone who needs a light in their world?  Remember: every act of generosity is an opportunity for witnessing.  Even something as simple as a “God bless you” after your gift of one or two dollars will let that beggar know that you are a Christian, and are giving from the kindness which God has provided you.  Giving is ministry.  Christians must unite in action more than verbal assent to model Christ to the communities that need him the most.

Does this seem uncomfortable to you?  Why?  Why should it?

At my donor relations internship with The Heritage Foundation, I had the opportunity to connect with some of the most fantastically wealthy people I’ve every met.  These people are multimillionaires; they own houses on Palm Beach and Greenwich; they own business you’ve probably heard of.  These people are also extraordinarily generous.  These people donate to Heritage, and then they turn around and write a fat check to the Boys and Girls Club of whatever city they’re from.  I saw one donor donate nearly a million dollars to the lifesaving work of the Mayo Clinic.  These people don’t view giving as a burden, but as a joy.  Some of them plan to empty out their entire life savings to charity.  They are motivated by God and by love for others.  Giving to beggars is just the start, my friends.  Giving is a habit.  Let’s not wait until we are their age to cultivate these same habits.

But Kenny, we’re not rich like them.  Bull crap.  John D. Rockefeller donated 10 percent of his income to his church from the moment he earned his first paycheck, which was around 10 bucks a week or something like that.  Don’t be a coward.  Be like John D. Rockefeller.

This doesn’t sound very conservative of you, Kenny.  Actually, it sounds very conservative.  See the opportunity I had with Sandy?  In giving to him, I got the opportunity to influence the direction of his life.  I got the opportunity to share with him a way forward that involved dignified work and becoming a professional.  If conservatives and libertarians truly believe that more money and power should be given back to the people (as I do), then should wholeheartedly support the idea that said people should be able to have the guts to take care of the poor on their own.

Conservatism has never been about making dumb judgments upon poor people.  Conservatives firmly believe that big government does not, in the long run, help poor people.  The welfare state is a disaster that keeps entire disadvantaged groups in a cycle of poverty that perpetuates itself generation after generation.  To help these people break the circle requires more than our taxes – it requires individual effort, action taken by our civil society to help the lowest in our community.  In a way, I’m exhorting you conservatives to be more… conservative.

There’s room for libertarians in this party, too.  Famous libertarian theorist Robert Nozick that we must protect the right to give as well as the right to be given.  I would go one step further and say that the right to give is one of the most fundamental rights we have – and that we should hold this right as a responsibility for all people.  Not only is giving our right, but we must protect the sweetness and robustness of this right by being generous with our giving decisions.  A land full of Ebenezer Scrooges is not a land where this right to give is valued nor likely to be accepted.

Unfortunately, liberals must think about a couple of things before they can be invited to this ideological pow-wow.  Liberals should really think about how the expansion of their government (and a loss of Christian sentiment among the public) has contributed to a decline in personal philanthropy since the 1950s, without very much correspondent progress of the fortunes of the lower classes.  Or how liberals tend to give less than conservatives, despite making more than them.  Nevertheless, I’m only going to spend one paragraph making fun of my liberal friends.  Because liberals and conservatives alike raise one particular honest concern about giving:

But are we really helping them?  Or are we enabling their degenerate behaviors?  Perhaps.  Is all I can say.  I can’t tell you whether Sandy was telling the truth when he begged me for the money that one fateful night.  He might have been acting.  In fact, there were signs to suggest he might have been lying.  At first he said 20 pounds.  I gave him 25, asking if it was 20 or 25 pounds for his expenses.  He said 20, then stopped and said “actually, I think it was 25.  Yes, it was 25.”  He might have been actually lying about his living situation.  Unlikely, but a possibility (he seemed very sincere otherwise.).

But does it really matter?  Sure, they might use your money to buy drugs and alcohol.  At worst he continues with his degenerate behavior with our money, in which case we didn’t do anything wrong – he was going to do it anyway.  But there are so many better situations to this: we could save someone from eviction.  We could give that person hope for a next meal or two.  We should share with someone the Gospel!  Why is only the worst-case situation, a situation in which we have no moral fault in, the only one ever considered?  Why not see that in giving something to a beggar, we have the potential to give that person love and hope for the future?

[image error] Homeless people at Union Station. Credit: Alamy stock photo

My internship at the Heritage Foundation was right next to Union Station.  At Union Station, all forms of homeless people congregate – slackers, addicts, the mentally ill, strange people.  Some people arrive at Union Station with decision that were their own faults, and some don’t.  Is it my place to judge?  Or is it my place to lend and extend a hand to these people, without inquiring whether they are worthy or not?

One thing is for certain: the look on one of those homeless people, when you give them a couple dollars, spare change to you, is a look to be treasured.  In that moment, you are their hero.  In that moment, you could have been anyone – a degenerate like them, which we all are as well, just more socially settled – a porn addict, a stoner, a woman obsessed with her career, a man obsessed with his sports team – but in that moment we are their hero.  They don’t judge us, but rather look upon us as beings worthy of finest praise.  Why don’t we look upon them the same?