From Helping to Loving

Sister, we must love these people very much, so that they can forgive us for helping them.
~ St. Vincent De Paul (1581-1660)
I stumbled upon this quote in an essay by Krister Stendahl and I was struck by how “contemporary” it sounded. Given that much of Christian charity during the modern period has been marked by a certain triumphalism and condescension, we tend to consider those who speak of true service of the poor and the outcasts — service that discovers God already present within the poor, and service that discovers that one is often more blessed than blessing — as entering into a new and exciting phase of journeying with those who are in exile. The quote from St. Vincent would suggest otherwise. We are not discovering something new, we are discovering something that some of us lost somewhere along the way. St. Vincent realized just how much pride and how much justification of self-indulgence we tend to invest in so-called “acts of charity.” He knew that often the ways in which we “help” others are far more about us than they are about the people that we are “helping.” And he knew how much “charity” is often simply a veneer that helps perpetuate the broader social structures that maintain the gap between the rich and the poor.
Yet the solution St. Vincent offers is not to stop all our efforts to be helpful. Rather, we must learn to love “very much.” The contrast between the language of “helping” and the language of “love” is significant. The language of “helping” establishes a hierarchy and an unequal, and often unhealthy, power divide. Thus the “helper” is able to gain nearly total control over those who are, by definition, “helpless.” However, with love such hierarchies and such unequal divisions of power are abolished. Love leads us to the place where any exchange that takes place is mutual and, most importantly, natural. Thus, Stendahl goes on to say, “true love demands that neither the giver nor the receiver be conscious of giving or receiving.” The exchanges that take place because of love are not exchanges that keep tallies or records of debts. Rather, all such categories are abolished and we are no longer “givers” and “receivers” but “lovers” and “beloved.”
Indeed, as I have moved ever more deeply into journeying with those who are in exile, I have had the delight of experiencing both sides of that love relationship. As I have begun to travel down the road of loving very much, I have, to my delight, also discovered myself to be loved very much. This is a great source of joy to me. How I wish that all those who are in Christ knew the joy of being loved by those who are in exile.

Only Natural?

As will be seen in a future post, I have been spending quite a bit of time wrestling with the ways in which Paul defines the Christian community over against the Jewish and pagan communities.
As I have tried to wrestle with Paul’s letters on their own terms (while trying to be aware of my own biases), it seems that Paul defines the pagan communities by three badges in particular: idolatry/self-exaltation, covetousness/seeking one’s desires over the needs of others, and sexual immorality. Furthermore, for Paul these three badges are all signs of people who have lost their true humanness. Just as the pagan nations are depicted as beasts (cf. esp. Dan 7), Paul argues that those who worship idols and those who chose to try and exalt themselves to the status of God (following the trajectory established by Adam) actually end up becoming like the animals. These things are badges of those who have ceased to be fully human and belong to the community of those who are “in Adam.”
Now what I find particularly interesting about this, is the way in which this radically subverts contemporary efforts to base ethics upon the “natural” world around us. It is common today to point to an example from the way in which animals behave and then conclude that it is “only natural” for us to behave in a similar way.
This is especially true in relation to sexual ethics (which is not surprising, given that sexual behaviour is one of the badges around which this discussion revolves). Some time ago it became popular to use examples of animal promiscuity in order to justify human acts of promiscuity (“it’s just not natural to have one partner”), and recently it has become popular to cite examples of homosexuality within the animal kingdom in order to support human acts of homosexuality (“it must be natural”).* The thing is, if Paul were to encounter any of these arguments, he would say that we’ve got it all wrong. Appealing to the animal kingdom for moral guidance is, according to Paul, a symptom of the problem, not a part of the solution.
Just as we cannot use the excuse “hey, I’m only human” to justify ongoing sin — for those who are truly human, those who belong to the community that is “in Christ” have been liberated from the power of sin — we cannot appeal to that which is “only natural” in order to justify any behaviour (sexual or otherwise). We must look to other areas for guidance in these things.
________
*Note that I am not, therefore, arguing against gay marriages, or against homosexuality or whatever. I have wrestled long and hard with that topic and I have no desire, in this post, to argue against those things. Rather, I am simply arguing that one should not look for support for those things based upon examples within the animal kingdom. Rather, one should look for supports in the proper places. Stated another way, you could say that my concern, in this post is not to question the ends but to question the means.

