Because people are contagious. What other people allow into their lives affects you and your life.
Example: Fast-forwarding through a lot of drama, one of my tenants ended up abandoning the rent house in possession of her barely-18-yo son and going back home, about 2000 miles away. Normally, what I do is clear out stuff, get things cleaned and fixed, and re-rent. However, I felt bad for this kid, and let myself get involved in trying to give him a hand. His mom, it turned out, did meth. He himself had gotten into gangs in his old home, and had been in juvie for shoplifting and whatever else. I thought that I could help him rise over his upbringing, and be a nice, normal, stable person, leading a nice, normal, stable life, if only I gave him a chance to make something of himself.
But no matter how hard I worked with him, I couldn’t force him to be successful. I helped him get a job that paid $3k/mo (good for our area!)… but he couldn’t keep it more than a week. He went and got a part-time job at a local fast-food place… and he couldn’t keep it, either. He was more focused on certain drugs that were legal back home, and not legal here… and it got him in trouble. And then when he slept with a local drug dealer’s girlfriend… yeah, things exploded. I had never seen anyone genuinely in fear of his life before.
Giving these people a chance cost me plenty-- not just lost rent, but needles flushed down toilets (gotta replace the whole thing), condoms clogging up the sewer lines (gotta roto-root), angry drug dealers beating in the door (gotta replace the door and then the other door), angry people looking for stolen property (had no idea it was stolen! golly!), and whatever else. They couldn’t afford food for their stomachs, but they could afford pit bulls, and random stray cats (fleas! now I’m dealing with fleas!) and cigarettes (whole house re-paint!) and drugs.
My life would be so much simpler if I hadn’t decided to give her a chance to rise above her circumstances, and then compounded my bad decision by trying to give him a chance. I’m not just out half a year of lost rent; I’m out so much wear and tear from them trashing my house, and their friends and enemies trashing it, too.
I love 'em as human beings, even if I don’t embrace them as paragons of virtue. God created them to do something with their lives, and Jesus died to offer them salvation. But they’re so mired in that lifestyle, it would have been better for me to have not welcomed them in the first place. Now-- imagine that it wasn’t just limited to a business relationship. Imagine that it was a social relationship, and I hung out with them (just to be loving and neighborly!), and encouraged my kids to hang out with them, too. Tell me five good things you think would come out of that scenario.
