Enabling Dependence vs. Enabling Hardness of Heart

I like this:

Somewhere long ago, I remember reading an anedote to the effect that C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien on on of their walking tours around England in their younger days, happened on a beggar. Lewis, especially after his conversion, was remarkably generous with his money. So when the beggar asked for something Lewis, as was his custom, forked over several pounds.

Tolkien remarked, “He’s just going to spend it on drink.”

Lewis replied, “I was just going to spend it on drink.”

I don’t really know if that story is true, but I think it still points a vital lesson, particularly to the subculture of American conservative Christians who always immediately declare that generosity to the poor is “enabling laziness” and who are always dead certain that the poor are parasites, freeloaders, and sponges who need to be policed by Christian Morality Cops lest they not use the money like good Puritans and (horror of horrors) do something pleasurable with it. By no coincidence, these Morality Cops always take the part of the super-rich and never think to police them as thieves, parasites and corporate welfare queens. The MAGA antichrist religion beatitude is always, “Woe to you who are poor, for you are being punished for your laziness and scamming. Wow to you who are rich, for you are Job Creators and not thieves who pile up treasure for yourselves on earth and show no regard for those you rob of their just wages.”

Sometimes the argument is made that giving to the poor enables addiction and that if we give to feel the glow of self-approval or to virtue signal regardless of the consequences to the object of our charity, we are actually selfishly harming others with our narcissism. I agree. What I do not agree with is the automatic assumption that the poor must always be assumed to be addicts, scams, or lazy thieves or that spending a gift on something pleasurable is clear evidence that they are cheats.

As we saw in this video, actual hard research done on the actual spending habits of actual poor people (rather than simply the moronic “gut instinct” insults of cruels like Jesse Watters, who sadistically call the poor “people that’ve failed in life”, “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk”, “urine-soaked junkies”, and “vagabonds and zombies.”) shows that very few poor people blow their money on drugs and alcohol and such things.

Indeed, in my experience, the poor are actually highly likely to be generous and share what little they have with others. And not just in my experience. Hard research backs up what I have seen.

So sure: if you are worried that the person asking for help is an addict, there are other ways to be generous to them without risking enablement of addiction, such as “blessing bags” or gifts of food or clothing.

My point is different. It’s that we need to learn how to be generous to the poor without insulting them with the assumption that they are presumed to be cheats and thieves and without the assumption that if they experience the perfectly ordinary human desire for something nice or pleasant, this is proof that they are scamming us and that it is our moral right to sit in judgment of them as con artists and crooks. One of my readers tells a story that illustrates the spirit in which we should give:

45 years ago, I was taught by a wonderful nun who I would accompany to Macy’s every so often as her package carrier. She wore her habit on the subway, in the streets, in the store. People were very deferential, always doffing a hat, saying hello, stopping to ask for prayers. Sr. Jean Baptiste was just one of those nuns who had a certain kindness in her eyes. She was the nicest person I had ever met and she truly loved people. I thought the world of her.

One day a bum came up to us and asked Sister for a quarter, she smiled, said a few words, and reaching into a pocket she gave him a dollar and he ran off.

I was perplexed…he was gruff, he was not polite, not even a thank you and Sister was as happy as a lark. When I asked Sister why she gave him a dollar, she said “If I was him I’d need a beer AND a pack of smokes.”

I will never forget her generosity of spirit.

The intense Puritan need conservative Christians have to make sure that every penny receive a return on our “investment” in the poor is, interestingly, the one thing Jesus absolutely forbids us to indulge. Why it’s almost as though he understands that money is a huge tool in our arsenal of ways to control, dominate, shame, enslave, and devour others:

“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:12-14)

Nearly every discussion of generosity to the poor I have ever heard begins and ends with the question of what happens if the poor person “gets away” with having their dependence enabled. I have never ever heard a discussion of what happens if a self-appointed conservative Moral Cop gets away with hardening his heart against the least of these, which is by far the greater risk from what I’ve seen.