Criminalizing Homelessness

I have been thinking about a recent horrible decision in North Carolina (the latest of several places) to criminalize homelessness.  It has been said that, “The poor are driven into hiding and the rich lay waste to the land.”  Nothing ever changes, eh?

 

I would be willing to bet there is a shareholder of a for-profit prison in there somewhere.  I would also be willing to bet he or  she thinks of him/herself as a Christian.  So when the time comes, and Jesus says, “I was homeless and you put me in jail,” will that be a shock, do you think?  I remind myself that Jesus spoke truth to power.  For me at my age that means letter and blog writing.  I see our country drifting blissfully into a police state that could make Soviet Russia look like an anarchist’s dream.  

Aside from the above rant, how can I humbly imitate Christ?  By being the message, which is more important than any amount of words…to be the love that I wish to see in the world, I must be “transformed by the renewing of [my] mind.”  I must put on the mind of Christ and live from the ground of my being.  When I do that, I can even love the ones I’d like to shake silly.  What they do is not all right, and I won’t sit by and not speak up.  But I can pray for God to strike them holy!  

If I were a minister in that town, I hope I would close my church and post a notice that it was “For Lack of Christians in this Town.”  Then I hope that I would join the homeless in refusing to move on and get arrested with them.  

Since I am too old and crippled to do that, I can dwell in the silence with the One Who loves us all, and pray for the world that is so cruel.  And for myself, who is so judgmental.  And for all of us who suffer in a world that is increasingly dedicated to profit and the destruction of community.