Video from Christopher F. Rufo
Chaos by the Bay: The Truth About Homelessness in San Francisco
"San Francisco has become plagued by homelessness, addiction, and property crime. In this short documentary, I investigate what went wrong—how one of the world's most prosperous cities has become a haven of public disorder." from video introduction.
Do not turn away!
Look at the people of our nation who are addicted, homeless and hungry.
Life is hard, life is unfair yet much of what we as a society turn away from, that is someone else's problem... many of us could contribute in someway to help.
As Christians we are not allowed to turn away. We cannot fix the world and help everybody but we can and should help those in front of us, in our community.
Christ our Lord lived a major part of his life homeless.
As Jesus said to Judas Iscariot, ‘You always have the poor with you’ (John 12:8).
In our time we could say "we always have the homeless with us."
Jesus was born in a stable, his crib was an feed trough for animals. His life began, as a homeless baby, born to parents who were sleeping anywhere they could find. Soon after birth Jesus became a baby on the run, a homeless asylum-seeker in Egypt.
Jesus showed his practical concern for homeless people. Two examples were a possessed man and a leper. Mark’s Gospel tells at length the story of a demon possessed man (Mark 5:1-20). He was violent, anti-social and self-destructive as he lived among the tombs and belonged to the realm of the living dead, an outcast from society. Jesus delivered the demon possessed man from the evil spirits who tortured him and restored him to a normal life.
A leper came close to Jesus, fell at his feet and said: ‘If you choose, you can make me clean’ (Mark 1:40-45). Jesus’s heart went out to the man; he touched his face and cured him. The homeless leper no longer had to be homeless and unwanted. He could now return to his home and family.
We are not Christ and cannot heal lepers or cast out demons but we can feed people, provide shelter and food to name but a few things.
Homelessness is a complex reality and there is no one explanation of how people fall into homelessness. Each man or woman's story has different tragic turns that contribute to their situation. We fail to honor the complex nature of suffering when we oversimplify these factors, or assign blame to the image-bearer on the street next to us.
Tim Keller says in Generous Justice, “If a person doesn’t care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn’t understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.” Please do whatever you can for the homeless in your community.