Dear Genuinely Responsive Friend,

First of all, thank you so much for your note. It feels great to know people care enough to not only read my letters, but also to reply to them. In this case, a lot of people, with a lot of very different ideas.

So then, instead of trying to answer each and every observation and word of advice, I thought it might be more interesting for everyone if I let some of those observations and words of advice answer each other. Taken together as a whole, I think they say something profound. For now, though, you and the others who responded are the only ones who will see them.

You may not have time to read each and every one, but you can be sure I did. I have been thinking about them too, and about you and the others who sent them to me. Troubled though I am sometimes, I don’t know anyone with the kind of backup I have, both near and far away. Thanks for being there.

Your friend,
Bart

You said that many of Marlena’s problems are the result of “amoral, ghetto decision-making we would never tolerate in a real friend.” This is what I’m saying - real friends don’t use their friends.

I wouldn’t have bought the tickets. Want to know what it really costs? Ask yourself how many Bibles could have been sent overseas to people who will really read them and take the Word to heart. $5/Bible is a good figure - so if you sent the ticket money for that purpose, what could have come from it?

jesus says, give to anyone who asks you. give, and do not hold back in luke. I don’t know what to do with that when i walk past the same homeless guy on the corner of michigan avenue on my way to work every day.

Your letter reminded me of the daily internal debate I have with myself about love and reciprocity.

Would Jesus have kept giving over and over to people who only saw him as the latest dispenser of things they had learned long ago to obtain by hook, crook or con? It is hard to tell for at least two reasons. First, Jesus clearly wanted to make disciples and at least part of the reason he made disciples was to have more people around to help people like Marlena. His help to people like Marlena was more than just object lesson to be sure, but certainly he wanted to “spread the joy” of this kind of giving to others. Therefore in his moving around to spread the Gospel he did not enter into long term relationships with those who were chronically dependent. The second reason is related to the first. Jesus died giving himself up, so there wasn’t much chance of creating perpetually co-dependent relationships.

Marlena is playing on your white guilt. She takes…but you give. My question to you is, “What do you get from this relationship?” “Why do you keep giving to her?” Is the answer, “Because that is what Jesus would do?” I think that is bullshit. I think to show love to Marlena, Jesus would understand he was being played and ask some tough questions and expect different behavior. I guess I would close by saying; We are called to LOVE one another, not be people’s friends necessarily. What if you weren’t in that neighborhood Bart? How would the people that are Marlena’s friends in that neighborhood help Marlena out? Would a bunch of neighbors all get together to pool their money to get her a plane ticket, would they sit with her and comfort her as she waits by the phone to hear how her son is doing. I wonder how you are actually upsetting the rhythm of that community by being the “White Guy” with the money. Hmmm…before guilty white people moved into poor black neighborhoods, if someone was “down on their luck” and needed rent money, they used to throw “rent parties” and everyone would bring what they had and have a party to help their friend and neighbor…but now they just go to that rich, white do-gooder and ask for help.

For us to try to base our actions literally on “what would Jesus do” mentality is a failure from the start. Jesus would know that person’s heart, their motivations, their chances, their pains. He wouldn’t look on the outer things at all. But all we can do is strive to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves and do the whole ‘pray for wisdom and not be upbraided’ thing (I’m sure hoping you understand my King James - it was once my primary language :-). I can only take care of my own heart, much as I’m pretty darn sure I could manage some other people’s hearts an awful lot better than they do! My own’s a full time job.

I understand the grace part on a theological level and in my world. I trust in God’s goodness and I’m overwhelmed with God’s “wonderful exchange”, taking on our shit and absorbing it. I don’t understand it and I certainly don’t know how you deal with it in your context.

Marlena has become a Narcissistic Personality Disorder for survival. People like her are all around us. This usually begins when you are very young and your family is unreliable and abusive. Working with people like this, I have to be sure to keep doing what makes sense to me and what I want to do and feel I should do to function for the wellbeing of the other person and also myself. I can never let the NPD take charge of the process.

