Walking in the Shoes of Our Maker

Today I had the pleasure of listening to a radio program in which James Dobson interviewed a man who, during his junior/senior years in college, followed a call that the Lord had given him to abandon the trappings of the common Western lifestyle, leave college, and walk the streets of 5 American cities as a homeless man. His parents were opposed to the idea, many of his friends thought he was crazy, and even James Dobson seemed a little taken aback as to why an up-and-coming young man in college would do something so inherently dangerous. I sat with rapt attention as he described an odyssey that took him into the darkest recesses of our society, into the depths of his own soul, and into the face of the cold, stone heart that most Americans (and especially American Christians) have toward the homeless.

As I have been thinking about that radio program, one verse from the Bible in particular comes to mind: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."

Jesus was homeless--and I think that He was trying to tell that young man (and perhaps all of us) that we need to walk as Jesus walked.

I have been on the razor edge of homelessness several times, and I have talked with a lot of homeless men and women, and I am always amazed at the extent to which our society attaches the value of a human being to the size of his or her bank account. The ability to buy food, the ability to have a stable place to stay, the ability to clothe and bathe oneself properly--these are luxuries for over two thirds of the world's population, and yet we in the United States consider anyone who does not have these assets to be offensive or weird (in James Dobson's words, "scary"). However, there is a great deal of freedom in not having access to food, clothing, or shelter in the ways our culture says we should--freedom to walk (literally) in the direction the Lord wants us to walk, freedom to speak openly and honestly about who we are without the threat of losing something dear to us, freedom to develop our spirits the way that most Americans develop their bodies. Perhaps that is why Jesus walked as a homeless man--and why He called His disciples to walk as homeless men (see Matthew 10).

One of the greatest sins that American Christianity has committed in the United States is to turn its back on the homeless, the vulnerable, and the poor. It is amazing to me that my fundamentalist friends and relatives rail bitterly against threats to the institution of marriage, but turn a deaf ear to poor beggars on the street who ask for a dollar in change. Worse, most of these people have freely told others (including me) to do the same, saying things like "He's just going to use it on booze anyway."

Let me tell you something--when Jesus comes in His glory, He's not going to care what theology you have or what political party you support. He's going to ask you a series of very simple questions:

Did you feed me?
Did you give me something to drink?
Did you clothe me?
Did you take me in when I was a stranger?
Did you visit me when I was sick?
Did you come see me when I was in prison?

That homeless person you walked by, knowing he was going to ask you for 50 cents, that person was Jesus--and if that's the only answer you're ever going to give Him, then when that final day comes, you will have failed the only final exam that counts, and Jesus will tell you, "Depart from me, accursed one, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

Maybe I'm being a little rough here, but let me tell you, I am sick and tired of a twisted, hypocritical church that gets all fired up about issues like the Defense of Marriage Act but does not lift a finger to support America's poor. And I am even more sick of the line I keep hearing from supposedly Christian politicians, "The government shouldn't be doing what the church should be doing," a line I hear whenever someone in government talks about making a serious effort to rid our country of poverty and joblessness. Ladies and gentlemen, the reason the government has to spend all of this money to help out people who are poor and vulnerable is because the church WON'T. If you people out there who icily brush past the poor and downtrodden on your city streets on your way from Sunday services would dare to OPEN YOUR HEARTS, maybe our elections every 4 years would be about something a little more substantial than taxes and the national debt. As far as I'm concerned, if you do not open your hearts, your arms, and (yes) even your homes to the lost and broken in our communities, then you have NO RIGHT to call yourself a Christian.

Ladies and gentlemen, people who claim to believe in Jesus Christ in our country need to WAKE UP and practice what they preach. If you talk about love, you'd better be willing to show it. If you talk about reaching the lost, you'd better be willing to DO it, even if it means walking straight out of your comfort zone and into a world of hurt. My God, there are people across half our planet who are DYING IN DROVES for Jesus, and you can't even fork up a measley 50 cents for a poor beggar on the street? What's with you? Where's your compasson? More importantly, where's your soul?

Believers in Christ need to WAKE UP and REPENT for their wickedness, their sinfulness, and their base evil in pushing away the very people that the Lord promises--in both the Old Testament AND the New Testament--to AVENGE. All this wealth that the church has accumulated in America has gotten to our heads, and we need to get a reality check.

Jesus is coming.

It's time for us to stand up and be the people He called us to be, and stop walking in the cold, heartless ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil.