Note: This could be a little offending to some Christians, or basically anyone who’s religious. Remember you chose to read this. These are basically my thoughts. You’ve been warned.

 

          Anyway now that I got that out of the way, I’ll just tell you a little story about what happened to me today. After riding the dreadfully long TTC bus (where I fell asleep and the bus driver near kicked me out) to the subway, and then reaching my destination, I noticed a homeless man asking for money on the stairway out onto the streets. It’s funny, I’ve already gotten into an argument about how I feel about homeless people with a friend, and probably lost her trust about it. It was about me thinking that some homeless people should try getting a job, at least using the $100 they make on the streets begging in a day (no joke, read the papers, I think it was Globe and Mail or something where a journalist posed as a beggar and wrote about his results).

 

But the thing is, I usually look at the person before I decide to donate (i.e. if he’s clean shaven then I for sure am not going to give any money, cheapasses). I give money when I feel it is appropriate. It’s funny, because the person I was arguing about thought I labeled all homeless people as ones who shouldn’t deserve any help at all, like I was a Nazi or something. Anyway, this guy looked like he could use some change.

 

Basically, I grabbed my wallet, took out ALL the change, and I mean all of it, and dumped it into his slightly tattered hat. He looked at me with a genuine look of gratefulness is his eyes and said, “Thank you”. The funny thing was that I really did not feel any better about giving it away or helping them out.  I thought it was good and great and all but I didn’t have any special feeling about giving him the money. No glowing feeling. I was wondering why. Then, I see other people pass by him, totally ignoring him. That would be the thing I’d do if it was someone clearly trying to scam people of money (which is how the argument before started anyway). But this guy looked like he needed it.

Anyway I noticed that many of these people passing him were probably Christians, Jewish, or at least a religion that promoted giving to the poor. And I see some of the things that religious people at my school do. I really wonder, what is their idea of the purest holy person? Are you not supposed to give something to help these guys out? I see their point about people scamming but this guy was either REALLY good, or was really in need. I cannot see the point of scamming as a beggar; you could do a better job getting more somewhere else, so that pretty much rules that part out.

 

I am not religious. I’m agnostic, I do not rule out the possibility of a higher being. But somehow, I sometimes think I have more morals than religious people do! And I’m not saying this to feel superior or anything, in fact, quite the opposite, I’m looking for someone to tell me what’s wrong and what I should do, not follow through with what I think on my own! How religious is one supposed to be? I don’t expect the everyday man to be a priest, but can’t they at least do what seems moralistically right? Insulting someone just because they did something to you does not make sense if you haven’t found out why they did it. Maybe they misinterpreted something you did. I can think of more than a few situations where people have told me to do something that was totally degrading yet told me to do it “just because they had a grudge with them”. Who’s pushing the buttons here? Do you hate them that much that you have to get all this support to tell this guy he is stupid, or small, or whatever the hell you think of him? What does Jesus teach anyway, if I see people like this? And by the way, by Christians, my definition of the word is Catholics, Protestants, everything. I’ve heard people tell me Catholics are not Christians. What the hell are you talking about; it’s just another interpretation of the same thing! So anyway that’s the real meat of who I’m directing this thing to.

 

I’m probably going to get a lot of flame for this, remember you chose to read it. I welcome people who talk to me about this, not like I’m saying “Come get some or anything”, but hey it’ll be interesting to see what comes up.