Discomfort with the Emergent Conversation

For some time I have felt a certain amount of discomfort in relation to the “Emergent church” conversation. Now granted, the number of people who fall under that label is increasingly large and diverse and to make a general criticism of the Emergent conversation is pretty much impossible. Even to criticize the movement based upon it's most famous leaders would be misleading. Criticizing all things Emergent based upon the writings of Brian McLaren (who, IMHO, does really miss the boat a lot of the time) is sort of like criticizing the entire “New Perspective on Paul” based upon the writings of Ed Sanders. For example, people that I admire quite a lot (like Brian Walsh) also fit within the Emergent conversation, and to discard Walsh because of McLaren is sort of like discarding N. T. Wright because one disagrees with Sanders (although Walsh does misunderstand Lyotard's talk about “metanarratives” but that's an aside).
However, with this proviso in mind, let me say that there is a particular trend that seems quite common in the Emergent conversation, and I find this trend to be quite troubling. However, to speak of this as a “trend” may be a bit too strong. Let me just say that I have the impression that this trend is present across the board in the Emergent conversation… but I am open to being mistaken about this. Actually I hope I am.
So what is this trend that seems to be present? Simply stated, I am not convinced that anything terribly new is going on in the Emergent conversation. It seems to me that, for the most part, the Emergent conversation is just another generation learning how to culturally appropriate their Christian faith — it's just that this time faith is being appropriated within a postmodern consumer culture. At the end of the day, it seems as though Emergent folk are just as thoroughly grounded in contemporary culture as traditional Christianity was grounded in modern culture. We've moved from quoting Descartes to quoting Derrida, from reading Dostoyevski to reading Nabokov, from listening to Gospel music to listening to Sufjan Stevens, from celebrating “stale” liturgies to celebrating “ancient-future” services, and we think that this is causing a more genuine form of Christianity to come (back) into existence. I'm not convinced. For the most part, it appears as though the Emergent conversation is not rectifying the mistakes made by prior generations of Christians; in fact, it appears as though they are simply repeating those mistakes in new and updated ways. Thus, once again, you get a Christianity that is oh-so-relevant, but really it's just as self-indulgent as the surrounding culture and as previous generations of Western Christianity. It seems to me that the Emergent conversation is not much better and not much worse than most other church trends that have come and gone in the last one hundred years. It's all just a little too convenient (but, after all, we consumers love convenience). Being Emergent lets me be “hot” and Christian and it doesn't cost me a thing (and we consumers love free things even more than we love convenience).
Now, show me a movement where people are committed to a costly form of Christianity, where people are radically committed to loving God and loving their neighbours, where people are daily laying down their lives for those whom they love, show me this movement or conversation, or whatever, and then I might be inclined to say, “yes, here is the Spirit breaking in (once again) in a new and marvelous way.”

Fearlessness as a Challenge to Faithfulness?

