One day, Jesus was walking alongside the Jordan river, when He came upon a man who was so drunk, he was almost incoherent. The man looked up at Jesus and asked Him for some money to buy food. Jesus looked at him and loved him. “Are you willing to give up your drinking to follow Me?” Jesus asked the man.
But the man ignored Jesus’ question and once more begged him for some money. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” Jesus answered, and with a final compassionate smile at the man, He continued on His way.
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i imagine this made-up parable [yes, you won’t find this one in the original scriptures] will initiate strong reaction in a lot of people. ‘
How did it make you feel? Angry? Confused? Ready to jump in to the comments section in full attack mode?
Well, give me a few more minutes and let’s look at this story and try understand it a little more.
The idea came to me after tbV and i stopped to chat to and help a man lying on the side of the road the other day. We chatted and i really did struggle to understand him as he had been drinking quite a bit and was not making a lot of sense. Also he was Afrikaans which puts me completely on the back foot, or maybe him when i started attempting to speak it back to him.
It was not a big deal at all – we bought him a meal and got to pray with him and said goodbye. We did not give him money for the train ticket he said he needed.
And as we drove home, it got me thinking, ‘What would Jesus do in that situation?’ Like really, what would He actually do? Engaging with drunk and homeless people would have been so much easier if we just had the parable to turn to. Oh, there we go. Sorted.
So i decided to write it. You know, to help everyone else who was wondering the same thing.
And the gut feel is that of course Jesus would have helped the man and possibly healed him of his alcoholism [if that is what he was suffering with] and maybe conjured a meal out of the air and led him to a transformed and God-praising life. But is that really what Jesus would do
WHAT DID JESUS DO?
However [and this is a wrestle piece, so please jump in and give your thoughts] there are a few things that i think we can see in the Bible that might help inform our decision on this. [Be warned: some of these may seem to contradict each other]
# Jesus gave invitations or responded to requests – Typically throughout the Bible, we see this as a trend of how God works with people. A call or a dream or a messenger and the opportunity to respond. In Matthew 19 we see the story of Jesus and the rich young man where Jesus tells him what he needs to do to be right with God and the young man walks away disappointed, because Jesus has targeted his money which had a greater hold on him than the desire to follow God. Jesus doesn’t chase the young man or try to convince him or compromise on the ask. Jesus allows him to walk away. Even at times when it seemed obvious, for example, when Jesus asks the blind man, “What do you want me to do?”
So if it came to an encounter with Jesus and a drunk person, i have to imagine there would be an invitation to change, to receive healing, to change but also the opportunity to refuse that invitation and continue to live in the same way.
The parable of the prodigal son [an actual parable!] shows a father who allows his son to pretty much spit in his face and leave without arguing or coercing or reasoning or threatening. It also shows a father who is committed to keeping an eye out for his son and who is seen running down the path to greet him the moment he is heading home.
On another occasion we see Jesus [ironically in John 6.66] lose a lot of His followers, except for the 12, because some of His teaching is too hard for them to hear: 66 After this, many of His disciples drew back (returned to their old associations) and no longer accompanied Him.
Again, he allows them to leave.
# Jesus didn’t make it easy – Jesus tells the rich young ruler to give up everything. Then in Matthew 15 we see an interesting interaction with Jesus and a Canaanite woman where He tells her He has come to the last sheep of Israel. “Sorry, I can’t help you. You’re not one of us.” And yet when she persists, He rewards her faith and heals her daughter. With the woman caught in sin in John 8 Jesus lets her know that He refuses to condemn her, but He also sends her away with the command to, “Go and sin no more.”
# Jesus does call us to meet the needs of those considered to be the least of these – In Matthew 25 we see the story of the sheep and the goats where it seems to be saying that our actions are what prove significant to God [feed the hungry, clothe the naked, vist those in prison] and while drunk people are not mentioned specifically, are they not considered ‘the least of these’ by so much of society?
# The letter of James, in chapter 2, says this: 14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
i’m not sure about you, but this one seems a little complicated.
What would Jesus do if He came across a drunk man, on the side of the street. One thing is for certain, He would love him. But what would that look like and how does it play out?
What do you think?
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Irresistibly Fish 
I love this, thanks for the topic. I am an alcoholic in recovery, and God has done amazing things on my journey. He gave me the tools to help myself, and once I opened my hands I was able to receive. Its hard to make decisions when you are in active addiction, so you have to go with blind faith so to speak. The 12 Step Program I found in the NA totally embraces a spiritual relationship as the KEY to winning the battle. Without that you can move forward. So attending those meetings has facilitated my journey.
