Undeserving

A friend finds herself in a position to which many of us can relate: She offers help to someone in need only to begin feeling taken advantage of. The needy person in question is a woman, a mother, who has been abandoned by her husband. She's working a couple of jobs, and daycare is hard to come by. This is where my friend has stepped in, to take in this woman's children from time to time, in addition to her own four youngsters.

I'm not sure how easily I could take in additional children, were I in my home with my own four boys day after day after unending day. But this is what my friend has done, because something about a wronged woman tugs at the heart of other women especially, I think.

But now, it seems, this woman isn't just leaving her children with my friend to go work. She's getting manicures. Working out. "I'd love to have time to go work out," my friend said in exasperation.

I certainly empathize. I think we all want the people we help to, in some sense, merit it. The Victorians, as best I can tell, are the ones who fashioned the notion of "the deserving poor," as opposed to those who, presumably through their own immorality, are in a poverty of their own making.

There's something to be said for not subsidizing pathological behaviors, as perhaps more than a few parents with no-account adult children living in their basements can attest. On the other hand, I wonder if we are sometimes called to give of ourselves precisely to those who are undeserving. After all, this is the grace we Christians have received. It's hard to offer it in turn, though, especially when we feel taken advantage of.

My friend still helps this woman. She's good-hearted that way. I doubt I could. I'm stingy that way, and justice-minded (toward others, of course, never toward myself). I'm rational, as well, when it suits me, such that I reason by helping someone "undeserving" I'm actually enabling his bad behavior. I'm helping him harm himself. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes it's the argument I use because deep down, in my heart, I only want to help someone who merits it. Thank God that standard hasn't been applied to me.