When I was younger I always thought that violence was, well, stupid. Of course, I wasn’t then thinking about the big moral questions as they relate to violence; I was mostly thinking about fights at school, at the mall, or outside of clubs downtown.
As I have gotten older, I have thought much more seriously about issues of violence, in part because violence is so fundamental to the worlds in which I live (as exhibited by the consumer violence that much of the Church engages in, and the street violence that many of my friends continue to engage in) and also in part because what Jesus and the New Testament say about violence seems very clear.
My opinion that “violence is stupid” has matured into the view that, as a Christian, it is never right to inflict violence upon another person. I have since had the opportunity to see that commitment to nonviolence work out is some truly incredible ways in what could otherwise have been some very devastating encounters (I think especially of a few encounters I, and my co-workers, had with gang members in Toronto).
However, as I have become increasingly accustomed to the constant presence of violence in my neighbourhood and at my work (although not so much at my work these days), I have been coming to realize how much fear played a role in my previous expressions of nonviolence.
That is to say, as I have now arrived at a place where I am not really afraid of experiencing violence myself, I have also found it that much more difficult to not react violently in certain situations. A few encounters I have had recently have driven this point home. I’ll share one.
The other night I was walking to the corner store and I was waiting at a street corner next to a few street-involved men — i.e. men that looked a little rough around the edges. It was the weekend when all the college kids were out celebrating Halloween and a bus full of drunk university students drove by (rather slowly, due to traffic). A few kids leaned out of one of the windows, sprayed something at us from a can and yelled, “Go back to East Hastings, you fucking bums!” (East Hastings, by the way, is the ghetto in which I live.) They then threw a can at us which happened to hit me in the chest and then fell to the ground at my feet. Anyway, before I really even realized what I was doing I bent down and picked up the can and threw it, as hard as I could, back at the bus. Now, usually my throwing accuracy is awful. Usually I couldn’t hit the side of a barn from twenty feet away. So without really aiming, I threw the can as hard as I could. Lo and behold, the can actually went in a window that was open about a foot wide and it hit one of the mouthy college kids smack in the middle of his forehead. At this point, I also realized that the bus had stopped because all the kids were getting out to go to a club that was just up the street. For a second I thought I was going to get mobbed by about 50 drunken college kids but they just looked at me and the street-involved men (who were laughing their asses off, while offering me congratulations) and then turned away.
Later on, as I thought about that encounter, I was pretty ashamed of how I had responded. I was worried, too. I had acted out of anger, I had acted violently, and it had come spontaneously — it had felt natural. It was at this point that I realized just how much of my prior commitment to nonviolence had been motivated by fear. I have come to realize that it is far more difficult to embrace nonviolence when I am not afraid of experiencing violence myself. Before I would ignore situations like the one I just related, or I would de-escalate them — and I would have, at least in part, been motivated to do so because I was afraid. Now, without the fear, it takes a conscious (and actually difficult) effort to not escalate a situation.
I wonder how often the moral qualities upon which we pride ourselves are like this? I prided myself upon my nonviolence, and then I lost my fear, and I’ve realized I’m far more violent that I ever imagined. As I look back on other issues, I’ve noticed the same pattern. I used to pride myself on my “sexual purity,” and then, somewhere around the start of college, I lost my fear of women and, yowza, was it ever a battle to get to a place where I was, once again, living in a sexually pure manner.
Pride is quite the insidious force. It can fool us into thinking that our weaknesses are our strengths. Thank God, that we follow a Lord who offers us strength in weakness. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

20 Books

Well, it’s always fun to talk about books. Ben (of www.faith-theology.blogspot.com) posted a list of 20 books that have influenced him theologically and so I (like several others) thought I would do the same. Unlike Ben, I can’t limit myself to books that are strictly theological; however, I do retain his rule that each author can only be used once.
20. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
19. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski
18. A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Guetierrez
17. Mysterium Paschale by Hans Urs von Balthasar
16. Torture and Eucharist by William Cavanaugh
15. The Brothers K by David James Duncan
14. The Shape of the Church to Come by Karl Rahner
13. Embodying Forgiveness by L. Gregory Jones
12. The Nature of Doctrine by George Lindbeck
11. Hope in Time of Abandonment by Jacques Ellul
10. No Logo by Naomi Klein
9. Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross by Michael Gorman
8. Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen
7. Liberation Theology After the End of History by Daniel M. Bell Jr.
6. Theology of the Old Testament by Walter Brueggemann
5. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
4. Necessary Illusions by Naom Chomsky
3. Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon
2. The Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann
1. Christian Origins and the Question of God (3 vols… so far) by N. T. Wright

