Deceptive Christian Tippers

First, check out this article about customers who have left phony $10 bills marked with religious tidbits in place of monetary tips for their wait staff.

I'll wait.

...I know, right? I bet you're squirming with indignance, even if you've never worked as a server before, and/or you're concerned about the non-complimentary angle from which this piece serves up the Christian faith. Mmm, self-righteous deception for the glory of God. Delicious.

So let me begin (is it too late now to begin?) by saying that I think there's more to this than a critical view of Christianity. Some of Jesus' most controversial points were his criticisms of hypocrites and those who considered themselves most righteous. Today, this doesn't mean that we need to avoid Christianity or gathering as a faith community, but we do need to keep reimagining what it means to be a Christian while searching the core of Jesus' movement.

The article points out that not all Christians are poor tippers deceptive tippers, but the truth is, some are. So how do Christians reconcile that? How do we act, as Christians, knowing that this is the image of Christianity that some people - religious and nonreligious - have been given? How do we express what we believe and how we live without alienating or betraying people or being condescending to them? (Whichever "them." All of them.)

Instead of presuming to answer questions like these (since I think these are the sorts of questions best answered via actions), I'm going to highlight further what I consider a few important issues in the described scenario.

THE ISSUE OF DECEPTION

Do the people who do this think it's fitting that their religious intervention takes the form of fake money? What are they trying to convey, and what are they conveying instead?

If their message is that there are things in life more important than money, are they making that point by getting a hard worker's hopes up, thinking they've received a good tip, just to fool them?

Why not just leave a message on a card or paper instead; why go through the trouble of using fake money? Which brings us to...


THE REAL, HUMAN CONCERNS OF THE STAFF

As written in James, faith without good works is dead, and it does little good to give someone spiritual guidance if their basic needs are ignored (very Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, about 1800 years in advance).

By this example, should we replace all salaries with advice instead? How do the people leaving these tips support themselves? (And let's not pretend that a waiter's tip is beyond comparison to a wage, particularly if the employee's official salary is otherwise below legal minimum wage.)

Money is not the root of all evil; it has potential to do good, and technically it's just a tool in the extended bartering system of one person's time and labor in exchange for another's. So let's make every effort to make a fair trade.


THE GRATITUDE FACTOR

Traditionally, the amount of a tip is considered to be commensurate with the customer's gratitude and/or a measure of the quality of the service. Wait staff are often paid below minimum wage and depend greatly on their tips; unless stated, it's not included in the bill and the customer chooses the amount. A lack of tip signals extraordinarily bad service and/or extraordinarily ungrateful customers.

If a religious person is inclined to use this occasion to share the Gospel (more on that in a sec), they could do so separately and leave a note with the tip. Might look too much like bribing someone to convert, but tipping is being kind, generous, mindful of the server, and a decent customer. The note is just an additional and probably unsolicited expression of spiritual concern, whatever one's views on that matter. And speaking of which...


EVANGELISM IN ITSELF IS NOT A BAD THING

Mainstream Protestant churches and nonreligious groups sometimes villainize evangelism or proselytism, or else don't know what to do with it and shy away, but passive-aggressive practices like fake-tipping only fuel that fire.

At its best, (Christian) evangelism means sharing the Gospel, the good news - that something amazing has happened in Christ and continues to happen when the Spirit is at work in us. It means believing something so deeply that it simply must be shared; to avoid sharing altogether would imply that there's nothing so great or urgent there in the first place.

But the core of Christianity isn't about dropping a spiritual nugget of wisdom and running. Jesus and biblical writers like Paul emphasize community, unconditional love, and nurturing one another. Actually, these concepts being made reality are all a huge part of the message!

So telling others about Jesus isn't a bad thing, and these customers may genuinely believe that they're appropriately sharing an important message, but they've made no attempt to connect to the person in a truly meaningful way - nothing that demands risk or even much time and energy on their part. Unless they're chatty regulars, they're not around to nurture the server in faith or in general.

(Oh yeah. Sidenote: Casting Crowns touched on the idea of true Christian outreach and active care in the song "If We Are the Body.")

