I read about Rahab today. When I used to read about her, this was my impression of the spies' story: "Yeah, Joshua, like there was this prostitute and we were scared so we hid at her place." RIGHT.
No, it makes more sense to me now. Prostitution and gangs are just the best option for many of the youth growing up today. What does our society value? Sex, money, pleasure/calm (drugs), and power. Or as one Newark gang named themselves: Sex Money Murder. I have been watching Gangland over the shoulder of some of our youth at work, and the message is always clear: you can make thousands of dollars a day selling drugs, but you will probably die and go to prison for it, and if you're infamous, you might get on TV too as a real life badass. Power. One South African Gangster film was still more interesting: this gangster basically sabatoged apartment complexes into shutting down, and then took them over with the best interests of the people in mind: no drugs allowed, the apartments must be kept nice, and rent would be lower. Of course, his apartment empire also made him fabulousy wealthy, and keeping drugs out meant resorting to violence and murder.
The youth in our transitional living facility aren't given a lot of positive role models: video girls, gangsters, the Jersey Shore. Their families let them down, if they ever did have a family they could call home. The percentage of our youth who have experienced abuse of some kind is absurd. There is trauma from incarceration, sexual and physical abuse, seeing friends killed, or from selling yourself for sex.
We had one youth that was incredibly intelligent; her apartment was spotless, lined with books. She didn't want to follow our rules; she was already self-sufficient. She never gave us a straight story. Maybe she was a stripper, maybe she was pimping out others, maybe she was being pimped, or maybe we just misunderstood her as a young person who was tired of us seeing a skeleton in every closet...a young person who didn't fit our usual profile of passivity, misbehavior, and unprofessionalism.
The problematics and hypocrises of a program are many. If these youth (aged 18-22) were in a college dorm, the sex, alcohol, and drugs would probably be more or less accepted. The only difference is that our youth face greater scrutiny. They probably wouldn't have a curfew in a dorm, whereas most of them have to be home here by midnight here, and often they have to be back earlier. While I hope that our home is a safe haven, it feels more like an absurdity when the youth are walking down to the corner store a minute away, and sometimes they buy drugs, sometimes cigarettes, or sometimes just a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich. One of the most disturbing things about our program is the use of "suspension," or to put it bluntly, kicking the youth back out on the street as a form of punishment. There are a couple considerations here: 1)we can't allow youth to put our whole family in danger. 2)most of the youth have somewhere to go. 3)They can always go to "The Mission," our local shelter, although most of the youth reject the idea flat out ("I'm not an animal," one youth told me.). 4)if our relationship breaks down to the point of power, we can pretty much only do this or fine them. Since fines represent a conflict of interests, and a more permanent punishment that affects them once they've left, we kick them out on the street. I don't know. It drives me crazy, I don't think I would ever do that to my kids. But I guess if I had ten kids and one of them was bringing drugs into the house or beating up other kids...it would have to come to a head. Perhaps even more ironic, "overnights," which are basically the same thing as suspensions (a night away from the building) are also our highest form of reward.
A lot of the arguments we have with the youth are just about freedom and power. The kids want to go out and party, they don't want to clean their rooms, they want to cuss out staff and wander around spewing discontent. A lot of them just like to push, just like to see how people react, just like to watch the show, even if it's them who's putting on the show. I try not to have a power relationship with the youth, except when it comes down defending the well-being of the other youth.
It's kinda absurd, what I'm doing. I have less money in my bank account than our youth do. I have less years of independent experience in the world, about the same amount of job experience (in the same sorts of fields) that they do. Some of them are way better at getting jobs than I am, and they are all held (or hold themselves) to higher standards of professionalism in dress, room cleanliness, budgeting (50% goes to savings), etc. All that separates me from them really is a piece of paper degree and a family. But that doesn't bother me much. What really bothers me is seeing how much help these kids need...but at the same time, they don't need it much at all. What they needed was a family: What they got was a program, for some of them, program after program after program. We help our youth do all the things I've decided not to do with my life thus far: get jobs, save money, get health insurance, use government programs to get help. Hopefully we help them with things like life and God and self-confidence too. The hardest thing for me is the doubt that these youth don't really need me. Most of these youth feel entitled. A book on ministry to street youth put it this way: in the developed countries, street youth dream of families. Elsewhere, they dream of shoes and 3 square meals.
The spies talked to Rahab because she was an outsider on the street, someone who would actually talk to the two obviously foreign people in their midst (as I am obviously foreign here). It was probably a relief to meet someone who wouldn't see her as just a prostitute. Prostitution was her job, not who she was, and she wouldn't have tried to make a buck off of these spies. Similarly, selling drugs is just the logical choice that thousands of youth make every day, the easiest way to pay the bills. And the independence, individual ownership/responsibility, the short-term potential for advancement, and excitement of the job seems like it will always be better than working at McDonald's. Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of using drugs, and I don't know how to have grace for users and dealers who fund the murder of children and the corruption of governments from New Jersey to Tijuana to Colombia. It's an evil business. But it seems a far more humanizing job than flipping burgers, or even, if you let the paper work be your job, social work. Problem with selling drugs (from an employee perspective) is you can't get out.
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