Can I Ask You A Question

When I was in college, I remember an incident here in West Philadelphia when I was walking down the street in the evening with a handful of my friends, maybe three women and one or two men.  A guy approached us and said something to the effect of, "Can I ask you a question?"  He looked sketchy, but I wanted to acknowledge him rather than blowing him off, so I responded.  He and I began to talk, and he was about to ask me for something when suddenly two or three cops pulled up in their cars, jumped out, and grabbed the guy.  Apparently, he was a pretty bad troublemaker, and they had gotten a report of him having done something nearby earlier in the evening.

 

As they were hauling the guy off and the cops were scolding me for talking to him, I felt so embarrassed.  Embarrassed that I had put my friends and myself in danger, embarrassed that I was too naïve to figure out that this guy was trouble, embarrassed that my attempt to be nice and to be fearless had gone so awry. 

 

I recall this story because I think it must have affected a more recent interaction I had, again here in West Philadelphia.  It had been a few weeks since my wife and I had been able to go out on a date, and we were finally able to coordinate with a babysitter and were out of the house, enjoying our brief freedom from parenthood.  Our "dates" had heretofore usually consisted of power walks and pizza parlors, but that night we decided to go to a semi-nice restaurant, so we dressed up a bit for the occasion.

 

We were walking down the street to the restaurant, deep in conversation, when a sketchy-looking guy came up on us and said, "Can I ask you a question?"  If I was by myself, I might've stopped and heard the guy out.  But given that I was with my wife, and we were itching to get to the restaurant, I brushed the guy off and said, "Sorry, we gotta go."  And then we sped up our pace to get away from him.  But not so far away that we couldn't hear him cursing us out for blowing him off. 

 

Maybe the guy was trouble, like the other guy in the first story several years ago.  Or maybe he was just scruffy-looking on the outside, but he really did have a harmless question, like "what time is it" or "where is the nearest subway station."  No matter.  In the moment, I didn't hesitate; I didn't want to talk to him, and that was that.

 

But I wonder if that was rude of me, snobby of me, most importantly, un-Christian of me.  For people far scruffier and dubious than these two guys seemed to keep tumbling into Jesus' life, and He – as God in the flesh – had time for them.  In fact, the Bible seems to suggest that Jesus Himself is tumbling into our lives, in the form of the outcasted and dirty of our society, and that how we treat Him then will go a long way toward determining how He – as Final Judge – will treat us for eternity. 

 

When I was in college, I was a lot less snobby towards the scruffier ones in my midst.  I rarely gave them money or even bought them food, but I would converse with them, learn their names, sometimes pray with them.  One or two I got to know so well I cut their hair a few times.  But even then, and especially now, I don't feel I have a handle on whether I ought to be more friendly or more careful.  "Can I ask you a question?"  I've heard it now at least twice in my life, and neither time did I feel I had the right answer.