This is all I know….I sure hope that the God of the universe keeps on treating me like you are treating Marlena, with unconditional love, b/c you know what, if he ever decides to start giving me what I deserve, I’m in BIG trouble. I am sure that Marlena is thinking what I think sometimes….wow, thank you God (Bart and Marty) for helping me when I really shd have helped myself and thank you for loving me when not everybody cd. and thank you for helping me get thru things that I wdn’t have gotten thru w/out you and thank you God that even though I can’t even comprehend why you love me so much, you just do. And so, “now what” is like….the rest of the story might be that Marlena starts to love God more or it might just be this continually amazing story about how God loves us when we’re really, really stupid and how people like Bart and Marty and Roman and Miranda can display this unconditional love thru the mighty power of God to those around them and just maybe someone as dumb as me will get it!

Now, what you do in regards to her is up to you and those who finance your efforts, but here’s my two cents: 1.) It wasn’t for nothing that Jesus said not to cast pearls to swine, and Paul declared that those who will not work will not eat. There are limited resources available to help people, and those should be directed to those most worthy of support. For example, let’s consider the funds spent to buy her the tickets (disregarding the cost of the gas to drive her to Louisville): I read an article in Time Magazine a while back about people in India who survive by catching rats for farmers. On a good day they maybe catch 5 or 6. They make a nickel a rat, plus they get to keep the dead ones to feed their families. They bust their asses, working 12-16 hours a day, and usually die young from lack of health care. They can’t get a better job due to the caste system. What could someone like that do with the $170.00 spent for those tickets? 2.) Despite her chronological age and grown up body, Marlena is a child and should be treated like one. Children shouldn’t be given everything they ask for, lest they turn into spoiled brats 3.)Frankly, you are not helping Marlena by covering for her when her irresponsibility gets her into trouble. Rather, you are shielding her from the one thing that might make her realize just how selfish and irresponsible she is: consequences. Friends don’t aid friends in their self-destruction, and that is what you are doing in this case.

So, I will type in a few paragraphs from Bonhoeffer’s section on “Costly Grace”. It seems germane to the issues with which your newsletter article wrestles. I don’t share it as a criticism of your actions with Marlena but only as food for thought, since I think that the lines between extending hospitality, getting played, and enabling often blur. What else can we do but step out on faith and act. Here they are:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasure, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price, grace without cost! … In such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God….

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

I don’t mean to be patronizing, but I think you are realizing a few things I learned the hard way in the Dominican Republic. I applaud you for taking a similar approach in your dealings with people, I had to learn also, which is, to focus your efforts on individuals, rather than disperse your energy on masses. Those individuals begging for your focus and attention are still inevitably far too numerous for you to deal with effectively; more than you have time, energy, or resources to achieve anything meaningful, so you inevitably pick and choose. You are faced with that choice anew, every day, and you never know for years whether you did any good! 30 years later, I only know three people who for a fact I made a lasting contribution to…

You said you don’t have programs, just relationships. When you have a relationship, it’s between two or more people, it’s not one sided. I used my family for years and did whatever I wanted without much concern for them. As long as they were giving me money or helping me out, they were fine by me. I never really called them unless I needed something. My brother and sister-in-law have helped me so many times, just like you are doing. Eventually, it brought me home. I was a biker chick living with 1%ers and doing just about the same crap these people you deal with are doing, probably worse. It took until I was 36 years old, but they’re gentle coaxing brought me here and here is pretty damn good! If it were me in your shoes right now, I’d ask Marlene for help once in awhile too, make her feel like she is contributing something. She has no money, so, let her serve in other ways. If some elderly person needs a meal cooked, let Marlene do it. If someone needs help with house cleaning or whatever, ask Marlene to help. Get her involved if you can with helping others, cause she’s selfish, just like I was. Let her see that a friendship and a relationship works two ways. She’s going to disappoint you a lot, but maybe one day she won’t.

If you ever get this figured out, let me know what the formula or standards are. After 10 years, $20,000, a lot of favors, and a bunch of sleepless nights helping “friends” with issues, I am so convinced that giving it away doesn’t change anything, but if not that, what? Where is the middle ground between “go away” and “here, take my car.” If we keep feeding the beast, it just gets stronger, but if we don’t, then we are just more people who don’t give a damn. I am so tired and frustrated right now over this that I am ready to cut my losses and move to the country. Sorry to vent, but I am with you brother. I want so much to make a difference, and I am so tired of sucking at it.

