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Notes -
For me the thought experiment is rather something:
Your love for the sinner also poses a negative externality upon your neighbors who may not share such a love.
You're still supposed to hate what God hates. God hates sin.
Loving the sinner doesn't mean helping or enabling them to sin.
Loving the sinner is calling them to repent and allowing them the benefit of the natural consequences of their sin.
What if the 'natural consequences of their sin' make them less likely to repent?
Do you have an example?
If they die on a park bench they're out of opportunities to repent.
Are the only options providing resources directly to the indigent and perhaps inducing them to remain in the area or having them die on a park bench?
Some individuals 'rock-bottom' is death.
Each individual act seems merciful in isolation, collectively, it creates an unofficial support system that makes street life sustainable enough to avoid the harder choice.
This is the same dynamic as the family who keeps bailing out the addict, paying their rent, letting them crash "just one more time." Each act feels like love. The pattern is death.
Higher-intensity services often require something in return, sobriety, curfews, accountability.
The street, subsidized by scattered charity, requires nothing. You've made the path of least resistance also the path of continued destruction.
This isn't cruelty. It's refusing to be complicit in their slow death while feeling good about yourself. The hardest part of love is sometimes not helping in the way that feels most immediately compassionate.
Still, if you see someone actually freezing to death, call for help.
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I am, by far, the most conservative person in my entire neighborhood. I live in probably the most liberal 1 square mile area of a liberal state. If anything my neighbors are upset I am not doing enough.
I'm not arguing that what I'm doing is rational, but I'm also a pretty devout Catholic and believe that everybody has intrinsic value. I want broad policies that fix these problems, but in the mean time also love the people who are suffering these things as individuals, and if they are in legitimate need, I will help them.
On a practical level, I want these people to understand that they aren't fully lost. They can come home if they want to and the world still loves them.
LOL. The world is at best indifferent.
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I’m an Orthodox Christian and I’m not allowed to leave a man to die, even if his existence is an annoyance. That said, I resist all attempts of people to use my faith to blackmail me to support suicidal empathy as a national policy. I’m firmly in the deport them all camp.
It’s called “the middle way” or “the royal road”.
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