The other day a friend of mine rhetorically asked, “Why is it that you find so many people in the people-helping professions the most cynical and bitter toward the people they are supposed to be helping?”
I don’t know, but he got me to thinking.
In my own experience, I have known a teacher who disliked children, a businesswoman who disliked customers, a welfare worker who resents the poor, a pastor who had no patience with people who had spiritual problems, and, now most certainly, a homeless shelter director who treats homeless veterans and non-veterans as though she despises them for their need.
By comparison, she makes Cinderella’s step-mother seem like Jesus.
By contrast, I know Jesus to be one who will peel away the rotten and base things within us to find in us his image, and dignify us with his love and care. Even laying aside one’s religious views, we have a certain onus upon us to take care of the people who edge into our line of sight. This is the very essence of compassion – strangely absent in a place where compassion would be the most healing, the most helpful, the most human response to individuals suffering from many losses, including a certain perceived disenfranchisement from the norms of society.
I am very disappointed to report that compassion is discouraged at the Volunteers of American Sheridan Homeless Shelter, and that people are routinely questioned, accused, brow-beaten, scolded and kicked out for no reason – all from the director’s office
If there really is such a thing as client resentment disease, the CDC would have a heyday here.
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