Making my way to where I was going yesterday, I just so happened to fall in behind a couple guys. Nothing in particular stood out about them. Both younger than I am, wearing baseball hats and smoking. One of them carried a knapsack on his back.

Two dudes, walking and chatting.

“… you still staying at the Scott Mission?” the knapsack-less man asked the other.

I don’t know why I was surprised. That’s not true. I know exactly why I was surprised. Neither one of these guys looked homeless. Whatever the fuck that means. They had shoes! Their hair wasn’t greasy! They talked in complete sentences!

Sometimes I sicken myself.

Turns out the guy was no longer staying at the Scott Mission. When asked why, he seemed sheepish about providing an answer until goaded into a response. “Hey! I’m not fucking judging you,” his friend assured him. (No. Leave that to me, the total stranger walking behind you, trying hard not to look like I’m eavesdropping.)

It seems the guy had left the Scott Mission because he’d found himself a nice private spot in an underground parking lot. At which point of time in the conversation, the two gentlemen stepped aside and let me pass by. Evidently, my breathing down their necks to hear every word made for an uneasy chat between them.

As many of you know I am not a religious man. But today, on the holiest of holy days for many Christians, when Jesus Christ died for our sins, it’s hard not to conclude He may well have died in vain. We collectively are terrible, terrible people.

Nobody voluntarily or contentedly sleeps in an underground parking lot. There’s a series of obstacles, setbacks and just flat out ill-luck that places someone in that kind of precarious situation. Choice does not factor into such an equation.

We blithely shrugged our shoulders during the coldest parts of this winter when it was reported that our homeless shelters only bulged to 96% capacity. Some even patting themselves on the back for a job well done. See? Nobody who wanted a place to sleep was left out in the cold. We did our job.

Even if that number and claim was right, and we know neither one was factually robust, shouldn’t it be a shameful statistic rather than something to crow about? Our shelter and social housing system is bursting at the seams but, hey, our numbers prove — if you look at them in just the right light — that we’re on top of it. Nothing to see here.

I write that paragraph knowing how facile it is. There is no simple solution. The causes are manifold and the levels of approaches needed are many. We have been left to our own devices on the issues of housing and social programs by successive provincial and federal governments for at least a decade and a half now.

But throwing up our hands and wondering what else we can do is a cop out. At least, it’s not something Jesus would do if I recall my Sunday school sermons and lessons correctly. Unless, of course, we chalk up fair and humane public policy to rendering onto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and declare ourselves off the hook. That’s allowed, right? Decontextualizing scripture to use as justification for non-Christian behaviour?

We’ve backed down from fighting the big fights or trying to right the big wrongs. There is no grand enterprise. We simply content ourselves with bitching about small potatoes like how many TTC fare collectors make a six figure salary as if putting a stop to that is going to miraculously feed our hungry and house our homeless. It’s like some demented rationalization that goes to prove governments can’t do anything right so we should stop expecting them to.

If the 1^st-century C.E. population was anything like it is today, so petty, resentful, small-minded, I’m thinking Jesus got himself crucified in order to escape them not save them. Expecting Him to return any time soon is probably futile. Some 2000 years on, we’ve hardly done anything to entice Him back to save our sorry asses.

— disappointingly submitted by Cityslikr