The Point: Tough compassion

re: "...This opinion is shared by “The Nun from Hell,” who runs a homeless shelter for women in Chicago. When I interviewed Sister Connie for the BreakPoint article, she told me that most of the young women who ended up at her shelter “didn’t want to follow their mama’s rules.” In other words, they had a place in which to live but chose to leave in order to live a lifestyle involving one irresponsible decision after another. Because Sister Connie forces residents to deal with these bad decisions, few of her clients ever end up back in a shelter. /Having said that—a year ago, my husband and I, working through a crisis pregnancy center, accepted into our home two pregnant women, each of whom already had a young child. / One of them perfectly fit Sister Connie’s description of her typical client: She was 17 years old, had left home because she didn’t get along with her mother, become pregnant with her first child at 15, and later became pregnant with the second baby, whose father serving a prison term. This young woman’s irresponsible behavior continued in our home, and we frankly could not wait for her to leave. / But the second young woman was a different story. She was married to an uneducated man who lost his job. She and her little boy needed a place to stay for just a few weeks while her husband located another job and could save enough to pay the rent on a small apartment. /So yes, we need to show compassion to those who find themselves on the street. But we should also take a hard look at the choices homeless people make, and not be afraid to insist on lifestyle changes as a condition of our help, as Christians did 100 years ago, as decribed in Marvin Olasky’s book The Tragedy of American Compassion."...