So, today we begin with a bit of old news, but important news. In case you didn’t know, President Xi of China came and had a visit with President Biden at APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. And this event was hosted in San Francisco, which is a fitting location considering the long history of Chinese immigration and the strong Sino-American culture there.
Unfortunately for event planners, San Francisco had an issue which needed to be urgently addressed—homeless people. Homeless people living, doing drugs, copulating, defecating, committing crimes, spreading trash, and disease in their tent-cities, this is not APEC’s idea of America putting its best foot forwards when hosting the President of an aggressive rival superpower.
So, what happened? Were the homeless people forced to either go to jail, where many of them certainly belong, or mental institutions, where many of them certainly belong, or sent to half-way houses and told to find actual housing or go to jail?
No. I mean some were brought into shelters, yes. But most of them were simply moved to another part of the city. Few if any were actually forced to deal with their problems in a way that would lead to their flourishing, or at least would prevent them from being a danger to themselves or others or creating problems for law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.
But here’s the thing that I find most irksome about this whole charade. And there is much that is irksome in this charade.
But the thing that I think is the most disgusting is that the City of San Francisco in its messaging about how they were moving the cattle and their chattels to do devastate a different neighborhood made certain to use the inelegant, obnoxious, pious, unctuous, pseudo-intellectual euphemism “people experiencing homelessness” when referring to the bums. Because that’s how they let us know they care is by using “people-first” language which is one of the most annoying things that people of limited intellect and imagination do is try to enforce non-sensical speech codes.
They call the bums “people experiencing homelessness” and that’s supposed to signal to all of us that they care; they’re correct; they know the latest euphemisms; you should trust them. This people-first language is supposed to demonstrate that they’re compassionate because they are using the right euphemism. But you know what. I don’t think it’s compassionate. I think it’s cruel. And it’s cruel because using the euphemism is the way that the cruel hide their cruelty. It’s a mask of compassion over the true visage of cruelty. And I can’t countenance that.
And you might be thinking, “But Luke, how can using the right euphemism that we made up 5 minutes ago be cruel?”
First, let me clarify gentle listener. I’m not saying that EVERY person who uses such ludicrous and free-speech chilling euphemisms IS cruel or malicious. I’m sure that there are many people who use right-think and speak in double-speak because that’s how they’ve been trained and they believe that this is how they should talk if they really are caring and since they view themselves as caring they follow the speech-codes. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the people who create careers out of managing misery. The city workers who get paid annual salaries to manage the bums without ever finding solutions.
You know the kind of person I’m talking about; I’m talking about the person who gladly will take some social-work job to deal with the homelessness issue, but will fight nail and tooth over any effort to actually solve the problem—like executing warrants, enforcing laws, putting crazy people in asylums, forcing able-bodied people to clean up their drug problems, get jobs, and become useful productive members of society. Because, you see, THAT would be compassionate. Not letting another human being made in the image of God live on the streets addicted to drugs, committing crimes, prostituting themselves, being a degenerate drag on society—that’s compassion! Not letting people become bums is compassion. Calling them bums doesn’t dehumanize them. Their behavior dehumanizes them. Calling them bums reminds us all that living this way is less than what God desires.
But no. No, the special brand of malicious vampires I’m talking about will fight and march and shout from the rooftops about defending these people’s rights to destroy themselves, destroy their communities, tyrannize the law abiding, but they mask their cruelty with a euphemism so we can all know just how wonderful they really are.
Well, I don’t buy it. I say that they’re liars. Real compassion would look at the bums and tell them that they are ruining their lives and if they want help that we’ll get them help but we refuse to let this city be a party to your self-destruction. That’s what real compassion is. That’s what real compassion does. It helps people. Real compassion looks at the bum on the street and remembers that that bum is a man or woman made in the image of God, worthy of dignity and honor. And real compassion remembers that that man or woman made in God’s image and worthy of dignity and honor is doing their level best to hide the imago Dei behind filth, poverty, squandered potential, degeneracy, and degradation.
And that’s tragic. My heart breaks for people who destroy themselves. I have family members who are crazy. And want what’s best for them. I love them. I have compassion. But the reality of mental illness and poor choices is an ugly reality. Poverty is awful. It’s dirty; it’s smelly; it’s disgusting. And I think God has made his universe to operate in such a way that poverty IS unpleasant to be around. I think the stench of poverty and degradation is a gift of God so that we cannot lie to ourselves and think that this is OK. Anyone who’s worked with abused children knows the kinds of smells that come from those bodies. They aren’t good. They aren’t pleasant. They’re not supposed to be. The reality of human degradation is supposed to punch us in the face and spur us on to action to help people get out of it.