It is so hard to know what to do, when. I believe God say NO to us often—but He know when that is the best thing for us. We do not know when giving grace is appropriate or harmful or when a person is drawing closer to God or when they are using us. It is so hard!

I guess I should be thanking God for letting me read this particular newsletter at this particular moment in my life. But since you wrote and sent it – I’ll thank you more than I do God just this once. I’m a lot like Marlena…

Amen.

Dear Friends,

I really like Marlena, but that doesn’t mean she is a good person. She is smart and easy to talk to, but only if you are talking about her stuff. She is attractive and has her hair done every week, but every month she asks to borrow rent money. She loves her kids, but she lies a lot and has taught them to do the same. She’s been through more houses, jobs, men and resolutions than anyone I know, always looking for a better deal. So then, even though she clearly understands and openly embraces what out little fellowship is about, it is easy to wonder how long she’d stay with us if our friendship wasn’t such a bargain.

Lately I find myself wondering about that bargain, about whether the ‘grace’ my friends and I give our neighbors here is anything like the real thing. I mean, on one level offering our love without condition to broken people in a hard place sounds like a righteous thing to do. Moving into this neighborhood to establish genuine friendships across seemingly insurmountable barriers of race, class, and culture sounds more authentic than just dropping in to establish food, clothing, medical care, education, or housing programs.

For someone like Marlena, however, I wonder if our unconditional friendship isn’t just another program after all. When she comes over for a loan or asks Marty or I for a ride to the doctor, we generally treat her the same way we would Ric or Karen next door, who are our ‘real’ friends. It doesn’t feel the same, though, partly because Marlena is in no position to return our favors, and partly because so many of her immediate needs are caused by amoral, ghetto decision-making we would never tolerate in a real friend.

On Monday, for example, she called me sobbing just as I was preparing the game and a little five-minute talk about the value of community for that night’s fellowship dinner. “I just got a call from my son’s baby-mama. The girl he’s living with now stabbed him three times last night! He’s in the hospital there and he might die…oh Bart, I told him to quit that girl! I’m going crazy here!” I began to comfort her like a pastor, but she cut me off. “Can you use your computer to help me and Shonda get plane tickets to Newark tonight? I’ve been calling my family to borrow the money, but nobody seems to care enough to help…but if I come up with it, will you buy them for me?”

Remember, we don’t have a program here, just relationships. Marlena and I are supposed to be friends. So, before I headed to her house, I called my travel agent and put on hold a pair of $170 tickets, leaving three hours later out of Louisville, 100 miles away. On my way over, I called Marty to see what she thought I should do.

“What choice do you have?” she said. “Marlena knows we have that kind of money, and she knows we’d buy those tickets if it was our kid having open heart surgery tonight. If she’s really our friend, we have to help her.” She paused. “Now remind me again why we do this?”

You see the problem, don’t you? I mean, it is no big deal to help a friend when she finds herself in trouble after doing everything right. It’s a whole different thing, however, when your friend has no money because she quit her job after the boss disrespected her, bought a big purebred dog she can’t afford to feed, and drinks more beer in a week than you drink in a year. Or when her own family won’t help her because, well, they’ve all burned each other too many times. Or when the son she’s crying over has two kids by two different women and is freeloading off a third, who probably didn’t stab him for no reason. Or when the daughter she’s taking with her has already told you she doesn’t want or need a man to help raise her own babies when she has them. In other words, when this kind of ghetto drama is bound to just keep on coming.

And yet, help her I did. I bought the tickets with the fellowship’s credit card, not knowing if or when we (meaning you too, if you’re a supporter) will ever get paid back, and I got one of our young single guys to drive Marlena and Sonya down to Louisville, and I knelt on their front steps to pray with them before they left. Now, a few days later, Marlena’s son is just hanging on, and so is my confidence that I really know what I am doing here.

Giving grace? Maybe. But if it is grace at all, it certainly isn’t the same kind that God gives. God, after all, is no sucker. He may make all the goodness in the world available to anyone who wants it, but as far as I can tell, you have to actually want that goodness in order to actualize it. God makes the first move, over and over until you respond, but it takes two to tango. The gift is being shown the way, and being allowed to learn how to dance in good company, so you show up in shape for the party.

I like Marlena, but that doesn’t mean she is a good person. I gave her my friendship, but she hasn’t earned it. Now what?

Sincerely,

Bart