Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charleston, S.C.
But Shepard's descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents' home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.
To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.
During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.
Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.
The effort, he says, was inspired after reading "Nickel and Dimed," in which author Barbara Ehrenreich takes on a series of low-paying jobs. Unlike Ms. Ehrenreich, who chronicled the difficulty of advancing beyond the ranks of the working poor, Shepard found he was able to successfully climb out of his self-imposed poverty.
Sometimes people have a hand up to help out. I'm with that. But I have spent a lot of time in soup kitchens and homeless shelters. The recurring theme for me are the people who CHOOSE to be there and the same faces showing up over and over. We are doing no favor to those people by feeding and sheltering them. They are scamming the system.
I know I sound heartless but I think we have as Christians become a tribe of enablers. We should be more wise.
One other thing. My son, 136, moved to Boston with a little money, no place to live and a high mileage old Pontiac. That was 8 years ago. He worked his way up to where he has 5 figures in the bank, his own place and a good paying job. He started from scratch with little or nothing and is doing very well today. He was much like this guy. He blew into town with no place to live, no job, no nothing except the belief he could do this thing.
It is a myth that you can't work your way back.
If you want to give to or help in a homeless shelter, if that's your calling, do it. But, sometimes we are robbing God of the chance to redeem someone who is in the pigpen eating peapods because we get in HIS way.
It's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of that. I'd be much tougher.
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