Good Friday Reminds Us to Suffer With the Homeless

Today is Good Friday. Nearly two thousand years ago it seemed a very bad Friday. Jesus, as the Apostles Creed puts it, “was crucified, died, and was buried.” God turned bad into good, as He regularly does. Romans 5:8 in the New Testament declares, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Christians are supposed to get used to bad/good Fridays. Communist-turned-Christian Whittaker Chambers wrote, “a man can scarcely call himself a Christian for whom the crucifixion is not a daily suffering.” The idea of “suffering with” homeless people and others in danger (the literal meaning of compassion) is central in Christianity because it was central in the life of Christ.

It’s humiliating to be homeless. Children used to learn the answer to Westminster Shorter Catechism question 27, “How was Christ humiliated?” The answer: “Christ was humiliated by being born as a man and born into a poor family; by being made subject to the law and suffering the miseries of this life, the anger of God, and the curse of death on the cross; and by being buried and remaining under the power of death for a time.”

What Christians remember on Good Friday, in short, is short-term humiliation and long-term reward: Christ’s ultimate suffering would help those who believe in Him to remain under the power of death only for a time, not forever. Getting stuck under the power of a living death is common among homeless people. Some were born into families not only poor but abusive. They have sunk down and suffered many miseries, but some rise up when they realize Christ died for them.

Some homeless people change only because someone has put aside his own pleasures for a while to suffer with them. Sometimes that help is direct. Sometimes it’s one step removed when people with means make it possible for someone with social work skills to help directly. But success is rare when an “effective altruist” does abstract cost/benefit analysis and invests in some program far away in space and time.

In 1844, William H. McGuffey placed in one of his McGuffey’s Readers a wonderful little dialogue between a “Mr. Fantom” and a “Mr. Goodman,” with both names carefully chosen.

Fantom: “I despise a narrow field. O for the reign of universal benevolence! I want to make all mankind good and happy.”

Goodman: “Had you not better try your hand at a town or neighborhood first?”

Fantom: “I have a plan in my head for relieving the miseries of the whole world.”

Goodman: “The utmost extent of my ambition at present is, to redress the wrongs of a poor apprentice, who has been cruelly used by his master.”

Here’s more:

Fantom: “You must not apply to me for the redress of such petty grievances. The wrongs of the Poles and South Americans so fill my mind, as to leave me no time to attend to the petty sorrows of poorhouses and apprentices. It is provinces, empires, continents, that the benevolence of the philosopher embraces; everyone can do a little paltry good to his next neighbor.”

Goodman: “Everyone can, but I do not see that everyone does.”

We can often do more good by providing a good apprenticeship than by attempting to relieve the miseries of the whole world. Good Friday was a day in which Jesus completed his exceptionally hard work. Except for this one Friday of the year, “Thank God it’s Friday” is a terrible slogan. “Thank God it’s Monday” is much better.

In short, we’re told to defend the rights of the poor, particularly widows, orphans, and aliens. We’re told that justice means giving the poor full legal rights, but not treating them as more worthy than the rich just by virtue of their class position. Christian homeless shelters tackle the problem of how to couple the provision of food with the provision of spiritual lessons.

We’re told that work is good, although now impeded by thorns — and I’ll explain more about this in the next column.