Chris has served with WMF in Chennai, India and the US from 1993 to the present. His article appeared in The Cry, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 2000).
We were playing soccer in a park when I first met Juan. Actually, he wasn’t playing with us, but he did run through the middle of the playing field, interrupting our game. Juan was wearing a purple and green windbreaker inside out. The jacket looked brand new against his dirty skin and the rest of his street worn, dingy clothing. As he ran past us, Walter asked him why he was running. Juan’s reply was abrupt and short as he kept glancing over his shoulder from where he had come, and running away from where we were.
I asked Walter why Juan was running and why he didn’t seem to want to play soccer with the rest of the children who lived on the street. Walter’s response was a short-lived, quickly fulfilled prophecy: Juan had probably stolen the jacket and was running to get away from the victim of the crime. Just was Walter finished answering this question a Peruvian man, probably 24-25 years old, ran through the park chasing Juan.
The young man was angry. My heart went out to him. He had probably really liked his jacket and was probably minding his own business when it was taken from him.
But as I watched the scene unfold my heart also went out to Juan and I found myself torn between hoping that the young man would get his jacket back, and hoping that the little thief would get away and have something to keep him warm as he would be spending another cold night on the streets of Lima.
It was a unique encounter concerning crucial issues of justice. The little thief stole what he needed, simply a jacket to keep his cold body warm, or maybe to sell when his empty stomach couldn’t take the hunger pains any longer. The college student seemed to be the victim, but upon my reflection was a thief as well.
The student seeming to be a thief showed me the thief in my own heart. Often, it is because of our selfish tendencies to accumulate and hoard, that many of the world’s poor go without their basic needs. We are the thieves when we mistake our financial and material blessings as individual provision, rather than resources with potential for Kingdom development. We are the thieves when we hold on to those things that don’t actually belong to us, those things that God has intended for the poor.
Sometimes it may be our education, our savings account, maybe even our ability to choose our occupation or the neighborhood where we live – many times it’s our very life that we keep from giving fully over to the Lord.
Our theft of God’s blessing and provision does not justify the crimes the poor may sometimes commit, but it certainly does not justify the criminal attitudes we foster and felonious postures of our hearts. This tale of two thieves paints the disturbing reality of an unjust disparity causing one thief (the poor) to steal from the other thief (us, the non-poor) who has already stolen and continues to steal from God. May Juan’s act of misjudgment challenge us to consider the disobedience we perpetuate by our own disappointing disregard for the poor, and cause us to surrender all that God has placed into our hands.