What kind of person would you be if you saw someone in imminent danger and didn’t warn them about it? Horrible, right? If a kid’s playing in the street and there’s a massive semi barreling its way down the road and you didn’t pull the kid out of the way– surely he’s going to die, and the blood is on your hands. You had the opportunity to save him, but you didn’t. When we allow people to suffocate themselves with comfort, we allow them to suffocate nonetheless. Just because they look good doing it doesn’t mean they’re not dying.
I have two more faces from the streets you should know about.
I have no names for them. Just faces. But that’s all I need.
Face #1: We walked in a single file line down the busy street. I walked behind Max, glancing at people lying around us in a cross-faded stupor, backs against the buildings as they awaited their clients. Cocaine, weed, and heroin could sell themselves, but there’s no need for them to– this entire street has it covered. With nothing but my eyes peering from my mask and curtain of hair, I make eye contact with one guy leaning against the wall. And something about him struck me.
He looked like my friend. Not any particular friend I have back at home, but for one, he was white. His skin wasn’t the sun-loving olive skin I had seen on the streets all night, and his head was full of blond curls and he possessed stunning blue eyes. He looked kind. He looked like the kinda guy that if I had grown up with him, we would’ve played soccer in the backyard together as kids. He looked like someone I would’ve been absolute homies with in high school. He looked like one of those friends that would spontaneously invite me to Taco Bell at midnight. He looked like he was just a couple years older than me. Maybe 23? There was so much to uncover about this guy. Did he like sports? Dude looked like he could secretly ball out on the piano. Or was he ever in high school band? Maybe he liked pottery. Maybe he was only a sports type and loved soccer, football and water polo. We definitely had the same music taste.
This paragraph’s thoughts in a breath, and within two more steps he was behind me, back still against the wall, waiting to make some money off of the drug paraphernalia in his backpack.
He didn’t belong there.
Face #2: An hour or so later of standing at a street corner praying, a woman comes stumbling down the sidewalk, woozy and drunk. Two others and myself walk across the street to attend to her.
“Are you okay?” we asked. She kept walking. “Do you need help getting somewhere?”
“No, no,” she slurred, “leave me alone, I’m okay.”
She walked on, trying to lose this group of American women that kept pestering her. She stumbled away.
There were so many people in the street with bottles in their hands. We came across many women sitting along the street. So what was it about this stubborn drunken woman that made me feel different? What was it about her that made me want to grab her arm and say, “no, I’m staying with you until you’re safe.” Where in the world that would be, I have no idea. But she looked familiar.
Maybe she looked like me?
After our first night of evangelism, I could not shake the feeling of the familiarity of the streets. None of it was where I belonged, nor was it anything I regularly experienced, so why did I feel like these people were people I knew?
And it struck me: Aside from the cardboard box homes, garbage bag blankets, and incomprehensible Spanish, it felt just like home.
Truth is, I probably had several friends doing those exact things that same night: hang out in the streets waiting for and dealing drugs. I know for a fact that within the week I would have several friends back at home driving buzzed or drunk, miraculously remaining safe.
How could I have not realized that we were all living on the streets?
I have friends at home that have that same longing Raquel’s eyes possessed. I have friends at home that find themselves looking at the bottom of the bottle because facing the reality of the upcoming day somehow seems better with some booze in your system. I have friends that find themselves having outgrown their security blanket so they find a girlfriend instead. I have friends that chase money by whatever means because these new Versace sunglasses hide the desperate search for life in their eyes.
We really are a broken people.
Maybe it’s too dangerous to read this blog. Maybe what I’m about to say is too dangerous to write. But friends, it’s too dangerous not to share.
We’re currently working with Global Teen Challenge. A place where addicts in Costa Rica can come and enroll in a one year program to work towards sobriety. These men that we’ve seen sleeping in the streets, I beat their friends in Dominoes on Sundays (beginner’s luck). The guys rummaging through the trash, his former gang member now praises God with a tambourine. The former prostitute? She made me dinner and loves line dancing with me.
Understand that there is no difference between where I’m writing this and where you’re reading this. There are Christians where you are. There are Christians where I am. There are people sleeping in the streets where I am. There are people sleeping in the streets where you are. I know the people that sleep in the streets. Do you?
Go search the sidewalks– you might find yourself there.
If there’s one thing you learn by reading books like The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Radical by David Platt, Crazy Love by Francis Chan and the Book of Hebrews by, well, someone fantastic, it’s that Christians aren’t doing our job right. We don’t love Jesus.
The only difference between the streets of San Jose and the sanctuaries of American churches is that Satan gave the American Church a teddy bear of luxury to hold while he slowly puts us to sleep forever in his inescapable hell.
