Day 1144 - Blind Guides

Some of my earlier posts sought to fathom the fine line that can separate activism from true compassion. A recent local event reprises this issue. Some will read these words and conclude I am judging people. I am not. I am asking the reader to consider whether they are a blind guide or being led by a blind guide.

 A local man here in Chattanooga is confined to a wheelchair and spends much of his time begging for money, often in front of performance venues. The Chattanooga city police arrested him for “aggressive panhandling.” 

This is not a neat, cut-and-dry case. This is not the first time this person has been involved in alleged criminal activity. But... that is what makes this case salient and refractory.

A local TV news cast states the man has an “extensive criminal background.” (Of course if you are an African-American living in an urban ghetto, chances are you have an extensive record.) According to another TV news report, the police report states the Chattanooga Visitors Bureau calls this beggar “the number one problem downtown.”(The CEO of the bureau denies this statement.)

An activist group called Mercy Junction (whose success I hope for highly) objects rightly to the treatment of this man. A Mercy Junction spokesperson claims “poverty is the problem in Chattanooga, not panhandlers.” She demands the panhandler be released from jail and offers some very generalized criticism against “the powers of the establishment,” (My choice of words because as we all know the state has no power over the spirit.) but does not seem particularly concerned for the person's state of life.

Another spokesperson for Mercy Junction is quoted in the local TV news cast as saying they want to “raise awareness about the treatment of panhandlers and poor and homeless people in the tourist district.”

I wonder if every party involved in this affair has turned the world turned upside down? Have they all become blind guides?

Certainly the visitor’s bureau's interest is mainly Machiavellian, that is, in clearing the streets with tourist venues of folks they consider “undesirable” in the interest of economic growth. The bureau speaking for the powers of economic growth see arrest and imprisonment as a way to do it. They have fallen fully under the sway of greed and abandoned any sense of Christian value of the impoverished as a person.

The police arrested this fellow under the aegis of a new state law clearly aimed at “cleaning up the streets” of "undesirables." There are gang killings in this community weekly, if not often daily, and overt drug-dealing on the street. There are children with one or no parent whose values are shaped by the crime in the neighborhood. It is a flagrant outrage for the police to devote attention to panhandling rather than to community violence and safety. It shows certainly they have a distorted focus on what law enforcement priorities ought to be and have abandoned any sense of value of the citizen as a person.

The minister and his cohort who are quoted in the news articles run an activist center in one of the more impoverished, drug and gang-infested neighborhoods in town (Highland Park). I know this because I am on those streets in the shadow of that activist center several days a week looking after the interests of one resident or another. I see the burned out and/or condemned houses.  I see the wrecked cars and the houses with folks  just suspiciously milling around coming and going. I see the children wandering around unaccompanied.  I hear the stories of the shootings and killings. Mercy Junction sits in their own land of opportunity, their Galilee, to show Christ's compassion.

For these activists (sic) to see their primary role as wrapping themselves in the mantle of self-proclaimed prophet and being mosquitoes tweaking the powers that be about their commitment to injustice with a blind eye to their neighbors suggests for them talk is far cheaper that the risk of their direct action to uplift people of their neighborhood. 

They come very close to objectifying the people they speak for, turning them into political issues that give them opportunity for publicity. Why do they let this man who worships with them in their own congregation beg rather than give him their money or feed him so he does not have to beg? It seems easier for them to talk about collective guilt and judge others (the way they were judged as youth?) than accepting individual responsibility (and guilt).  Have they too abandoned Christian compassion for the citizen as a person, embracing activism in lieu of personal action to directly help the person in need?

It is easy to point to government and say it should spend more on the poor or change its policies. It is a far more personally expensive and risky to roll up one’s sleeves and jump into its local community creating and conducting direct programs to help people lift themselves out of poverty.

Each of these three organizations seem to pander to its constituency and none of them seem prepared to tackle the real problem, to offer a hand to lift up those who seek a better life, much less commit their own money to it.

Mercy Junction does offer a positive value. It calls attention to injustice that hopefully resonates in some people who ordinarily would just pass by the person “in the ditch.”

But how much more could Mercy Junction do as a worshipping community if it “walked the talk” and practiced a working model showing how every individual can make a difference by committing an intentional personal act to alleviate the poverty of one. What if personally and corporately it practiced real Christian compassion in this case? Assuming the person wants to change, what can Mercy Junction do to help this wheelchair-bound beggar to obtain release from this life of begging by moving into a more productive life focused on helping others?

The ultimate cause for the persistence of poverty is the very thing that afflicts the beggar and the rich, most folks love their money, and those who have a lot of it often love it more than they love those who are in need. The beggar and the rich person love money over spiritual health.They are both impoverished.

This points out the insidious nature and irony of poverty. Poverty is a spiritual condition that afflicts those who thirst for money over grace. Money, fame and publicity are the blind guides of spiritual poverty. Grace is the currency of true value. People who do not feel compassionate obligation to follow the role  of the good Samaritan, to stop and minister to that injured neighbor in the ditch on the side of the road are locked in spiritual poverty. They seem not to get Luke 4:14-21. Such committed action carries more individual and spiritual power than the state can ever muster or prevail against. It changes lives. It breaks the bindings of poverty.

The proper question is not the one I first posed to Mercy Junction, “Why do they let him beg rather than give him their money so he does not have to beg?” Giving money only cements one's stasis in life. The proper question is what are the visitors' bureau, the police and the self-proclaimed prophets doing to change the lives of people such as the wheel-chair-bound beggar so both beggar and helper become productive members of Christian society living their vocation, i.e., their calling?

The visitors bureau and the police are convinced they exist to defend their and the state's self-interest. Compassion does not seem to be part of their equation.  The Mercy Junction spokesperson, an advocate for Christian justice, would do good to realize and proclaim “poverty is NOT the problem in Chattanooga, or any other city. It is the absence of compassion." But then again, what is the lack of compassion but spiritual poverty? And what does spiritual poverty do but suborn injustice?
Amen.