Are you compassionate?

[joseph52]

Are you compassionate? When you see a homeless person are you compelled to help them ( please do not give them money.You are not helping them ,but hurting them.They waste it on drugs.It is better to give to

Comments

[pastorlenny]

All homeless people are drug addicts. It's in the Bible.

[lordhellebore]

It's sometimes hard to believe they are for real.

[lordhellebore]

Right. And you know that because....right.

[lordhellebore]

Also, even IF a homeless person were to buy durgs/booze, who are we to judge? Living on the strets is hard, and sometimes self-medicating seems like the lesser evil.

[brother_dour]

Nope, gotta disagree. From a Christian standpoint anything that distracts you from God- and I'm pretty sure drug abuse is right up in there- is bad and should be avoided.

[lordhellebore]

Not everyone is a Christian - and sometimes I'm tempted to say, luckily, because I can't count the times when I experienced how people whore not Christians have more compassion and understanding than Christians, without being enablers, as I suspect you'd like to argue.

[muffledlaugh]

please do not give them money.You are not helping them ,but hurting them.They waste it on drugs.

Wow. Just, WOW. And in a post on compassion, nonetheless.

[chordoflife]

Yes, it's not helpful to give money to the homeless, but it's more about perpetuating dependency on handouts. As others have said, the OP neglects MANY reasons for chronic homelessness such as domestic violence, mental illness, etc. Chemical dependency is only one slice out of many, and not all who are homeless are substance abusers.

[chaeri]

Op, I don't think you can be compassionate while making such judgments, honestly. I think you can act in what you think is a compassionate manner but when it's based on gross ignorance it's not at all.

And, wow. It's way more complicated than just perpetuating dependency. That implies that if you just stop giving them money they will suddenly be able to go find a job or medical help or a house. It doesn't work like that. There are dozens of socio-economic factors in play in each case. What works for one family or individual won't work for another.

Stereotypes and generalizations - especially damaging ones like all homeless people are drug addicts, or even that drug use is always a bad thing/for a high and not for some legitimate reason - make the problem worse.

The bottom line is that the only way to be compassionate is to understand that these are people just like you and me, individuals with stories, and to act accordingly.

[uguardian]

One reporter recently gave prepaid credit cards to homeless people; out of 5 people, 2 bought booze. One just got a meal for today, another bought as much groceries as they could and the 5th person didn't spend any of it.

Here's the story.

[brother_dour]

Wow. I can draw some pretty direct comparisons between this and Charles Booth's 1887 survey of London poor. The ones who bought drugs might be classified as 'undeserving poor', the other two who used their money for food as 'in chronic want'

Of course his survey was heavily colored by the typical Victorian-era upper-class snobbery and no actual understanding of social issues. And 5 homeless people out of an estimated 3.5 million in the U.S. does not a reliable sample make.

[uguardian]

Agreed on the sample size; it needs to be a lot bigger for the "study" to be representative of the nation.

All I was going for was that there's always a reason behind poverty, and it's not always self-inflicted via booze and drugs.

[chaeri]

And, there might be legitimate reasons for the person to be taking drugs or drinking.

[raitaysil]

While I would rather give someone food then money.

I don't think it's far to asume that everyone that is homeless is a drug addict.

There are multiple other reason for people to homeless especially here in the U.S. with our economy situation.

[chordoflife]

Chapel Hill, where I lived for a year, has a campaign of asking the public to give their spare change to a general fund for social services instead of panhandlers. So far it has seen very positive results. What the homeless usually need more then anything is a link to social services such as job counseling, psychiatric care, and safe low-income housing ( Shelter's are often unsafe and crowded). Many of the men I worked with as part of a volunteer project were actually in recovery and trying to stay sober.

[raitaysil]

That's great that's going on I still am not comfortable with everyone assuming that everyone is an addict that lives on the street.

My mom and grandma were very poor when my mom was growing and at one time homeless and neither of them are or were addicts.

[chordoflife]

I agree.. I think the OP was wrong on that.