When I talk to professionals in the field working for charities and social work organizations, and when I read the experts, I find a concerted push to get to the root causes of homelessness and to address the issue with comprehensive approaches that tend to be complex. “Poverty” itself undergoes redefinition. In addressing root causes “effectively” efforts are made to shore up deficits in sobriety, in education, in job training, in anger management, in housing opportunities, in “awareness”, and perhaps a dozen other aspects of the intractable problem.
However, I suggest that the one universal thing missing in the life of every homeless person is LOVE.
Having a HOME is all about sharing LOVE. It’s not really at root about personal responsibility, about holding down a job, about education, sobriety, affordable housing or any of that stuff – important though any of it may be. On the contrary, it is about sharing LOVE with others and living in a network of caring people where human beings are infinitely and innately valuable beyond measure to one another. Where anonymity is nonexistent. Where money is not as valuable as people to the hearts of those sharing in the community.
As insightful as a program can be, it cannot be anything more than a noisy gong without LOVE. Please quote me on that. (St. Paul might almost say that.)
Fat Beggars School of Prophets 
I’ve just read, btw, that some US churches exclude children suffering from ADHD & Autism. What next? Squeaky clean but sterile.
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I thought God asked us to invent Sunday School to avoid exactly this scenario?
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Thanx for reading and for your comment!
Clever.
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Thanx for reading and sharing here!
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Most excellent. It is all about LOVE!
Thanks for the wonderful insight.
Be blessed. God is with you.
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The reason why government can never “solve” poverty or homelessness is because it won’t/can’t look past material needs. It thinks poverty and homelessness is only a material and money problem. It goes way deeper than that. It’s a humanity problem that is messy.
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This phenom you describe is practically BUILT-IN as far as government is concerned. It is amazing how powerful “Housing First” is; I believe because it so nearly imitates LOVE. Of course, it is not actually LOVE. But it comes so much nearer to LOVE than practically any other approach going, and it is powerful.
My concern is that the church is going the way of the government, as you describe it. So sad.
If you have read here much, you know I do not criticize people for giving money directly to the poor. In fact, I am in favor of it. I don’t think it is necessary or sufficient, but, on the contrary, I think an unwillingness to do it is wrong. A fine distinction, but one I make.
So… lets say something about that: I can give a bum $10 and seek different possible goals with it. It kinda depends on how I read the situation and what I am aiming at. Usually, giving $10 has a way of subtly telling the bum that I am a source of income, thus s/he will come again seeking more.
Now… I ask, what is wrong with that?
I might well have bought another chance to “build a relationship”. Forget the booze its used on… Or don’t. Go read Prov. 31! God’s Word tells me to actually give the bum the booze! So this should not inhibit me. But it really could get me more chances to come into ongoing relationship.
However, it CAN have the opposite effect too, and though it also is subtle, it is powerful and I have seen people do it for this purpose. If you give a bum $10, you make them GO AWAY. At least for a few minutes. Sometimes for weeks or months!
Think about it.
Well, actually the same phenom CAN be at work in any method of approach. It gets even more subtle, but it is still there. If you treat a person as a symptom, as a doctor, this is considered poor bed-side manner.
I think my church has embraced this mentality. We think we will make the problem go away, and that is the basis for our approach. And I must admit, making the problem go away comes very near seeming like a godly goal.
However, I think it is a very limited worldview for a church to embrace. Church should be thinking eternally, not about the next decade or century, but about the AGE TO COME. There is a subtle and insidious phenom at work here. We aren’t really into saving souls, we are into rehabilitating the American Dream… of making the problem go away. If these people become self sufficient, then they are not our problem anymore. They effectively GO AWAY.
A lot of fine distinction here, I know, but sorting it out reveals how devastating it is to God’s mission for his creation.
Thanx for the comment.
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Interesting stuff X. I agree with much of what you are saying. And I think there is room for churches to follow, even with a little room for variance. When we give a hotel room, or food, or help someone with a bill, we are thinking about how we help make the problem go away, but do not personalize the problem on the person. They have a challenge and we have resources. How are we called to make the problem go away, while embracing the person, showing them the love of Christ, and proclaiming Good News to them, the poor. There are many at the church that welcome these people in, warmly. There are others who see the person as a problem. And well, the only thing I can say is that is there problem, not the person we are welcoming in.
I love the housing first approach, and it is something we are looking at implementing with a group of disciples as we tackle the challenges of homelessness here.
Keep up the good work.
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Thanx Matthew,
I hope I said something meaningful here. It’s a comment on a blog post, so I doubt with my limitations that I will say it in definitive terms that settles it. But if I illuminate the issue enough for you and others to think it through, that will be a success, I think. Because I sense the pendulum swinging even in my own remarks as it tries to hit the target somewhere between the extremes.
I am sitting with Michael Wilson’s words currently trying to decide if they adequately capture the idea.
He says its not our job to FIX the problem or to FIX these people. The moment we get that idea, we become engineers and not so much friends. But we are called to LOVE, and really down at root, I think we know when we are loving and when we are being loved and when we are not. Engineering becomes manipulation almost right out of the gate.
This is why I spend so much energy talking about PARTY with Jesus. I am not at all against offering food, water, shelter and all that. In fact Jesus says as much. But when I party with someone, I celebrate them, and Jesus in them, and where there is lack, need, it seems to get filled almost automatically due to the party.
But more of that as we go…
For now, I gotta run.
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Well, you see this idea of love is great and all. But we’ve discovered that you can give homeless or other people not like us, an almost exact imitation of love, without any of that icky yucky self-sacrifice that usually comes as a requirement for actual love.
We call this love imitation – love, just to confuse everyone. So when we say love, we mean something different. And now that we can love without getting our hands dirty, we can give even more love. And if it doesn’t seem to be working, we just call for more love.
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I like your comment. I think I get your point, and if I in fact do, I think it is a good one.
I expect it needs a different word for “Love”. One of these LOVEs is divine; the other is demonic. A parody parading as love, but its not. And pointing out that it is so 666 instead of 777 is important, but I THINK we need to name it a demon name instead of letting it have the divine name.
Dirty hands…
That concept seems to be a distinguishing characteristic, alright.
Thanx for the input!
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btw, I failed to address my last comment to mbolstergmailcom, but it is meant to be addressed there.
also..
see my next/subsequent post about Care? Or not….?
I sense my blog is largely redundant except that I find new ways of repackaging the same thought(s) over and over a lot of the time.
Seems to work for blogging….
again, thanx for the input
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Reblogged this on Loiter Larry and commented:
X said to quote him, and I think this quote sums it up well – The one universal thing missing in the life of every homeless person is LOVE.
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Nice work you do here. Looking forward to connecting with you.
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