Shenzhen, China isn't too hard to get to from Hong Kong. You get on the KCR (the public train in Hong Kong) and get off at Lo Wu. From Lo Wu you go through the immigrations and customs, walk across a bridge which crosses the China/Hong Kong border, buy the Shenzhen visa permit and then go through the Chinese immigrations and customs.
Shenzhen is a business center that tries to keep up with the frenzy of banking and trade that Hong Kong is famous for.
Once you're across the border you can sense a difference. Inside China the police and soldiers are a little more rigid, or should I say unfriendly and disagreeable.
The people seem more distant than the people in Hong Kong. There's a strained look on most faces. The typical dress is far from the progressive western clothing worn by most in Hong Kong.
Phileena and I were walking through the city looking for a place to mail some postcards when we were first approached by the children.
They were thin faced and poorly dressed. It was a cold February day and these malnourished children were on the streets begging.
The first child we saw was a 7 or 8 year old boy. He had a long black coat, a sunken face and scabs on his lips. He asked for a dollar and I gave him a handful of change.
We didn't see the others, but they certainly saw us. As soon as I handed the kid some money we were surrounded by other children begging. We walked on, a parade of little ones following us, not knowing what to do.
There were too many and we didn't have enough money for all of them. All the “arguments” as to why we should or why we should not give to beggars went through my mind.
It's hard to know when and what to give to the beggars. On one hand, by giving to a beggar you are only encouraging a lifestyle of pathetic dependency, that, if perpetuated, eventually will lead to very unhealthy implications. It can be seen as perpetuating an unhealthy view of “foreign assistance”, leading the poor to believe the only ones who will help are those from abroad.
It's also hard to decipher whether the man, woman or child that is begging isn't being put up to it by the black market (we later found out that those children begging were in fact “owned” by gangs that deal Opium and Heroine). The black market in China is cruel. They steal children and intentionally cripple them, gauge their eyes out, or inflict them with a number of any other humanitarian crimes. Then they place them in “strategic locations” so that they will earn money for their slum lord. There are instances when it is a set up of the black market and the dilemma hits whether to give or not to give…
On the other hand, the man, woman, or child begging from you is literally dying in front of your face, and how can you not give? After all, the Scriptures do say, “Give to everyone who asks…”, but does it mean to give what they ask? And what about the way one gives? By giving are you only doing this “act of kindness” to get that persistent beggar to leave you alone? If you do give, can you give only a handful of change and feel good about that? And what about the questions that linger… “Will I be held accountable for not giving to that child on my day of judgment?” for the Scriptures also say, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat…”
Giving. You can never tell if the money you give can be a demonstration of God's provision for His children… a witness of His overwhelming Love. You can never tell if the money you give will be the meal that saves the life of that poor mother's child…
At times, it is easy for one to become cynical and grow to despise the constant begging. The irritating crowd that follows, asking for more after you've given to one. The woman that asks for a container of formula for her baby, only to turn around and resell it, with a percentage going to her slum lord.
There are thousands and thousands of beggars in China, with no way to help them all, with no way to know which ones are truly needy and which ones are out to take advantage of someone with a compassionate heart. It's very hard to know what to do sometimes.
“Eat everything on your plate, don't you know there are children starving in China?” kept running through my head. As a child I heard it a thousand times, but as an adult I was faced with their gaunt faces and sad eyes asking for a dollar. Not even a U.S. dollar, but a Hong Kong dollar-worth only $0.13.
The longer we walked the more the children gathered around us and followed us. We could only give to a few, but the others still followed.
It started to get irritating. The children would pull and hang from our arms, they'd grab our ankles and stand in front of us making us walk around them.
The only way we could get them to leave us alone was to ignore them. It didn't work at first but slowly the crowd of beggars dwindled down to about three or four children.
We walked on to the Hong Kong/Chinese border. I felt sick about the condition of those children and how I had treated them.
Then it hit me… just as I had ignored those beggars, we ignore Jesus and make Him painfully come to us, begging for our time and for our attention. He's begging for our lives and we walk past Him rarely noticing Him. We put Him through pain as we ignore Him and we make Him come to us at our convenience, in our timing, not His. We have made our Precious Savior a beggar because we've become a selfish people, a hard hearted people.
Those children broke me and changed my life. Their dirty, open palms reminded me of the soft, tender palm that was pierced with a large stake for my sake, for my selfishness…
Oh, may the Lord break us, and may His call be always obeyed, lest we punish Him all the more and turn our Redeemer into our beggar.