God has a bigger plan for me.
It is a spiritual battle.
I am faced constantly by arrows that the enemy throws at me. But I’m not going to let that get me down. Being aware of the spiritual world makes you more aware of the battle that we face, and its harder when you are an addict.
Thank you Andrea, appreciate you sharing some of your story – do you have any thoughts, comments or suggestions when it comes to being faced with someone with a drinking problem as to what constitutes valuable help that is actually likely to make a difference for them?
All anyone ever needs is someone to be there for them, someone to care, and someone to feel their pain.
Any genuine help needs to be followed with action, such as in the case of the good Samaritan. So that requires commitment in the follow up.
I would suggest taking someone to an Alcoholics Anon or Narcotics Anon (the are the same) meeting, where the only requirement for admission is a desire to stop using. Meetings are held all over town, everyday of the week. Here we find a sense of belonging and a community of others who feel the same pain.
And if someone is in a place where they are not interested in stopping the drink? What then? How involved do we get? Or do we just be loving towards them and wait til they are ready for help?
It does take a long time to admit that you have a problem. The cognitive parts of your brain wont be able to function and need time to heal while in active – that handles logic and reason.
But if someone doesn’t want help that is a hard one, make sure you have open channels and stay in touch, just be there and listen. So yes, just continue to love and listen.
At some point we reach rock bottom, which is a crucial point in recovery, a place that you start from and never want to go back to.
Sponsorship into a facility is so much in need, I have a tonne of friends who would love to do what I am doing in a facility for a year but don’t have the means.
This is a really great piece my brother, and I hope that my reply helps in some small way.
I get this question weekly in our area, sometimes daily, and with the combative nature (another story altogether) of some ways of thinking here, I often hear a very confusing anger from folks because they may have encountered a homeless friend who has been drinking, and more often than not, it has prevented them from helping in any way at all.
When I came here in 2003, both homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol, I learned very quickly that I was in a unique place, but not because I panhandled (I hustled music and played billiards for money) and that being in the ‘Bible Belt’ folks responded to my ‘kind’ in a negative way. I was actually told by a local pastor that “When you get your life sorted out, we’d be glad to have you attend ‘my’ church”.
I don’t want to get off topic here, but I felt it important to lay a bit of foundational understanding of the mentality in this touristy little town that I have discovered as my Calcutta, in which I now find myself serving those who are in the same situation as I was when I first arrived here.
For years now I have been encouraging the local church as a whole to work toward forming relationships with those whom they wish to reach, and not focus as much on the reaching part as the actual touching of lives. In some ways this has been well received, in other ways not so much, but what I have discovered over time, is that God has brought me to a place where I can not only help others, but have also gained a better understanding of who I was for a large part of my life. This has helped me to also understand my identity in Christ, so I’d say it’s a win.
It’s easy for folks around here who serve in local churches to take verses out of context and use them to leverage their point when dealing with our homeless friends, and people who are different from themselves in general, and I hope that I do not do that myself in an attempt to share my heart on this matter.
My favorite passage is the tale of Jesus touching the leper, and it is something that stays at the forefront of my mind when I go out to the local camps, and when our homeless friends come here to our home for showers, laundry day, meals etc. I could reach them where they are, and never touch them. However, something about that makes me more uncomfortable than any situation I’ve ever found myself in out on the streets.
So then, I arrive at my point, which is when I am confronted by folks who have tried to help our homeless friends, or encountered them on the streets or in public, drunk or drinking, they always say to me the same thing… “We didn’t give them money”.
I must admit that it is rare for us to give them cash either, because it is rare that we have very much extra to give away. What we prefer is to share what we have with them, and by this I mean our food, giving rides, our laundry machines, Garage 🙂 or our homes. Ultimately, this is an act of love that we share, which is far more valuable than money. Spending time, a gift that can never be reclaimed, is what we most often find to be the greatest gift of all, and it is many times what our friends value the most.
It’s rare that our local homeless friends ask us for money anymore, because they know that we live meagerly, but they also know that they are welcome to anything that we have, and to enter into our lives and share one another’s burdens, but when they do ask, and it is something that I have which I can give, I find myself staring straight down the path of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:42 where He says this; “Give to those who ask, and do not turn away from those who want to borrow.”
With that said, I have wrestled with this in the past, but Jesus has somehow brought me to a place in heart where I value very little what I can hold in my hand, unless it is the hand of another fellow human who is struggling.
Thanks for letting me share, and hopefully it makes some sort of sense. Blessings and Peace to all who are. Tim