Taking It to the Streets

I swallowed hard, refusing the urge to vomit. Four people toting Bibles had just exited the sandwich shop, tossing the remains of their lunches into the trash. They didn’t acknowledge my friend, Sam, or me as we sat in a corner of the shop, reeking of sweat and life on the streets. But I followed them out to hunt for their leftovers. Never mind the flies, never mind the smell of refuse. I was hungry, and there was food in that can.

I had become homeless.

How I Got There

The idea occurred to me during a Sunday sermon. I saw a huge disconnect between what I said I believed was important (loving God, loving others, serving people …) and how I actually lived (focused mostly on myself, too impatient to care, too judgmental to serve …).

I wondered what it would be like to live on the streets, stripped of everything that made up my life at that point: school, friends, car, cell phone, job, laptop, clothes, comfort. What would happen? Could I really trust God to protect and watch over me?

I soon found out. My friend, Sam, and I chose to become homeless on the streets of six different American cities: Denver; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Phoenix; and San Diego. For six months, we panhandled to survive, slept under bridges, ate out of trash cans, and simply experienced life at the bottom.

There are some things you can’t truly understand until you experience them for yourself. While on the streets, we learned what it feels like to be treated as less than human. Sam and I watched countless people pass us by, refusing even to acknowledge us, pretending we didn’t exist. Churches kicked us off their property. Women grabbed their children’s hands as they hurried past us. Most wouldn’t even look us in the eyes. Because of our appearance, we were labeled and avoided.

The ironic thing is that while we were rejected from “normal” society because of what we looked like, we met countless men and women on the streets who welcomed us into their communities for the same reason. We seemed dirty, tired, and outcast - just like they did.

More Than a Quick Fix

Prior to this journey, poverty had seemed simple to me. Homeless people had only themselves to blame for their life on the streets. They had chosen such a life, so I felt no responsibility to do anything to help them. They just needed to make better choices. I went into this experience thinking there had to be an easy solution to the whole problem of homelessness—a way to fix it.

But the stories of people I met who were broken and entrenched in horribly complex and multi-generational problems shredded my simplistic notion. The reality is this: There is no one-size-fits-all cause or fix for homelessness.

Pamela, who lived on the streets of D.C. and had been homeless for nearly 20 years, was severely mentally disabled and didn’t know what day it was when we met her. Bill was abused as a child and now refused to trust anyone. Mary’s mother was an alcoholic, and now Mary drinks heavily. Pete’s brother got him hooked on crack at a young age. Joe was evicted from his apartment after he lost his job. Jennifer never finished high school. Howard is schizophrenic. Jose and Gina were married, had a young daughter, and were caught on the streets because their funds had run out before they found employment. A rough divorce led Bill to drink, and now he’s too drunk to even think about getting a job. Rings lives on the streets of San Diego and uses what little income he finds to help feed other homeless people in the name of Christ.

After meeting these men and women, homelessness no longer seemed a simple matter of choice.

One day, as I was wondering how I could “fix” the situation of a man I knew who chose to drown the sorrow of his wife’s death in alcohol, I remembered something that Jesus said: “You will always have the poor among you” (John 12:8, NIV). That’s when it hit me: If ever there was a person on this earth who could have ended poverty, it was Jesus. But He didn’t. By saying those words, Jesus framed His expectations and our purpose: We’re to serve, not solve.

Simple Service

Not solve? That’s right. Just serve.

But the problem is so huge, you may think. What does “serving” even look like?

We start small: Something as simple as eye contact can help improve someone’s day.

But what if they ask for money? Cash is not the only form of compassion. In fact, I don’t recommend giving cash to panhandlers because we saw so much of it go straight to feed drug and alcohol addictions. But we can buy gift certificates to local restaurants, fast-food places, and coffee shops and keep them in the glove box of our cars.

Or we can buy food to hand out. Last June, I found myself with a few extra hours in downtown Portland. I stopped at a burrito shop, bought 10 burritos, and spent the next few hours walking around and handing them out to homeless guys.

I sat down next to one person as he ate. We talked about the weather, the panhandling routes, and a recent baseball game. Halfway through the conversation, the man stopped chewing and looked at me with tears in his eyes. “You’ve changed my whole week, man. Do you know that? This is the first conversation I’ve had in a week.”

Befriending a man with a burrito and having a five-minute conversation had changed his week? Wow. Simple things do mean a lot when you aren’t often treated like a human being.

Love in Action

We don’t all need to go live on the streets or spend the next 40 years working in a rescue mission. But the point is that love is a command. John further explained that we’re to “not love in word or speech, but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18). This life in and of Christ is about more than just belonging to the right church or intellectually ascribing to a set of Christian doctrines. Life in Christ is about letting Him live through us and intentionally loving people in such a powerful, obvious way that others can’t help but know we’re Jesus’ followers.