Loving Heart

I have been living in New York (ok, NY area) for nearly 3 years now. It was not a place that I dreamed of living in as a kid growing up in Korea and LA. If anything, I didn't like it because I lived close to the Times Square one summer and developed a strong distaste for its constant stench, crowd and noise. I reluctantly came here because of my job. It also explains in part why I chose to live in Jersey City until now.

I have to come to like New York a lot now, and one of the things that I really like about it is a dose of reality check that you get from riding the subway and walking in the streets. It is filled with the breadth of life, from one spectrum to another. In this entry, I want to talk about one particular aspect that has been beating at my heart: brokenness of people, particularly those without home.

When I was a young boy in Korea, my dad took me and my sister to the slums in the outskirt of Seoul a few times. I think he wanted us to see that poverty is real, and it's not merely a news headline or something you learn from the textbook. Then I came to the States and spent my adolescence behind the metals and glasses in a suburb of Los Angeles. My neighborhood had a mix of lower middle class to middle class folks, so it was rare to see homeless people. Even if you see them on the streets, you are most likely passing by them in your "Lexus cages" (Switchfoot) which makes it extremely easy to simply turn away and enjoy the music on your radio.

It was in Boston that homeless folks became more of...an issue. There is a good number of homeless people in Cambridge, and unlike in LA, you can't just turn your head away. You have to walk by them, you get a whiff of how some smell like and you hear them soliciting for changes. By the virtue of the pedestrian lifestyle in Cambridge and their concentrated presence, they suddenly become more real when in fact you just have been ignorant.

In New York, they are, well, more real. It is desensitizing in some ways--after you see the same person giving the same speech on a number of Saturdays, you learn to block him out. Human beings (maybe it's just me) are funny creatures: compassion that one feels so deeply and richly, can fade away so quickly once you see the insurmountable magnitude of sufferings and needs that are out there that are simply overwhelming. Or you see some impostors and potential impostors who are taking advantage of people's sympathy for the homeless and suddenly you become cynical and want to shut yourself from all this and block it ouf of your senses--when you know deep inside your heart that the suffering itself is very real and that the needs are out there. In many ways, it is a convenient cover-up to excuse yourself from getting yourself involved.

I do not give money to the homeless people, and I think I have a good reason for it. I have given food to them before. But last weekend, as I saw another homeless person walking through the subway asking for food and money, I realized one thing: people who give anything to the homeless always appear to be minorities and/or low-income. Never have I seen it the other way around in my 3 years in the New York area. Why is that?

While it is not my intention to make a case that non-minorities (including Asians) and/or rich people don't give to the homeless (in fact, I know a good number of people in those categories who have a heart for the homeless and devote their time/resources to help them), is it possible that for many of us are simply jaded, cynical or just couldn't give a damn?

If you simply don't care, it is not my place to preach to you why perhaps you should. Just go the Scripture and read what God says about taking care of the poor until Jesus comes again. Or just make a case that everything given to you in your life is entirely due to your merit, because I or anyone else with a common sense will destroy your case.

In the end, God grants us a loving heart through the Holy Spirit. But sometimes we need to realize that we must ask for it, for any compassion stirred by human emotions is likely to fade away. It is only in understanding the depth of our brokenness and the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice that we can set aside our cynicism and jadedness with the homeless, recognize their needs and suffering are very real and come to have genuine compassion to the point where we would truly abide by the Scripture in caring for the poor.