Lessons from The Blind Side

My wife and I watched the movie The Blind Side on Saturday night. The movie is funny, well-acted, and very emotionally moving. It is the true story of how a wealthy white family adopted a destitute black teenager from inner city Memphis. That destitute kid, Michael Oher, made the Dean's List at Ole Miss and is now an NFL star. Two things struck me as I watched the movie. First, the pain and tragedy of Michael's childhood. He never knew his father, and his mother was a crack addict who had a dozen children, apparently all with different fathers. He was essentially homeless at age 15 when the Tuohy family picked him up on the side of the road, wearing nothing but a t-shirt & shorts on a cold night. Watching the scenes in the movie where Mrs. Tuohy meets Michael's mom and where Michael tells Mrs. Tuohy he wants to stay with them will tug at your heart strings.

The other thing that struck me about the movie was the genuine Christian faith of the Tuohy family. To bring a virtually unknown 15-year-old kid to stay in your house from off the street takes both compassion and courage, and the Tuohys had plenty of both. The movie makes clear that this compassion and courage was a result of their evangelical Christianity, and it is surprising and refreshing to watch a Hollywood film that paints believers in a positive light rather than ridiculing them. Because of the Tuohys' intervention, Michael's life was transformed. Without them, he would likely have continued the rest of his life in poverty and hopelessness; thanks to their love and support, he was able to achieve greatness.

I don't think there's a government program on earth that could have transformed Michael's life in that way. One loving family did more for him than tens of thousands of welfare payments could ever do. That doesn't mean that I think we should eliminate welfare or other social programs for the poor. But those programs have not eliminated poverty, and they will never do so. And ironically, some of the cities that spend the most on social programs for the poor have some of the worst problems with homelessness and addiction (like San Francisco, which spends an average of $130,000 per homeless person without any appreciable reduction in homelessness levels). A well-designed government program to help the poor can provide needy people with their most basic needs while encouraging them to help themselves and take responsibility. But I think what truly destitute people need to enable them to get out of poverty is a personal connection -- individual people to demonstrate love, compassion, and help tailored to their specific situation. They don't need just money; they need a change in their thinking, habits, and lifestyle. Large government bureaucracies can't do that very well. That is why individuals and private non-profit charities are usually much more efficient and effective at helping the poor than the government is. Ask victims of Hurricane Katrina who helped them more: FEMA or church groups and other private volunteers!

I think this provides a challenge for us as individuals. What are we doing to help people around us in need? What are our churches doing to show compassion to those who need it the most? It also provides us with a needed caution. Let us not confuse real compassion with politicians spending other people's tax dollars on bloated bureaucracies that do more to encourage laziness and government dependence than to provide lasting help.