Forms of Solidarity

As I journey alongside of those who are (needlessly) in exile today I am often faced by questions like these:
“What about the rich? What about the comfortable? Aren't we suppose to commit ourselves to journeying alongside of these people as well? Shouldn't we be living in solidarity with them too?”
Now then, apart from the fact that these questions are always raised by Christians that are (surprise, surprise) rich and comfortable (which makes me wonder just a wee bit about the objectivity of the questioners), I have tried to answer these questions in a few different ways in prior blog entries and, for the most part, I'll try not to repeat what I have already said elsewhere.
However, I was doing some reading in Exodus with these questions in mind and I was struck by Moses' interactions with Pharaoh. Upon my first reading I thought that the answer was simple: Moses clearly sided with the Hebrew slaves, and he sided against Pharaoh as well as the wealthy, comfortable Egyptians. Therefore, I thought, because those of us who follow Jesus are to be a people proclaiming the end of exile, and the end of slavery, we must side with some people and against other people. Moses has very little interest in journeying alongside of Pharaoh; in fact, he seems to demonstrate no interest whatsoever in journeying alongside of the rich and comfortable in Egypt.
However, even I am a little uncomfortable with that conclusion. I really don't like the idea of siding wholeheartedly against any person, or any people group. Certainly resistance, subversion, and even outright (nonviolent) rebellion are all necessary things, yet the idea of completely discarding an entire group of people does not sit well with me. It seems that the liberation that Christ offers is a freedom that liberates both the oppressed from oppression and the oppressors from being oppressors.
Therefore, I reread the Exodus story with that question in mind — where, in this story, does God (or Moses) offer liberation to Pharaoh? And then it hit me. The whole time I was thinking that God's command — “Let my people go!” — was a command that sought the liberation of the Hebrews. Don't get me wrong, it is that. However, it is also a demand that seeks the liberation of Pharaoh. By calling Pharaoh to stop enslaving the Hebrews, God is calling Pharaoh to conversion and liberation. God is offering Pharaoh the freedom to stop enslaving others; he is offering Pharaoh a wondrous new way of living. He is offering Pharaoh salvation.
As I thought some more about this in light of the various ways in which Jesus' call is extended to various people in his ministry (unconditionally to the woman who washes his feet, conditionally to the rich young ruler — i.e. Jesus' call seems to be one of radical welcome to the poor and one that requires radical conversion on the part of the wealthy), I realized that the offer of salvation, that the call to conversion, looks very different depending on whether a person is oppressed or whether a person is an oppressor.
Consequently, I am lead to conclude that, yes, we are called to journey in solidarity with the wealthy and the comfortable of this world. However, the way in which we show our solidarity with the wealthy looks very different than the solidarity we share with the poor.
To the poor we say: your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more. And this is an expression of our solidarity with them.
To the wealthy we say: let God's people go. And this is what solidarity with the wealthy looks like. It is the type of solidarity that liberates them from having their humanity warped by their role as an oppressor and allows them to be restored to the truly glorious image of God — the image of God that is especially embodied by the crucified Christ.