If anything, deceptive tippers teach someone to believe that Christians not only aren't generous but return (presumably) good service with self-righteousness under the guise of giving glory to God. They imply that, if God is actually supposed to work in the world through believers, then God does not provide or heal but only chastizes and counts followers.

Mainly, it's my hope that the religious and non-religious folks who read and reflect on the aforementioned Daily Finance article walk away with something other than a bitterness for Christians and others who seem too "pushy" in sharing faith (as, I admit, I have been prone to feel).

I hope that there is something fortifying and renewing to be found here - perhaps faith-affirming, or at least reconciling.

One of my favorite things about taking Church History classes in seminary (besides inordinate gobs of song parody fodder) has been confronting some of the terrible things that Christians have done, often in God's name.

Being honest about this troubling history - and realizing that "my" church and I are not necessarily much holier - has opened me up to thinking about all the good potential the church still holds and, perhaps most inspirationally, how we as a faith community can grow beyond and despite our mistakes.

An Open Letter to Harold Camping

(the man for whom May 21, 2011 marks Judgment Day)

---

Dear Mr. Camping,


"I establish my covenant with you: Never again
will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again
will there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Genesis 9:11)

Discuss.


Sincerely,
Kimmery

Clinging to Hatred

I just read a really well-written post about hatred at the blog Christian Girl at College. It is particularly poignant in light of the complicated response to the death of Bin Laden.

Click here to read Midwesterndiva's thought-provoking post.


Image Source

And here is the response I wrote to her post and the subsequent comments, an interesting discussion on judgment and righteous anger/hatred:

At the risk of proof-texting and skipping around Bible verses in a way that does justice to none of them, this conversation reminds me of the warning against hypocrisy in Matthew 7:5 and Luke 6:42 - taking the plank out of one's own eyes before attempting to remove the speck in someone else's.

When we are called to hate evil, we are called to hate the evil in our own hearts and at our own hands just as much as we hate evil elsewhere. There is too high a price for assigning a point system based on human understanding of which acts are more evil and thus which people are more evil.

If we justify our hatred of people who have murdered and terrorized, perhaps we are not as different as we think from those who justified their hatred of the people they then murdered and terrorized. This frightens me, yes, and it is difficult to look at my own life and realize that even if I have never killed another person, I have certainly been angry with others and perhaps unjustly so. The best I can do is to reconcile that in myself and strive to live out the love I have unduly received.

Religious Anti-Environmentalism at Its Worst

In the midst of working on my final papers for a course called The Spirituality of Ecology with the proficient Dr. Laurel Kearns, I found more than enough motivation - in fighting the myths offered under the guise of spirituality.

This video suffers from inordinate misinformation and lack of evidential support:



How many "false assertions" (as they would say) can you spot?

I'll start you off.

First major inaccuracy: supporting environmental justice means putting the wellbeing of nature ahead of that of people.



Fact: Ecological degradation disproportionately affects the poor, the indigenous, and minority populations.

Let's be clear.

The "environment" is not just wildlife or the Grand Canyon or Algonquin Park. It is also the plant in Newark, New Jersey, the site of the chemical accident of Agent Orange; it is a landfill; it is Chernobyl; it is the Ironbound District; it is the slaughterhouse; it is Doremus Avenue, the "Chemical Corridor." The environment is our surroundings, whether placid and flowery or a pit of squalor and waste. And people live in both settings.

In the Ironbound District of New Jersey, signs of environmental degradation and the risks it poses to the humans living there are evident. For just a few examples:

-A community pool had to be constructed on lifts to prevent contact with hazardous chemicals in the ground.

-There is approximately one half acre of green space per 1000 people, versus the average 7-8 acres per 1000 people.

-When the community implemented an Astroturf soccer field, it was eventually found to be poisoned with lead. Residents and environmental workers needed to fight hard for lead-testing for the children who had walked and played there, including preschool students whose teachers had often taken them across the field.

And if that isn't enough to swallow, to help people to fathom one individual's impact, "ecological footprint" tests are available; they evaluate, based upon lifestyle, such a question as: "If everyone lived as you do, how many earths would be needed?" Even the most ecologically-minded are shocked to discover that their practices only go so far. When people who already live extraordinarily lightly on the earth are scoring two, three, four planets we know we are in dire trouble.

