Opinion

Extending love to another isn't always easy

Friday, October 23, 2009

The Pittsburgh Pirates were playing baseball against the Houston Astros this past summer, and as Adam, our son, got out of a cab for this final game of their first series against each other, he noticed a homeless man staring at him. He looked familiar. Crossing the lane of traffic, Adam approached the man. As he neared, he realized it was Steven, a former FSCC teammate who played when my husband coached the team. Steven was everyone's favorite while he was here.

But now he was thin and filthy, he stank, and he had only a small plastic grocery bag in his possession. Steven told Adam that, since leaving Fort Scott, he had returned to Houston to play ball, but no team was interested in him. Acquaintances introduced him to drugs, and he ended up on the streets where he had lived for over a year.

Adam took Steven into the clubhouse to shower and eat and then sent the visiting team's attendant out to buy his friend some new clothes. As Adam took batting practice, the first-base coach had a chance to sit down with Steven and talk with him: Steven needed to know Jesus.

Adam left Steven a ticket for that game and met up with him afterwards, before the Pirates left for the airport. Adam gave Steven enough money to get a fresh start and told him to go home to his mother who lived several hours away. Steven said he was too ashamed before, but now he "just might do that."

Later that night, Adam called me. He wondered if he should have taken Steven back to Pittsburgh with him. I assured my son that he had done enough, and since the Pirates were returning to Houston a few weeks later, he would have a chance to see what kind of choices Steven had made. "But by the grace of God, goeth I," I told Adam. With just a few different circumstances, any of us could be Steven. Adam agreed.

When Adam returned to Houston a few weeks later, he looked for Steven outside the ballpark. He wasn't there. Adam then asked the club house attendant if he had seen his friend. He had. About a week after the Pirates left, Steven turned up in the dugout on a day when the Astros were playing in another city. He was wearing the same old, dirty clothes he had worn the first day they met. Since it was obvious he had sneaked in, the attendant told him he had to leave. Two weeks later the same thing happened. This time Steven announced that he had a tryout with the Astros that day. He appeared high on "something," and the Astros' management had him arrested.

In the early 90's when our family lived in Houston, I would regularly give to the homeless who lived under a bridge a few miles from our house.

One day the "Houston Chronicle" ran an article asking people to NOT give to those people but to, instead, donate to local organizations that offered long-term help to get the homeless off the street and back into society. All I was doing was feeding their addictive habits instead of helping them turn their lives around. Had my son done the same?

Adam was devastated after hearing Steven had not made wise choices with what had been offered him. Did he not do enough? Did he do too much? How is one to know?

Extending love to another person is sometimes not as easy as it first appears. In addition to whatever risks we might create, how do we really know that what we are doing is loving or even helpful?

We often believe that we know what people need, and sometimes we are even willing to apply resources to meet those needs. The problem is that we don't always obtain the results that we intend, either because we have misunderstood the true nature of the need or because the persons whom we are trying to love or help are more likely to apply our resources to what they want rather than what we believe they need. Surely that does not diminish what we have attempted.

If we choose to extend an act of love or kindness only when we are absolutely certain of the outcome, then most of us would never be able to act at all. Perhaps we would be better served if we evaluated our actions based on our intentions rather than on results. The best we can do is to examine our hearts to determine if we are truly attempting to love or help our neighbor. The rest is out of our control.

Editor's Note: "Steven" is not the real name of the person who is the subject of the column. The author chose to change the name to protect the identity of the real person.