People have asked, “Fartch B. Fondlegod, how much if anything ought I give to strangers who come up asking for money so they can buy food or get home?”  They allude with approval to my reputation for sternness.  The skills of the seasoned interviewer usually lead me to deduce their hope that I will admonish them to give nothing and that I will provide incontrovertible justification.  Instead, the admonition they get is to not seek me out for advice on bums.  This is not a topic on which, as my Tennessee cousin would say, I am drove to some fiercely-defended policy.  To the contrary, it is one on which  I am tore.                 

Jesus was a man whom I greatly admire and with whom I share a good many traits.  Like Jesus the man, I breathe, eat, walk, wink and grin.  Like Jesus the enlightened spirit who cast the buyers and the sellers out of the temple, I vent at the television screen whenever buyers and sellers defile the temple of my well-being by plunging my investment retirement account into a nosedive.  Like Jesus the Savior, I have been called a savior by more than one reputable source, under such-and-such-and-such conditions.  Jesus was at once humble and matter-of-fact about his godhood.  I am at once humble and matter-of-fact about the excellence it has been my fortune and nature to attain.  (Were I not making a point, humility itself would dictate that others, not I, declare it.)       

I have known Jesus for some time, have worked with him and spoken on his behalf; but I am no Jesus.  For one thing, his perspective on dealing with beggars might have been—shall I trip gingerly—ever so slightly biased.  Wall Street or the Securities and Exchange Commission might deem his pro-beggar policies and exhortations akin to inside dealing.  For although the Nazarene bore the workaday title carpenter, he was no stranger to the largess of well-wishers, the neighborliness of the pure-hearted and those who might have intuited something of benefit in the offing.  Jesus welcomed gratuities, encouraged them generally.  Generosity he touted among the prime virtues.  He was wired into the higher plane; unlike the majority of us, he was not about the daily grind of busting *ss to make ends meet.  Whatsoever we might sew and reap was already his, anyway.

However, Jesus could peer into the hearts of men and so knew whom to recommend for charity and whom to rebuke for, say, sloth or more broad-based undeservingness.  It is more than appropriate to infer that a duty to aid the poor does not compel the perverse abandonment of reason and justice by turning over one’s hard-earned family funds to some incorrigible louse.  Therefore charity properly rides upon discretion.  There are criteria and conditions.

Lacking the inner sight of Jesus to know when some hard-luck artist is running a game as he stands there in the Wal-Mart parking lot rousting you for gas money to make it home, you should feel entirely free to play by your own rules and intuition.  I have gone various ways, seldom winding up convinced I have done the right thing.  I have given nothing, and suffered doubt and self-reproach.  I have given spare change on the theory that with enough effort the fellow could accumulate what he needed from the community of pitchers-in, and maybe somewhere along the way realize this is a hell of a rough career choice.  I have given five bucks, ten, and one magic night twenty to grateful solicitors, always feeling like a mark and ruing my encouragement of unethical industry, but glad at having taken a painful chance for goodness’ sake.  Maybe I have helped save a life, sparked hope, rejoined a family, extended mankind’s lease on this world from alien/angelic judges, or maybe I have merely helped someone de-liver his liver to the altar of the distilling industry.

A year or two ago I knew I had been fleeced by this one young man who came skip-bouncing up to me like a gushy Michael Palin character, hitting me for gas money while admitting it sounded like a story but assuring me it wasn’t.  An uncharacteristic mental lapse had me thumbing through my uncharacteristically loaded wallet before his eyes.  I came up with a fiver, which he readily accepted before knocking my cheapness and kiting a requisition for more.  Apparently, dropping the five hurt me more than getting it helped him.

“Do you want to give me the five back?”  I shot, blasting him with the most incredulous frown I could post.    

“No, no, man!  Thankya!”   And off he danced amongst the rows of parked vehicles and fat prey.  Gas my *ss.  I rather wished he had pulled a gun so I could reform him.

That experience has substantially chilled my responsiveness to desperate financial appeals by strangers in parking lots.  Like very many Americans, I dish pecuniary support to various secular charitable, civic and educational causes, medical research, youth activities, community action, state and federal government programs; and my wife Thelma Louise Fondlegod has the church’s fingers fairly deep in my pocket for its roster of worthy deeds.  We’re a powerfully helpful and benevolent society.  Certainly some wretches fall through the cracks, or through some of the cracks some of the time—there but for the Grace go all of us—but with all due respect to those accosting me, I’m feeling ever more as if I gave at the office.  I am not responsible for the tragic predilections and life decisions (whether atrocious or simply unfortunate) that bring many to ruin.  I am not responsible for anyone’s failure to exercise sensible birth control or provide a sane and stable family environment.  I am immediately responsible for making my life and the lives of my family members into all that our lives can be within the limitations imposed by nature and man; and achieving this requires dinero.  Rightly and fully pursued, it requires all the resources I can acquire or create.  There is never a plateau of ultimate comfort; there is always higher to reach and farther to progress and, sure, greater possibility to experience.  Mostly requiring dinero.

Vast numbers of my countrymen who likewise are being assailed for wampum do not even own their possessions free and clear. They owe debt far exceeding their liquid assets, certainly their disposable incomes.  The panhandler is in effect asking them, “Will you give me that money you owe to others?  Maybe you can surrender a few more hours of your life and efforts to make up for it in future earnings—provided you don’t meet with misfortune in the meanwhile—and then you’ll be able to repay your creditors.”  I would not be surprised if these beleaguered citizens are, like me, questioning the rationality of random giving amid dubious circumstances, particularly if they already give much through credible, standard channels. (But have they assumed such debt in dereliction of some sort of responsibility to the less- or presumably less advantaged?)

I believe I’ve finished coming across with the big bonuses for people’s begging.  Depending on my mood, the frequency of such assaults, and perhaps contextual clues to the authenticity, the true nature of the claim, I might be good for a buck or two on a given occasion.  I think that’s it.  To the extent I budget for charity in general, pretty much not only the need but the reasons giving rise to the need will have to be almost certifiable; and the reasons will have to be ones with which I sympathize.  On a given day some random approachist might find the bar set pretty high indeed.

And what if my misgivings should somehow cost a life?  You’ll have to take up mortality with the Maker.  Everybody dies.