As for the claim that the environmentalist movement has become its own religion which threatens - I'm sorry, that is, "is deadly to" - the Gospel of Jesus and the good of the church...?



Not so.

There's "an elephant in the way," folks, but it isn't the environmental movement.

First of all, if we're going to argue the idolatry angle, then as Dr. Laurel Kearns has said, consumerism itself is a system of beliefs and values - not the least of which are low prices, budgeting, and possessing gadgets. Let's not forget that.

Second, the Bible is perhaps the most frequently misunderstood and misquoted source. This case is no exception.

According to Dr. Catherine Keller, natural science is a crucial ally to eco-theologians. And some non-religious authors have referred to creation as "divinely inspired," which is more scripturally accurate than many Christians' perspective of dictatorially imposed creation.

The often misinterpreted Genesis story does not claim creatio ex nihilo – creation from nothing, from a formless void – but rather from tohuvabohu – an uninhabitable mishmash, literally a word that cannot be translated except as what seems a sparingly-used rhyming colloquialism. Creation occurs at the edge of chaos. If there is too much chaos, there is disillusion; if there is too much order, nothing can emerge.

Possibly an even more commonly disputed interpretation of Genesis is that it grants humans "dominion" and the right to "subdue" nature to humans' own means, rather than describing a human role of steward and caretaker.

But this simply cannot mean exploitation; rather, it entails power with responsibility and wisdom, that humanity should view creation with love and awe. The Bible prohibits waste, the cause of extinction, and the cause of pain to living creations.

Humans have an emaciated understanding of the world – often using the dualistic terms "we" and "they" in all matters. "We" as a species claim superiority, deeming the rest of nature as inferior forms of life.

Nevertheless, "we" forget that, according to Christian principle, we are judged by the way that we treat the least powerful, and we continue to wreak destruction – actively and passively – on a creation which cannot restore itself.

This is only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg. If this is at all new to you, as it was for me this past year, I hope you'll consider delving more deeply into the subject. Don't take my word for it, and don't take scare tactic videos like the above at face value, either. This issue is far too critical not to do one's own investigation.


Tipping my hat to Scotteriology on this one. Please read his blog post on the subject here.

Pandora's Sense of Humor

What should come on the radio the other day just as I was writing about salvation but none other than "Save Me" by the Dave Matthews Band?



Now I'm holding out for the Beatles' "Ballad of John and Yoko."



Thank you, Pandora Radio. You get me. Like on a creepy level.

The Gospel is Not a Weapon

In November, a pastor named Jim Swilley came out to his congregation; in an interview with CNN, he discussed his church and family, as well as the misuse and abuse of scripture.

View the video below, and please excuse the general incompetence of the interviewer.




I regret that the interviewer really didn't allow Swilley more time to speak to the issue (near the end of the interview as it were), but I appreciate that Swilley's words echo the message of this clip from the film "Saved," a great illustration of the matter at-hand:




(Thank you to D. for reminding me of this scene!)


It saddens me when any faith of peace is manipulated or misrepresented to do harm in any form. But instead of continuing to rehash the ways in which scripture has been used as a weapon, I'd like to share something else.

I've recently written about my take on syncretism, religious diversity, and upholding one's right to belief. But with that, I believe in the right to share one's beliefs. I think a leave-it-alone, don't-ask-don't-tell approach in which everyone is expected to keep their business to themselves can put us in a vacuum.

So here are a few of my own tips for sharing one's beliefs; and while I write them from one Christian's perspective, I hope that if you see anything that rings true in other traditions, you will say so or take it with you. I will list them now and expand upon them later for the sake of readability.


Thoughtful, Authentic, Nonviolent Evangelism

-Be honest about where your religion or worldview falls short or where you think it could fall short. A religion with limitation does not necessarily indicate a God with limitation.

-Consider context. Be willing to approach people in different ways, respecting their own experiences and understandings.

-Be willing to be honest about your own mistakes and difficulties, past and present, and to discuss issues that often go unspoken or against the grain of public opinion.


I will illustrate these points in the future and hope to add to the list. If you'd like to make further suggestions, you're welcome to email me!

