“Ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent…For behold, are we not all beggars?” (Mosiah 4 16:19)
Lived Christianity is … difficult. In a multitude of everyday encounters, I either genuinely don’t know, or my natural instinct is not to follow, how Christ would act.
I’ve dubbed these my moral “dilemmas of the day.”
Take yesterday. The poor often congregate near where I work. My office is in a gentrifying area — upscale cafes serving business professionals are popping up next to downtrodden public housing and shelters. Nearly every day, someone asks me for help.
I’m terribly imperfect and inconsistent at actually helping (to say nothing of acknowledging their existence as human beings). But there is one pattern I try to follow. If I’m out grabbing lunch or dinner, and someone asks politely (not by cat-calling) for food (not money), I offer to buy them a meal.
That pattern may itself evince too much judgment for my neighbors. But nonetheless, here’s how it played out yesterday:
I escaped my office, intending to grab a Sweetgreen salad for dinner. As I was approaching the shop, a woman politely asked if I could help get her something to eat.
I hesitated for a second, before remembering I want to accommodate requests like these.
“I’m about to get a salad — do you want a salad?” I asked.
“Oh,” her face fell. “I was hoping for Chipotle tacos.” (There was a Chipotle next door to the Sweetgreen.)
“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to Chipotle, and I don’t have any cash — but I can get you a salad,” I offered again.
“That’s all right,” she declined. “I’ll be ok.”
I bid her a good day and went on to get my salad, then returned to work. But this mini-drama was still nagging at me. Was there a more Christian way I could have acted?
So I posed my moral dilemma to my Facebook friends. And, to my fascination, they split approximately evenly between “offering a salad was itself generous, and exactly right,” and “Jesus would have taken an extra five minutes out of his day to get this woman tacos.”
Especially after hearing the reflections of friends who have been poor, homeless, and hungry, I think the “tacos” have it. As two remarked:
If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? (Luke 11:11)…or if she asks for a taco, will she give her a salad?
Here’s my public commitment to do better. The next time I offer a meal, I’ll do my best to accommodate the specific meal my neighbor requests. Compassion is worth the mild inconvenience.