October Books

A fairly quiet month. I’m diving into a paper on the topic of “Badges of Membership” in the Pauline Epistles and so the vast majority of my reading time has been dedicated to paper research. Anyway, here are October’s books:
1. Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics by Stephen Westerholm.
This book is an exceptional and quite comprehensive introduction to the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” — one of the hot button issues in contemporary biblical studies. Westerholm begins by surveying the more traditional interpreters of Paul who have largely paved the way for what has come to be known as the “Lutheran” school (these formative exegetes are Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and J. Wesley. He concisely surveys a vast number of Pauline scholars (Wrede, Schweitzer, Montefiore, Schoeps, Sanders, Kummel, Stendahl, Bultmann, Wilckens, Sanders (again), Drane, Hubner, Raisanen, Wright, Dunn, Donaldson, Cranfield, Schriener, Das, Thielman, Seifrid, Laato, Thuren, Aletti, Martyn, and Becker) before providing his own perspective on Paul and the key themes that dominate this discussion: righteousness, law, justification by faith, grace, and questions of ethnicity. I don’t always agree with Westerholm’s conclusions (I find Dunn and Wright to be more convincing and comprehensive) but I can’t think of a book that would better orient a person to this discussion.
2. Barth by John Webster (Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series).
When it comes to introductory secondary literature about Karl Barth this book seems to get mentioned more than any other work. After reading it, I can understand why. Webster obviously knows Barth’s material well (he is, arguably, the best Barth scholar living today within the English world) and he is able to succinctly cover vast amounts of Barth’s material without creating a disjointed, cut-and-paste type of summary. This book is very readable and has made reading Barth seem more exciting than ever — which, I suppose, is precisely Webster’s purpose in writing this book.
3. Notebooks 1914-1916 by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein had this nasty habit of destroying his unpublished notebooks, and various collections of thoughts. However, after his death the notebooks and journals that survived Wittgenstein were collected and, as these have become increasingly available to the contemporary reader, they have become indispensable aids in deciphering what the hell Wittgenstein is talking about in his best known works. These notebooks, written between 1914 and 1916, are a precursor to the Tractatus and are especially helpful in orienting the reader to the picture-theory of language developed therein. However, what I found especially interesting about this work is the way in which it seems to pave the way for Wittgenstein’s later work on language-games. I am increasingly convinced that the split between the “later Wittgenstein” and the “earlier Wittgenstein” is more imagined than actual (just as the split between the “later Barth” and the “earlier Barth” seems to be over-exaggerated — a point Webster makes in his book). This book also has some interesting, albeit brief, reflections on the relation of God and suicide to meaning.
4. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault.
I didn’t mean to read this book this month but then I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. There is an incredible amount of stimulating, provocative, and subversive material to be found here. Using the history of the prison as his prime example, Foucault argues that the transformation in society’s way of punishing criminals is not actually part of a process of increasing humanisation; rather, it is a part of a process by which the powers gain a greater amount of control over an increasingly self-disciplining general population. I really think this should be a required text for anybody interested in pursuing restorative justice. In fact, I hope to blog through this book in more detail with one of my brother’s who has done a Masters in Restorative Justice (with Howard Zehr) and so I will leave any further reflections for later.
5. The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek.
Right off the bat Malarek lets us know that next to the sale of drugs and arms, the sale of women and children is the leading international money-maker. Over $12 billion (that’s $12,000,000,000+) is made annually from this global sex trade that sees 800,000-900,000 women trafficked across international borders and an additional 1,100,000-1,700,000 women trafficked within their own countries. All of these women are survivors of violence and rape. The stats, like the stories, are staggering, and both are gathered here in Malarek’s book (although Malarek, as a journalist, favours stories). Not for the faint of heart, I had to put this book down a few times. It made me feel sick and angry, but mostly it made me feel broken-hearted. This is especially so because Malarek does a fine job of showing how our countries are either too apathetic or completely complicit in this trade. Everybody is involved, from the U.S. soldiers, to Canadian peacemakers, from the G8 governments, to the UN, and everybody knows it, but nothing is really getting done about it. At the end of the day, money speaks louder than the cries of millions of women on the “breaking grounds.”
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the Church in general falls into the category of “too apathetic/complicit.” I know this because I work with some of these women and children, and although some Christians tend to think that this is admirable, they sure as hell aren’t about to do anything themselves. Although I have been told that when I “grow up” I won’t care as much either so you can pardon this rant.
6. Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse.
Well, sometimes it’s nice to just escape into fiction. I really quite enjoyed this tale about two friends: one a monk and an ascetic scholar, and the other a lover and a Dionysian. Hesse does a good job of painting a picture of life on the road and life in the monastery and it certainly gave me the travel itch. I think I’ll go to Australia.

Rejecting False Judgments: Lk 6.37a

I was doing a bit of work in Lk 6 with an interlinear Greek/English New Testament and I was struck by an alternate translation of verse 37a. Generally, in our English translations, the verse reads something like this:
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned” (emphasis added).
Now, the thing is, the verb that is translated into English as “will” can also be translated as “may.” Thus, an equally valid translation of the text would read like this:
“Do not judge, and you may not be judged; and do not condemn, and you may not be condemned” (emphasis added).
I believe that this translation better captures what Luke has Jesus saying in this passage. While the first translation (“will”) captures the future-element of what Jesus is saying, the second translation (“may”) captures the present-element of what Jesus is saying (while also retaining the future-element). In light of the Lukan emphasis upon the poor, the oppressed, and Jesus' solidarity with socio-religious outcasts, this second translation means that Jesus is essentially saying this:
“If you do not buy into the popular way of judging others, if you refuse to judge others by the social standards that continually dehumanise and marginalise others, then you too can refuse to be judged by those who wish to marginalise and dehumanise you. You can reject those judgments because you may not be judged and condemned — so long as you do not then impose such judgments on others. Do no judge and any judgments of you are invalid; do not condemn and it is not permissible for you to be condemned. You can refuse to give such judgment and condemnation any authority over you.”
This reading ties in well with Jesus' proclamation of forgiveness to sinners as sinners (and not as penitent sinners).
The Church today would do well to think on how these thoughts tie into the way in which she journeys and speaks with those who are judged, condemned, and called “sinners” today.

