Questions Without Answers

A young person in Homewood has been asking a lot of questions lately. He is entering his sophomore year in high school, and he is having a hard time finding a positive direction to take with his life. He has reached a point where many of his peers from Homewood have started to give in to the temptations in their neighborhood and drop out of school. He lives on a block in Homewood that is full of drug addicts, drug dealers, prostitutes, bars, and gunfire. His house is probably only two or three hundred yards from my house (an easy walk), but his home really sits in an area with constant shady traffic and illegal activity. I was driving him home the other day and an addict walked right up to our car. My mentee turned and asked me, "Ugh... why do there have to be so many crackheads right in front of my house?" I didn't have a good answer to his question. I've seen him almost every week for the past four or five years. Nothing ever changes in front of his house. I know that drugs are all around him. He knows that drugs are all around him. I don't know why the police don't do something to intervene. I don't know why more people don't care about his predicament. Well, maybe I do know, but it's too hard for me to explain it to him. The powerful people, including many Christians in Pittsburgh, don't care at all about his predicament. They're busy trying to advance themeselves. They want to advance their lifestyles. They want to advance themselves in their jobs. They want to advance their housing situations. They clearly don't have time for a fifteen year old boy living in poverty on a tough street in a neighborhood like Homewood. People generally don't want to buy a home on his street. People generally don't want to start a business in his neighborhood. Most Christians generally want to avoid his neighborhood, and specifically his street, at all costs.

But, then, tonight he walked over to our house to hang out on Monday Night Madness and he asked Julie and I another question. "Why are you guys doing this?" He had looked around our house, which was full of about fifteen or twenty kids from our neighborhood between the ages of 5 and 16. Some kids were in the back yard playing a ball toss game. Some kids were playing the Wii in our living room. Some kids were mixing beats on our keyboard. Some kids were playing Nerf basketball in the other room on our main floor. Some kids were playing dart tag in our basement. Some kids were playing frisbee and football in the parking lot of the elementary school next door. Some kids were eating in the kitchen, the same kitchen where one kid was standing there bleeding because he had gotten a little bit too involved in the dart tag game downstairs and the basement pole didn't agree with him. It was all a lot to take in. Chaos surrounded us, but the kids were having a great time and they were off of the streets for a few hours. I tried to have a meaningful discussion at one point or another with each of the kids who came over. We do this because we care. We do all of this because we have listened to God's heart for people who are hurting and ignored by society. Our particular call is to Homewood.

The majority of Christians in Pittsburgh tonight are distancing themselves from my mentee's problems. As nightfall comes in "nice" and "safe" neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh and suburbia, many kids in marginalized neighborhoods like Homewood try to go to sleep asking themselves questions. "Does anyone care about me?" "Why are there gunshots in my neighborhood?" "Why are there so many drug addicts, drug dealers, prostitutes, or bars by my house?" "Why is my street so run down?" But... maybe somewhere in Pittsburgh tonight, there is a Christian who is restless because of their struggle to answer the questions associated with God's call on their heart. Maybe they are considering mentoring a child. Maybe they are considering building other types of relationships with people in neighborhoods like Homewood. Maybe they would be willing to sacrifice their own comforts in order to impact those who are hurting or struggling right here, in their own city, on this very night. Maybe, just maybe, the Christians in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area will step into their roles as the body of Christ, as people who represent Christ to those who are hurting, to those who popular society ignores. Or, maybe, they'll turn their heads to the other side of the pillow and try to sleep thinking about all of the comforts that the world has to offer them tomorrow. There are jobs to be done. There are retirement accounts to be filled. There are $300,000 mortgages to be paid off. There are private Christian school tuitions to be paid for. There are vacations to be taken this summer. Who wants those pesky suffering people in our own city to ruin any plans for advancement?