Self-described “Christians” judge you, find you wanting, and steal your labor. Jesus would be so pleased.
Let’s hope this doesn’t become a full-blown trend: it seems to have become increasingly fashionable among “Christians” to offer judgmental pronouncements scrawled on restaurant receipts in place of tips to the wait staff.
In October, this tip was received by a waiter at Carrabba’s in Overland Park, Kansas: “Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to GOD. Queers do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your fag choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’S love, but none shall be spared for fags. May GOD have mercy on you.”
Then it happened again: on 13 November at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, NJ, waitress Dayna Morales got this tip on a $93.55 receipt: “I’m sorry but I cannot tip because I don’t agree with your lifestyle & how you choose to live your life.”**
There is SO much wrong with the misguided, hateful, selfish sentiments expressed in these petty little barbs, I hardly know where to start, but here goes:
Theft: what these asinine Christians are really doing is stealing the value of their waiters’ labor, and then slapping them with a judgmental insult to justify their own cheap, selfish, thieving actions. Yes, yes, I know that tips are at the discretion of the diner, but conventionally, standard wait service warrants a 15% -20% tip. This expectation is so strong that there is a “tipped minimum wage” separate from the regular minimum wage… and the tipped minimum has languished at $2.13 per hour for some 22 years. So – yeah, if you don’t tip your wait staff for basic, standard service, then you are stealing from them (personally, it takes a lot for me to decide to withhold the tip; if service was that bad, then you should be complaining to the manager). If you just take one look at your waiter and decide he is a worthless Samaritan queer, then please just ask for another waiter right away, or better yet, go the hell home and boil some manna in holy water or something. Don’t sit there through an entire meal with your pious little plans to steal people’s labor.
Prejudice, and Loving Thy Neighbor: yeah, there’s a reason the Samaritan crept into the previous paragraph. Everyone knows the parable of the Good Samaritan, but we are so far removed from Jesus’ time and place that we kind of don’t get it. The whole point is that the Jews had a hostile opinion of Samaritans, kind of like how “Christians” like to see gays these days. But while respectable people passed by the wounded victim on the road, it was a Samaritan who stopped and compassionately helped him. So, dear Christians, go open your Bibles, re-read the Parable of the Good Samaritan (it’s Luke 10:25 in case you forgot), and take those pious little pens that you use to write on restaurant receipts, and every time you see the word “Samaritan,” cross it out and write, “queer.” That will actually convey the meaning of the parable a little more accurately to you, and maybe you might learn something about Jesus’ attitude toward the scorned and excluded (it’s a big leap from where you are, so I will give you a hint: they are your neighbors by Jesus’ definition, so you’re supposed to love them as yourself).
Personal responsibility: everyone else is responsible for their choices, but Christians claim to have no choices and are therefore not responsible for the hateful things they do. Don’t you just love the language relieving these loser Christians of all responsibility for their own choices? “I cannot tip because…,” while blaming the wait staff for the lack of a tip: “We hope you will see the tip your fag choices made you lose out on….” You know, saying “I’m Christian so I can’t tip someone with different values,” is exactly the same as saying, “Jesus told me not to pay you for your services.” (You do follow the teachings of Jesus, right?) When I put it that way, doesn’t it sound kind of.. well, wrong? News flash, Christians: yes, you CAN tip, you just choose not to.
A culture of exclusion and hate: hardly Christian values, are they? Jesus recognized sins, but he forgave people their transgressions and was famous for going among society’s rejects of the time, touching, healing, comforting, helping them. He forgave the adulteress and saved her from stoning. Mary Magdalene, one of his closest followers, has long been portrayed (probably incorrectly) as a repentant prostitute. Christians can insist all day long that in accordance with the Old Testament, or in the evidence of the Letters of Paul, Jesus would have regarded homosexuality as a sin. They can believe that Jesus might even tell gays, “Go, and sin no more,” as he did to the adulteress. But one thing is certain:
He would not have stiffed them on their justly earned wages.
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”
– Pope Francis, in America Magazine, September 2013
** UPDATE: There’s something amiss in the Dayna Morales case. As of 26 November, a couple has come forward with the matching customer copy of the receipt in question, and it shows that a 20% tip was included. The couple insists the handwriting on the offensive receipt is not theirs. The clincher: they also showed NBC News their credit card bill, with a charge at the same restaurant on the same date, but for the higher amount reflecting a 20% tip. When questioned, Ms. Morales was at a loss, and also says the handwriting is not hers.
