Today, as I walked up to my local coffee shop to meet with my brother and dad- as we do every week for our little "Man Club"- as was approached by a skinny, greasy, in-need-of-a-shower, late-twenties, poorly dressed white guy who proceeded to launch into a story about, "Wouldn't you know it but my car broke down and I don't have money or my wallet or my brain." (Okay, I added that last part)
Despite what some of my critics think of me I really am a tender person and gave this pathetic individual some cash. He then proceeded to get into his running car 75 yards off and drive away. And I was mad.
Not so much mad about losing some cash to the man but mad that now, the next time someone is in need I will be that much more cynical, that much more leery, that much more unwilling to help. And it made me think about the culture of the poor.
That guy probably saw his father do that type of thing. He grew up knowing welfare, delinquent fathers, lots of beer, poor hygiene, lack of emphasis on schooling, hard work, or morals. And you know what? He is still as liable for his actions as I am for mine.
You do not act out because your momma did not breast feed you enough, coddle you enough, your daddy was not there, you grew up poor, you were bullied or whatever new cop-out-drugstore-pop-psychology excuse some hot shot lawyer just used to get his multiple-repeating-criminal client out of the court charges of beating his girlfriend who wanted her child support payment and knocked over the local 7-11.
Hence I am Armenian. You chose. God gave enough grace to everyone to be liable to have either chosen Him or rejected Him come judgment day. I have known family members and friends who have rejected what they grew up with and ran down a road so vastly different than what they grew up with that it would shock most of their acquaintances to know their roots. It has nothing to do with intellect or some humanistic "scoobalah" (props to Dr. Chris Bounds).
Now I must turn my guns on a sacred cow. When the civil rights movement began blacks couldn't vote, sit in some diners, had to go to different water fountains, and couldn't hold some jobs. Let me just say, that is the dumbest list of rules I have ever heard in my life. And so sit-ins, race marches, and speeches began. The oppressed culture began to move and be promoted and make things of themselves. And I look around now to see something else.
I see NBA stars punching fans and NFL stars bickering over dances done on the field and prisons surging to the breaking point full of minority status citizens. And the leaders of the culture explain it away saying the rap is part of the "culture".
And this behavior serves the same purpose as the white guy at my coffee shop did for me. It taints you in ways you don't want to be tainted. I don't want to view every lower-class white person with the same disdain, distrust, and disgust that I viewed that man this morning. Nor do I want to view every pop-culture black man as having an entourage or attempting to go through airport security with marijuana in his water bottle.
What we must do is continue to act in the way God called us to. When I interned at a large church in Indiana the head pastor received a man into his office very similar to my friend from the coffeehouse and in the end gave him some cash. He told me, "How we act is between us and God and how he acts is between him and God."
The hard fact is that stereotypes may be stereotypes because that is what happens a majority of the time (the hobo is buying liquor, that man is on drugs, crime is higher among the poor, etc.) but that does not mean we should stop being insensitive to the Holy Spirit because we do not live to the audience of people around us and their opinions but to the Audience of One. He sees our compassion or lack their of. He sees our choices for good or ill. And He is the one to judge at the end of the day.
devin...you always have a unique and semi-violent way of posting and i think its halarious...becasue it's very much YOU. anyway...I appreciate your post and I feel the way you do on most of your points...hope all is well in Kansas...take care!
jfry