Roman Catholic: The Entertainment Factor

by C.M. Schott, contributor

Whenever something more-than-natural is afoot in film and TV—and often even when it isn’t—the protagonists turn Catholic. I had this realization brought home to me recently when, during an episode of Heroes, of all things, Peter Patrelli found himself in St. Patrick’s Cathedral trying (not quite in vain) to strike a bargain with Jesus.

This scene led me to think of so many situations in film, TV, literature, and music when the “je ne sais quoi” of Roman Catholicism seemed irresistible to artists: there are fallen-away Catholic characters like Sydney in The Pretender (remember that series?) and Grissom in CSI; sci-fi is rife with religious metaphor—even the “Gridlock” episode of Doctor Who features heavily Christological (if not Catholic) themes; and the explanation for all things Supernatural and Buffy always comes around to some (usually distorted) echo of Catholic dogma. And for that matter, can we forget the Jewish-born, irreligious Paul Simon with his “crayon rosary” and the poet’s crooked rhyme reading, “Holy holy is his sacrament”?

I think, before we pronounce a knee-jerk condemnation of the travesty that mainstream art usually makes of Catholic doctrine, it’s worth asking what exactly attracts even atheists to the Church when they deal with things greater than man—to the Church specifically, not just to theism or even to Christianity in general. The answers, I think, are not just positive but even hopeful, despite all appearances.

The obvious answer, which leads us into the more meaningful one, is that Catholics still do creepy.

Exhibit A: exorcism.



Exhibit B: well, do we really need an exhibit B? Let’s face it: Catholicism is second only to Voodoo when it comes to believing in things that go bump in the night. And despite whatever bad feelings remain toward Catholics from our brother Protestants or from mainstream entertainment at large, Catholicism is just more socially acceptable than Voodoo. More than that, it is somehow at once eerily foreign and deeply familiar, as a little of Catholicism runs in the veins of every social element with roots in the Middle Ages and beyond. The Catholic faith is an open playing field for entertaining situations that butt man up against anything that is bigger than himself.

Of course, sometimes that “bigger-than-man” opponent is nothing more than a corrupt hierarchy. We do have to admit that the Church plays no second fiddle when it comes to being a long-lived institution that has, at times, suffered legendary bouts with corruption, greed, and all the most human institutional failings. It provides a rather broad target for iconoclastic artists. See in this category: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kingdom of Heaven (or for that matter practically any crusade movie), and perhaps most of all The Da Vinci Code.

This use of the Church I feel to be (if saddening) a generally pedestrian anti-institutionalism, often having less to do with the Church itself than with the modern individualist taste for conspiracy theory. It must serve as a reminder to us, as members of the Church, to be always on our guard against corruption and the corrosive influence of power and human greed; it reminds us that we must present more than just our personal incarnations of Christianity to the world but rather we must represent the whole Church in our lives; but I don’t find much in this anti-institutionalism that has to do with the souls of its advocates.

What interests me is when the “bigger-than-man” opponent is indeed supernatural. We could go back further than Dracula, no doubt, to find instances of the ritual and beliefs of Catholicism being brought to bear as weapons against preternatural evil, but why bother? Here we have it in spades: Dracula, the menace-cum-seducer, is powerless before the Eucharist. In the same way, the demons in TV’s Supernatural are subject to the ritual of exorcism, and in that old Schwarzenegger movie End of Days, where he is of course single-handedly responsible for staving off the apocalypse, the scene they showed in all the previews was our hero on his knees in a Catholic church (to be interrupted by a dragon-Satan bursting through the floor, but more on that later).



When the evil moving about is not manmade but is an arm of the devil himself, the storehouse for solutions is inevitably the Catholic Church. And I believe it’s not just because of the ancient, mysterious ritual that surrounds Church proceedings, but rather, I think it is because Catholicism still admits to something many “religious people” have sidelined in favor of more appeasing and pragmatic approaches to spirituality: we still believe in ultimates. Ultimate truth and ultimate falsehood, ultimate evil (whence the interest from cinema), but most importantly, ultimate good. All these, working actively in today’s world just as they did in the days of the Bible. We may believe in possession, but we also believe in miracles. Grappling with the devil we have the angels.

