Honor Among Thieves

Dale is a large man. He stands over six feet tall, his hair is long, and his eyes squint toward you as if he hadn’t time for pleasantries. It is nearing 12 o’clock and his girlfriend still sleeps beneath a pile of blankets underneath a Tacoma November sky. Should it rain, their home, a highway underpass near Pacific Ave, should shield them from the onslaught of Western Washington’s late autumn moisture. Like rain in Seattle, the homeless in Western Washington are a mainstay. Dale, who has weathered harassment from police, violence from other homeless people, no money, and dependence on drugs, is no exception. He tells us tales of murder, drugs, and theft. He expresses his hatred for the United States government and its corruption, all of which is hard to disagree with. All Dale sees in himself and the world is evil. Is he wrong?

As Dale walks away to roll himself a cigarette, it is hard not to examine his rather large collection of clothing, dishware, and miscellaneous belongings, many of which he watches for other homeless folks for a small price. Dale has enough to his name that he could fill a small house should he find the motivation to turn his life around. When I ask if he needs any food, clothing, or toiletries, he says he has all he needs. When I ask what’s next for him however, he simply answers, “You’re looking at it.” As Dale’s toothless drug dealer pulls up in a beaten down car, the answer to my question is clear.

You get the sense that these people not only operate with disregard to societal law, but moral law as well. You have the feeling as though they have sinned so habitually that they have no regard for wrong or right at all, and the code to which they honor is dictated only by the means required to achieve their next high. It is easy to say, “It’s their choice to be where they are,” mostly because if you say that you’d nearly always be right. And if you’d ask Dale, he would probably agree.

After listening to Dale confess his troubles and his hopeless aspirations, essentially to bide his time until death, I offer to pray over him. His reply, “better not—pray for me, but not with me. I’m too far gone.”

In contrast, a large man, also named Dale, drives his early seventies Chevelle into a gym parking lot 120 miles to the North of this underpass. This Dale, by his admission, owns a large house. He gloats about his four vehicles: a Harley, a Ford F-350 lifted, a 2016 Mustang, and of course, his navy-blue pristine Chevelle. A couple months prior, Dale slept with his friend’s girlfriend, who moved in with him, which he later left for another mistress. He spends much of his time at the gym watching himself with awe in the mirror, as his recently injected testosterone pumps through his uselessly muscular frame. He is his own God.

While the two Dales seem to be equally as guilty in their own way, a third person comes to mind. Kate, a personal trainer. She is charismatic, engaged in people’s lives, beautiful, married to her college sweetheart, and has a young son not quite a year old. Kate is ambitious, with aim to grow her travel business, help her husband grow his real-estate business, and grow a training division at the gym in her spare time. She tells me about her ambitious intent, prays that God bless her finances and businesses, and prays continually for God to “lead her to prosperity.”

It is easy to get on my knees before I go to bed, close my fingers together, bow my head, and pray for the needy. It is easy to create a hierarchy of sinners, placing the generic “good person” at or near the bottom and placing people my culture deems as “wicked” toward the top. If I wanted to pray for the innocent and needy person, which of these three would qualify? The man believes God has forgotten him, the man who believes he is God, or the woman who believes God is her financial advisor? What if I throw myself into the equation? Where do I fit in the hierarchy of “good people?”

Honor among thieves. It is the scenario where the gang member and murderer sentenced to life in prison brutally assaults the accused child molester. It is the moment the wicked man disassociates himself with the wicked-er man. A more ground-level understanding of honor among thieves might be a Hollywood adult-film star accusing a reality TV star/business-man turned president of the United States of paying her to keep silent about their affair. Maybe it is a husband yelling at a wife for nagging because he didn’t take out the trash during the football game. Honor among thieves—there is not such a thing. Only hypocrites telling hypocrites they are hypocrites.

When a man tells me he isn’t worthy of God’s grace because, as he puts it, “all the shit I’ve done,” I can only agree with him. The truth is—he isn’t. We all like to say, regarding our own faults, “Well, no one is perfect,” but how imperfect do we have to become to consider ourselves “a bad person?” When Dale tells me this on this cold morning beneath the underpass, I find myself humbled. Not because of my gratitude at my good fortune in life, but because while I have a car, a job, a home, and a career—I have more in common with Dale than not; I also am not worthy of God’s grace. Not I, not the Dale’s, not Kate, not anyone. We are neither good people nor bad people—we are just people—constantly under threat of corruption, and often succumbing.

We are all subject to sin. Whether it be too much coffee, too much fast-food, too much TV, too much pornography, too much sex, too much to drink, too many drugs—we are all just searching for a means to achieve our next high. Some of us stumble in silence, some of us stumble noisily. In between moments of righteousness are moments of wickedness, and visa-versa. What has been sold as a moral yin-yang is truly a poor justification for being constantly overcome by our inadequacies. However, we cannot justify our inadequacies. By ourselves, are sins are like rain in Western Washington, they are a mainstay. No one deserves Gods justification, he gives it at a cost. But not to anyone, only those humble enough to know they need it. Only those willing to pursue a relationship with him. It is not our job to give it nor make judgement on who needs it. It is simply our job to retrieve it and let others know it can be had.     

 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”