We spend two hours of our week listening to words about our saving grace only to have defiled it thirty minutes later. We sit in the pews and praise Him that we have life, yet with the posture of our souls right now, this is the only life we get. We thank God for being our Father, and then return home to neglect our children, beat our wives, cheat on our husbands, lust over pornography, drink our wits away, embezzle money, manipulate our girlfriends, degrade our boyfriends, condemn people to hell, sell our bodies, and open the doors to our skeletons in the closet to join them. Satan has simply fooled us into thinking that if we give our sins a different name they receive less condemnation. We’re not abusers, we’re disciplinarians. We’re not drunken addicts, we just love having a good time… all the time. We’re not emotionally abusing our significant others, we’re just making sure our voice is heard. We’re not prostitutes, we just love us a good side hustle.
When we hit snooze, Satan tucks us in a little tighter. When we walk out of our sanctuaries, he applauds the sound of the ding on our phone that reminds us to go to work. When we find a string of posts on Instagram, Satan sits right next to us and laughs with us. Because we’re not NOT “keeping the Sabbath holy,” we just need to provide a good future for our family. We’re not “putting other gods before me,” we’re simply enjoying the constant comfort of our boyfriend’s company. “Honor your father and mother?” Well, they’re in the wrong so why would I honor their poor decisions? We’re not “coveting our neighbor’s house,” we’re just looking at it as inspiration for our “Dream Board.” “Thou shall not commit adultery.” Well, I would never! I was just looking.
The Devil swaddles us with the many things of this tainted world and sings us a beautiful lullaby. The bigger problem is, though, that we see our Bible laying by our bedside and consciously choose to watch pornography in bed next to it.
Cower, friends. We’ve spat in the face of the Triune God, and He is not tame.
In the middle of prepping for our second night of street witnessing, I scribbled down my thoughts.
“Do you understand, friend, the goodness of God? Do you see, friend, the blessing of salvation? Do you desire, friend, the light in our eyes? No you don’t. If you did, you would stop at nothing to find it. If you did, you would make sure everyone else knew, too. Is there any difference between these addicts walking away than my friends at home living lukewarm lives? The only differences is that my friends don’t realize they’re living on the streets outside the gated kingdom.”
Whoever is reading this, let me speak to you with the most raw and honest words: I wept.
Think back to the beginnings of this blog series. That little snippet about experiencing brokenness? Me. The mother that sobs herself to sleep because her child is dying and won’t accept help? Me. The person who allows the semi to plow through the street without changing a thing? God, please, don’t let that be me.
God had given me just what I asked for: the shattering of some rose-colored glasses and a brand new prescription. “Wear with caution,” it should say. “Side effects include having your prayer requests answered and learning about the desperation of this earth.”
A couple days later, in the middle of flipping through my Bible, I landed on Hebrews 10. Part of me wanted to paraphrase for the sake of blog length, but I thought, ‘if these people are reading what I have to say so far and don’t feel like reading a paragraph of the Holy Word, that’s a heart check for us all.’ So, the Word of the Lord, everybody:
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with out hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
A quick synopsis of the Gospel. Crazy cool. A lot to unpack that would take maybe seven other posts. Unexplainable in words, honestly. I do it no justice. But there’s more. (Emphasis added for Sarah’s desired effect.)
“If we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgement, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses does without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much WORSE punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
My probably appropriate response to reading this was to become progressively more dumbfounded, suddenly stunned and struck by the Fear of the God, and to melt into the ant-infested floorboards, cowering in understanding of what I had done. I then proceeded to sob because the emotions were a little much for my human body.
Friends, once we understand this, our hearts should grow ten sizes and break into seven billion pieces.
To those of us who have claimed God as our God, we can rejoice. We’ve been saved! HALLELUJAH!!! For those who don’t know the Gospel, we should be willing to run into the way of the semi to save them from this perilous death. In fact, we should seek the dangerous places to save the lost. But for those of us who have claimed God as our God and still deliberately sin because we think that the pleasures of this life are worth more than what we’ve said we’d sacrifice our life for– we’re screwed, dude. More than screwed. We’re condemned. With a worse punishment. Because we profaned, trampled underfoot and outraged God.
For lack of a better word: yikes.
We’re living our lives like Hebrews 10 doesn’t exist. We’re living like our sin doesn’t defile Jesus’ blood. How dare we partake in Christ’s communion only to make love to our temptations two minutes later?
Friends, it’s time to shake the sleeping shoulders of the wealthy American church and awaken them to the reality of the Gospel. We cannot serve both God and man. We cannot crave Christ and keep killing ourselves for those crisp dollar bills. We can’t bargain our way into genuine faith and love. What in the entirety of the Biblical world makes us think that we can be in a committed relationship with sin and still hear “well done, good and faithful servant?” If we’re not dedicating every single part of our life to Christ, we haven’t dedicated our lives at all.
It’s the highway to hell or the pearly gates of God. Both will welcome you with open arms. Where are you choosing to make your bed?
It’s too dangerous not to know.