Unfortunately, the same sun that melts wax hardens clay. Too many see, hear, and smell true poverty, like in these homeless tent encampments, and they see it for what it is: disgusting. But instead of wanting to help these miserable people made in God’s image they either look down on them and think that they’re better than them and hope to ignore the problem, OR they find a way to make a pretty good salary with benefits and a government pension managing the misery.
But that is not what we’re called to do.
We’re not called to rearrange language to make people think that our cruelty is compassion. Rather we’re called to be compassionate. To actually care about people.
In the book of James we read:
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
2:1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? (NIV)
And, I could go on and just read the whole book of James—indeed I considered it!—but that’s not my point. My point is that while I’m disgusted with the euphemism creep in society,
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I expect that from society. I expect pseudo-intellectuals and secular prudes to perpetuate cruelty against bums while washing their hands of the whole thing by using some special phrases.
Friends, that’s literally how magic works! You say some special words and phrases in the right order at the right time and something that CANNOT be effected by the words IS. That’s magic. We are literally living in a world where the moral logic of our self-styled social betters is to say magic words that take away their guilt. But unlike confessing sin to a party that can absolve you of your guilt, these people rather use their magical words to cast a glamour upon themselves as being caring and compassionate when all the whiles they’re leeching off the poorest and most degraded people in society—they’re using these magic words to not only absolve themselves of guilt but to convince everyone that they, the ones doing the actual harm, are not only not guilty but are actually better than everyone. They put a spell on us, and themselves, to make their cruelty compassion.
And that’s not what bothers me. The magic moralizing of the godless doesn’t disturb me—I expect that. What disconcerts me is that so many Christians have been snookered by these arguments. Many Christians, and I think many if not most, are genuine people who truly want to do good. The problem is that wanting to do good and actually doing good are two very different things and the desire does not necessarily end in the accomplishment.
Many Christians have believed the lie, out of soft hearts, soft heads, or as a stalking horse for sin, that it’s the Christian and godly thing to do to never force a bum off the streets. Indeed, I know I’m being a provocateur. And that’s the point. The point that there are people out there who are more exercised about me calling someone a bum than they are about the bums destroying their lives. There are more people who are more scandalized by me using a term they find offensive than they are offended by bearers of the image of God reduced to living on the streets. There are people who are more bothered by me saying bum than they are about what comes out of the bum’s bum onto the San Francisco sidewalks!
Somehow it’s insensitive to call a bum a bum, but it’s compassionate to the nth degree to fight for the bum’s right to whore herself out for drugs and overdose, it’s compassionate to commit crimes petty and major to avoid responsibility, it’s compassionate to leave the insane living in filth. I know I’m being a provocateur—that’s the point. You probably jumped when you read “whore” too. But the word bothers a lot of people more than the act!
In Tolstoy’s epic tragedy Anna Karenina, Anna is living adulterously with Vronksy and she has been ostracized by Petersburg society. One of the themes that Tolstoy deals with in Anna Karenina is the hypocrisy of the Russian aristocracy. Anna did nothing that many other women did, and they were still received at the best salons and balls, but Anna was persona non grata. One character explains why, saying that they didn’t care that Anna broke the law; it mattered that she broke the rules.
Tolstoy knew, and he was right, that high society has rules. And those rules do not correspond to moral virtue or personal excellence. Rather those rules correspond to SIGNALLING moral virtue and personal excellence. Many of the women who shunned Anna were themselves committing adultery—and getting caught—but they were sinning by the rules.
Brothers and sisters, the world will always come up with ways to sin by the rules. The people our government pays to be merciful, because social workers tasked with caring for the needs of the homeless are literally professional compassionate people, they get paid to be compassionate, these people don’t really have compassion, rather they exercise cruelty and exploit the poor. But they sin by the rules.
This upsets me but doesn’t surprise me. Worldlings will live worldly. But Christians should live godly. We should seek to be genuinely compassionate. And all the more so now around Thanksgiving, a holiday dedicated to thanking God for his kindness and goodness, now is a great time to demonstrate our gratitude with deeds of compassion and mercy for the least of these—not with words, but with deeds. Let’s not feign love as the world does to conceal malice, but let’s love in truth, in Christ.