World Magazine's latest issue has a series this week about life in the city, and one particularly interesting part to me was about the homeless; many cities are more or less "banning" homelessness by prohibiting panhandling, sleeping in public, and so on.
On one hand, I can understand what's going on; one of the best ways to kill a retail district is to spread a few panhandlers around, and people will immediately assume it's no longer safe. That said, banning begging doesn't seem consistent with how Christ and the apostles treated the poor.
I think it also misses the basic reality of today's homelessness; thousands of men who are today homeless would have been quickly hired as day laborers in Bible times, or even just a century ago. Moreover, until the past couple of centuries, large quantities of cheap liquor were not readily available.
And so I think that we really ought to re-consider how our ancestors treated the homeless. They'd take care of the truly disabled, and offer work to the able-bodied. If an able-bodied man wouldn't work, they'd let him go hungry until he would.
In addition, our ancestors were also willing to cut off the flow of cheap liquor, knowing that it's a great way to make an able-bodied man disabled. Perhaps shutting off the supply of 40 ounce bottles of beer and "Uncle Jack's fortified Prune Wine" would do more than 1000 other programs intended for the homeless?
On another note, World's review of "300" has a note that it has "gratuitous" violence. I'm personally puzzled about how a movie about a battle that claimed the lives of over 5000 men can be said to have "gratuitous" violence. Exactly what else is hand to hand combat supposed to be if not violent?
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7 comments:
When cities declare war on the homeless with excessive laws directed at the homeless, they are just trying to push the problems related to homelessness into someone elses backyard. This solves nothing, but continues to keep people homeless who truely need a helping hand. There is no pat answer to solving the problem, but I suggest helping one homeless person at a time is a good start in the right direction.
Homelessness is a tough issue to deal w/. On one hand, we are not doing enough to help them but on the other hand some of them decide to be homeless. A friend of mine volunteers there to feed them and he says some of them are not even thankful but told my friend he should serve them more. Then there are those who want to get out of it but can't because no one would hire them since there's not a permanent address and no references.
In regards to 300, it seems like that's how the general Americans are not, look at the war in Iraq, we don't have the stomach for it. Any death is not good but can we expect no casualty going into war? After 3K deaths and however many wounded, that's not a lot when we have over 150k troops there. That's less then 1%. Yes, we've become the 'paper tiger'.
Homeless, I'd love to hear your take on my thoughts if you'd be so kind; what about cracking down on cheap liquor and insisting that the able-bodied do some work for their food & shelter? It seems that merely handing things out deepens the problem by training people not to work.
A question on the other note, did World not mention that there was sex and nudity?
They mentioned that, actually. I just thought it was funny that they talked about violence being somehow "gratuitous" in a movie about a battle in which 5000 or so men were slaughtered in hand to hand combat.
Mebbe I should send them a note suggesting that when a movie is "rated R for violence and sexual images," maybe, just maybe, that means that Christians have something better to do with their time.
so, xians cant see r movies?
I wouldn't go that far, but I would think that Christians should have a very strong reservation about spending two hours watching the killing and dismemberment of their fellow human beings, if (thankfully) only virtual.
To put things differently, it requires some "getting used to" to go to sleep after watching--even "just on TV"--the murder or rape of a fellow human being. Do you think that God is glorified when we "get used to" this?
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