That’s what entertainment so often lacks: why its demons, ghosts, and monsters leave us always a little dissatisfied, a little unconvinced, a little sheepish at how cheesy it all is. When our salvation rests on the success of a human being—whether unlikely hero or dashing heartthrob, whether played by Keanu Reeves or Sarah Michelle Geller—salvation always seems to fall short. At the very least, it’s temporary, at best lasting until the next sequel. Without the real ultimate good—let’s go ahead and say aloud the word “God”—the ultimate evil will never ring true, and victory will always feel incomplete. There’s just something woefully inadequate (or, worse, comically ridiculous) about arming the Governator with a grenade-launcher and thinking he could conceivably win out over the powers of darkness. Without God, the devil is a dragon to be charged at, or a cheat snatching at models and action figures; without heaven, hell is just an uncomfortable place to lodge somebody for the duration of a two-part episode. The sham is exciting enough, but it always leaves us wanting more than it could give.

Yet, that is exactly why I see such hope in art today. People seem to find it easier to believe in evil than in good, yet isn’t the draw of a compelling demon or vampire at least in part the secret desire for its salvation? If the good-versus-evil shadowplay of media leaves its consumers dissatisfied, might it not lead them to question what it is they really wanted in the first place? And what they really want (as much as even Christians would often like to deny it these days) is Christ. And he may be more politically correct in a church where “Jesus is your friend,” but he is all we could ever want when he is not only a friend but a lord, flanked by his angels and riding the clouds of heaven to harrow hell. When the world abandoned the hierarchy it lost something of the hero as well.

Popular movies and books and music appeal to the romantic in us, even if it is only to try and quash romance with cynicism. It is the romantic that wants happy endings without corniness and wants evil punished without gray areas. That’s why I think Catholicism always shows up in these movies: it is a romantic religion in which there are weapons to fight against what goes bump in the night (the things children recognize naturally and are only convinced don’t exist by a self-confident and jaded adult culture). It is a faith which promises a dawn without shadow. And at the same time it is a religion hard-as-nails (nine-inch nails, in fact) in which there are no excuses for not at least trying to be a hero. All roads can lead to God, and that is why when I look at entertainment these days I take more pleasure—even joy—than I take offense.

Unfortunately, of course, even if all roads can lead to God, it doesn’t mean they do. When Schwarzenegger’s kneeling plea for help is answered by the thunderous entrance of a monster, when the promise of the first seasons of Supernatural falls flat because it turns out that God is on vacation, all that potential I feel building in the set-up disappears in a puff of cynical cinema-smoke. I don’t know if there is room in the film world for a dogmatically correct Dracula, or in the TV world for a theologically sound Buffy or True Blood. I half doubt it (for what would those shows be if everybody kept their clothes on?).

But there is room for ultimate good alongside ultimate evil—Lewis and Tolkien (and their immensely successful recent film renditions) have proven that. And perhaps there is a role for entertainment in salvation, even if it serves aesthetics ahead of religion: if what people see reminds them that they really do want someone to save them—if it touches that deep-seeded desire for something that is both more real and more epic than CGI demons and their grubby gladiatorial opponents—then people of faith must declare the name of the savior. Art is already pointing its consumers upward, however inadvertently: let us stand along the roadside to open the gate, direct them toward heaven, and—pardon the expression—evangelize the hell out of them.


C.M. Schott likes blockbusters probably more than she should, and likes serious cinema “less than half as well as it deserves.” She is a student of literature but moonlights as a movie fan, music enthusiast, and (as of this post) a freelance blogger.


* Photos link to online sources. All rights reserved; no infringement is intended. AmenAbility.blogspot.com is a not-for-profit blog.

Good Text, Bad Text

To prooftext is to quote or cite parts of a document (such as the Bible) out of context and present them as basis for a proposition, often one that the document taken as a whole would not support. Even suggestions that seem reasonable may be no less a fallacy than the mathematical proof-spoof in the image above.

Read. Think. Ask. Don't enable proof-texters!


Read more about proof-texting from Wendy ("Bookgirl") here. And check out her blog while you're at it!