September 10, 2012
Ashamed to Beg
In the current political environment I heard a Hispanic politician ask,
“When have you ever seen a Hispanic
panhandling or begging?” He went on to say that in his culture it is an
embarrassment to the family for anyone to beg. I think he has a point.
Hispanics may take advantage of the social services offered in the community,
but I have never seen a Hispanic panhandling. I’m reminded of Jesus’ parable of
the shrewd manager. The manager was about to lose his position and said to himself,
“What shall I do now? My master is taking
away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg.” (Luke
16:3 NIV) I’m wondering if the element of being too embarrassed or ashamed to
beg has been lost in today’s society.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----This world stews us into a mix made both of life and death processes. Without the expenditure of energy or effort, everything seeks its lowest level of being, whether that be a state of energy or a place in life. A person can take himself into a place where his only option for survival is begging. Or he can be placed there entirely against his own volition by accident, circumstance of birth, or any other variety of happenstances. Whether by their own irresponsibility or against their best efforts, people do enter Beggarsville.
-----God raised His people up in a frame of mind and feeling towards one another such that Beggarsville would be provisioned, not so it wouldn’t exist. The law given to Israel forbade the farmer from harvesting right up to the property lines along the roadways so that the poor and the traveler alike could survive. And the social principles praised in their literature He inspired involved generosity to those who had nothing in addition to tithing. For the society He meant to raise was one in which beyond the necessity of meeting one’s responsibility towards himself, there was also just as real a responsibility to be met towards one’s neighbor. The law His Christ gave the rest of us was simpler yet: love your neighbor as you love yourself.
-----Beggars exist because life in this world is a real rat-hole. If there isn’t the danger of a person taking himself down by self-deceit, there is the danger of him being taken down by more than every form of calamity imaginable. So begging itself is not shame worthy, especially since God acknowledged it in both His law of procedure and law of love. So, I don’t believe beggars should be ashamed to beg. I believe we as a people should be ashamed beggars beg. We are all proud of ourselves for the social security, Medicaid/care, welfare, HUD assistance, ad infintum we allowed our governments to formulate. We think that provisions Beggarsville. For many beggars it does. But it reduces the identities of those in need to checkmarks in databases, such that if you can check-off the right boxes you get a perk. But that’s all. You don’t get any of the love and attention and directive care which might actually elevate your situation back to the level of self-responsibility.
-----Law never was the way to provision Beggarsville. Heart and soul and principle was. It’s that kind of thing where lightly stigmatizing unsociable behaviors such as disregarding your neighbor’s overwhelming difficulties (to name one of myriads) made for internal pressures towards caring about other folks around the community enough to provide a piece of real help to the person seen in need. When the essence of mutual benefits form the fibers a network of stigma, society will work through its problems, though not working them out.
-----Those folks who have during the last 125 years been constructing a new, care-free, utopian society for us declared war on social stigmas and removed the driving force of a healthy society’s self-correcting means. They indeed slopped the troughs of Beggarsville without warming any of its hearths. Now Beggarsville is where beggars will go and freeze in place. Without the real Beggarsville, the shame in begging is not upon the beggar; it is upon us.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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