I used to volunteer a good deal of my time at a food pantry run by my church. That food pantry was government sanctioned for food and clothing distribution under several federal programs.

One man used to come in with his official paperwork, load up his brand new Caddy with food, and walk out with a big grin on his face. He’d be there every day he was eligible.

One day, he came in with a more serious look, took me aside, and told me he had something to say: He was a drug dealer, and he used the food and clothes he got from us to buy drugs from his distributors so he could deal on the streets.

When I asked if he wanted to repent and seek forgiveness from God, he laughed and said that he was making too much money for that.

Or when I worked restoring dilapidated buildings in downtown Cincinnati, only to have the poor people who would live in them complain that the free housing we were providing didn’t have this or that, despite the fact that those renovated living spaces were nicer than any housing within five miles and even some places in the suburbs.

I could go on and on.

The truth is that all the stories we can come up with don’t add up to even the slightest objection against the truths of Scripture. They are just excuses.

Will our kindness be taken advantage of? Are you kidding? Of course it will be! That doesn’t stop us.

On the other hand, no one has the right to treat the cavalry like handmaidens. Too many Christian people allow themselves to be walked on by needy people with reprehensible ideas about what they think they deserve. Though we talk “tough love” in too many cases where plain old love is called for, some people need us to have an iron hand even as we have a soft heart. As Jesus said to the lame man at the pool of Bethesda after healing him (John 5), “Stop sinning lest something worse happen to you.” We can’t be afraid to speak those words to people even as we are saying, “Here is a piece of bread given in the name of Jesus.”