People Are Just People, Just Like You

My friends Ali, Christina, and I went out to lunch today, at this really swanky cafe. On our way back, we passed by probably three or four homeless guys. They were really friendly and polite, telling us to have a good day even when we didn’t give them anything. Now, assuming that they weren’t being sarcastic—and we all know how great (terrible) I am at detecting sarcasm—I thought that was pretty amazing and maybe even selfless. They could have been rude, or said something mean, but they didn’t.

Ali turned to me and said that she never knows what to do in that situation, to give them money, or buy them food, or just walk away. I’m really terrible about this too. I never know what to do, so I usually do nothing. And even when I do do something, I still feel wierd about it. It’s like we treat the homeless like vending machines for our consciences. We put in a little money, or time, or food, and we get a little bit of feel-good back. This just strikes me as a little hollow.

Don Miller talks alot about the importance of being relational, that humans are meant to be with each other. Jesus spent a lot of time just being with people, complete strangers sometimes.  And I think that the first step in this is to recognize the “human-ness” in other people. Like Regina Spektor says in Ghost of Corporate Future:

Cause people are just people, people are just people, people are just people like you

And I think that is just so true. People are just people just like me, just like you. We all have our lives, which are real and happening right now. When I just give my money, how is that being relational? How is that recognizing the humanity in this other very real person right in front of me? I think that if I was serious about making a difference in someone’s life, then I would actually get involved in someone’s life. I would build a relationship with the beggar who I pass every single day on my way home from work, take him to dinner once a week. I would volunteer on a regular basis at the homeless shelter, get to actually know the people who come in there every day.

But I don’t do this. This is hard enough with people I am close with, let alone complete strangers. It’s just so easy to write-off people sometimes, to just discount them as other, as things. It’s like we can’t trust other people (maybe for good reason? I’ve been swindled plenty of times). But maybe that’s part of following Jesus, to learn to trust, to learn to hope beyond the cynical walls we build around ourselves. Kierkegaard describes faith as hoping for the impossible “on the strength of the absurd.” Maybe the world would be a better place if we would take that extra effort to genuinely see the lives behind the faces we pass every day, if we would extend understanding to people, on the absurd hope that they won’t hurt us.

The flip-side of this must be forgiveness. Because when you do get hurt (which will happen), the only response that doesn’t toss you into cynicism and nihilism must be forgiveness. God hasn’t given up on us humans, He doesn’t see us as a lost cause. I don’t think He is cynical or jaded or nihilist. The whole Old Testament is one big story of giving understanding (love) again and again, only to be betrayed. But He forgives us, again and again.

I hope. Absurdly.