Moses and Joshua in Luke-Acts

I was reading Luke the other day and was struck by the parallels that exist between Jesus and Moses. Jesus, like Moses (only more so), is the great liberator of Israel. Jesus provides the people with a New Torah, he provides them with nourishment in the wilderness, and, ultimately, on the cross, he brings an end to exile and the wilderness wanderings of Israel. Of course, the fact that the bondage of exile has ended is confirmed at the beginning of Acts with the outpouring of the eschatological Spirit.
However, I was struck by this idea: if Jesus, in Luke, is like Moses yet greater than Moses, surely Paul, in Acts, is like Joshua, yet greater than Joshua. After Moses liberated the Hebrews and led them through the wilderness, Joshua conquered the land that God had promised them. However, with Paul as Joshua things are significantly revised. The land is now the world, and the means by which one conquers are radically different. Whereas Joshua conquered by the sword, Paul conquers by the Gospel proclamation — by the sword of the Word. Whereas Joshua conquered by inflicting violence on others, Paul conquers by allowing violence to be inflicted upon himself. Whereas Joshua conquered by force, Paul conquers by serving others in the power of the Spirit.
Furthermore, I suspect that those who wish to appeal Old Testament conquest narratives in order to justify Christian violence today have not sufficiently grasped the way in which Paul's model of conquest completely subverts and replaces any and all violence with cross-shaped living.

What would you do?

Two encounters I had recently made me do some soul-searching, and made we wonder how others would handle these situations. So, I’ll relate the scenarios with the hope that others might share how they would respond. I’m curious about this in part because I wasn’t entirely satisfied with how I responded to either one, and in part because I think that it might be such day-to-day encounters that reveal to us just how seriously we take our faith. Of course, as with any encounter in life, what we hope we would do, or what we say we would do, can often be quite different than what we actually end up doing. All the same, I am curious as to what others think they might have done in these situations.
(1) I was sitting on the back of the bus one night next to three other fellows who were on their way to a downtown club. They looked like the frat sort and they were all quite a bit larger than me. They had obviously had a few drinks before heading out and were all acting tough. In the midst of their banter one fellow declared: “Yo, man, I’m gonna rape a girl tonight!” Immediately a series of thoughts ran rapidly through my mind.
I thought about saying and doing nothing. I mean, these fellows were big and they were drunk and they were acting aggressively. I didn’t particularly feel like getting my ass kicked. But is it possible to ignore that sort of comment? What if this fellow wasn’t just “talking tough,” what if he actually did rape a girl that night? Wouldn’t I share in the responsibility if I sat by silently and said nothing when he announced his intentions? Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything, maybe I should just jump in and start swinging. I’ve known too many people that have encountered sexual violence and I know how absolutely horrible and shattering sexual violence is. Maybe it would be worth getting my ass kicked just to break that fellow’s nose and show him he can’t go around glorifying or trivializing rape. Yet wouldn’t I then just be perpetuating and embracing just another manifestation of the male violence that I claim to hate?
So, if you were me sitting next to these fellows at that moment, what would you do?
(2) I sometimes enjoy going for late night walks around my neighbourhood and I always make sure I carry a lighter when I walk (lighters make for great conversation starters — plus it’s good to have something in your pocket to hold onto when you’re walking around the ghetto late at night, but that’s a different story). Thus, when a fellow stopped me and asked if I had a lighter I didn’t hesitate to say that I did. However, I quickly realized that this fellow wasn’t interested in smoking cigarettes. As I pulled out my lighter, he pulled out a glass pipe and a ten dollar crack rock. I was taken a little off guard. It wasn’t that I was unaccustomed to being around people smoking crack — I see enough of that in the alleyways and streets around my house — it’s just that I didn’t expect the fellow to start smoking right there and then with my lighter. If I let him use my lighter wouldn’t I be supporting his addiction? Yet wouldn’t he find a light in the next few minutes anyway? If I let him use my lighter couldn’t I use that as an opportunity to share a few much needed good and gentle words with him?
So, if you were me standing on the sidewalk that night holding a lighter, what would you do?