When I was hungry, you gave me food

The Making of a Spiritual Anarchist

I recently came across a series of articles by Barnabas Smith on medium.com titled The Making of a Spiritual Anarchist. One of them was When I Was Hungry, You Gave Me Food.

The phrase below, “after my time on the bench,” relates to Barnabas’ punishment for not getting good grades. His father made him sit on the bench outside his father’s store, hoping to give him a different perspective on the importance of a good education. I know, that begs the question of what a good education is. The store was in a part of the city where there were people living on the street.

After my time on the bench, I decided to take matters into my own hands. If the city wouldn’t take care of its citizens and churches weren’t going to take care of their neighbors, then I would do what I could. As a high schooler, it wasn’t much.

I started by buying two meals when I ate out and giving the extra away. After graduating high school, I started inviting people to have lunch with me instead. To me, if taking care of someone was also taking care of Jesus, wouldn’t it be better to have lunch with him and treat him as a friend?

I did help a few churches organize their outreach programs. If they were willing to put their time and money into the community, I figured it was best to help them do it right. And by right I mean, by treating the people they were seeking to serve as people and not a project. To see them as human beings fully loved by God and not as souls to save from God’s wrath. It was hit or miss on how the outreaches actually lived up to this.

I didn’t know at the time, but my disregard and distrust of the necessity of institutions was a hallmark of anarchism. I was simply trying to do my part to help my community. I wasn’t radicalized in college or by reading Marx. I was awakened to the needs of the people around me. My neighbors. People who the powers that be saw as unimportant.

When I Was Hungry, You Gave Me Food. The Making of a Spiritual Anarchist, Part 2 by Barnabas Smith, medium.com, Sept 18, 2023

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matthew 25

If you’ve read other articles I’ve written you know I was profoundly changed when the Spirit connected me with the people at Des Moines Mutual Aid about four years ago. Barnabas’s article distills a few things I’ve learned or questioned as a result of my experiences there.

Why are so few churches feeding, clothing, and providing shelter to those in need?
- Sending money somewhere doesn’t count.
When they do, why do so many dehumanize those they are trying to help?
- I say “trying” because how helpful is treating those in need this way?
Mutual Aid groups across the country and the world are doing these things and treating our neighbors as ourselves.

There is a large collection of articles about spirituality in The Anarchist Library. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/spirituality