However, Lila stands by the gist of her opinion: other similar cases have occurred, have not been questioned as false, and the sentiment behind them is wrong.
Clare Flourish
November 18, 2013
Are you sure these non-tippers are Christians? It seems such a mean thing to do, that someone might do it to calumniate Christians.
The Color of Lila
November 18, 2013
Clare, I really don’t think the motive here is to calumniate Christians, and actually… no… I do NOT consider these hateful, cherry-picking Bible thumpers to actually BE Christians. This is why I frequently put “Christians” in quotes and included the remark by Pope Francis at the end as a reminder to all those who call themselves Christian… but aren’t.
No, these are that breed of people who think they are Christian, for whom it is a very large part of their identity; they go to church, loudly proclaim their faith, and hate and fear all that is different from their rigid little world… and punish it, if they can. These are the very qualities Jesus criticized so roundly in the Pharisees of his time, who could hardly be said to follow Mosaic law as they should have.
Mimi
November 18, 2013
What a crappy way to steal!
DanS
November 18, 2013
As I began to walk my path toward atheism, one of the first big steps was to actually sit down and read The Bible from cover to cover. Through all of my church and catechism classes and serving at the altar, I had some vague notion that I had been familiar with the entire book to some degree or another, though not in the same order as the actual book. I feel like most Christians have this sense and they sort of treat The Bible like a software license: They click the “I agree” button without fully knowing what they’ve actually agreed to.
Something that I quickly discovered with my Bible reading is that it’s a vast, dark sea of evil, life-destroying nonsense, sprinkled with small islands of moral and wise teachings: All we had been doing in church was island-hopping. One conclusion that I came to was that every person who considers himself/herself to be a Christian is absolutely not getting their morality from the Bible. If you followed that book to the letter, you’d be a criminal that would make even the Westboro kooks pale with horror.
What people tend to do is to behave in the way that seems right to them and will cherry-pick the bits of The Bible that confirm what they believe, then ignore the parts that don’t. The good news is that this leads the vast majority of Christians to be actually better than their religion because they’re basing their morality on reason and empathy and not on Iron Age scribblings. But this also allows Christians who personally find homosexuality to be disgusting to discriminate, condemn, and short-change waiting staff as they see fit. And they can find the Bible passages to back them up, allowing them to sleep soundly at night. And they even managed to save themselves a few bucks in the process. How’s that not divine?
The Color of Lila
November 18, 2013
Dan, YES. YES. YES. The Old Testament especially is filled with horrid things (what does one expect, really, from an ancient Middle Eastern tribal history?), and I am not a fan of the Letters in the New Testament, either. As for Revelations, gahhh. That is the most misunderstood, misread, misused book and should probably not be in the Bible at all. The extreme symbolism was very specific to time and place… it is NOT a prediction of things to come. It has warped the very definition of the word “apocalypse” (the Book of Daniel is also an apocalypse, I leave my readers to learn more on that).
And… YES on the cherry picking. People just LOVE to cherry-pick what they like and ignore the rest and that always leads to trouble, whether in religion or in intelligence in 2002.
For those who like to cherry-pick the Old Testament, I have a little test: Leviticus. If you’re eating shrimp or lobster or cheeseburgers, or wearing wool with your cotton, you’re sinning against the “word of God.” Go figure.
Chris Glass
November 18, 2013
Whatever happened to do not judge lest you be judged?
I have read the Bible many times and studied many other major religions. If you look to what the enlightened teachers said in all cases it was love and accept one another and learn to forgive.
Real humanity is accepting others without judgment because as humans we do not know which direction that our good will come from. I tip generously because I know that most servers in our area earn fewer than three dollars on hour. Staff can be taxed on money they didn’t make at times.
globalfreeopinionator
November 18, 2013
There has always been a pseudoChristian contingent lurking about. Unfortunately, they have found a way to bully the rest of us with their silly, false drivel about being persecuted in various ways. The rational beings among us of any, all or no religious belief need to start standing up to these self-appointed moral monitors.
Robert
November 20, 2013
More harm has been visited upon this world in the name of God than from any other cause……. After posting my take, yesterday, on this story (Homophobe Refuses to Tip Server Gets Surprise Tweet From God) I revisited the FB page (Have A Gay Day) where the waitress, posted the details of her encounter with a family of homophobes. Over 15,000 people have expressed their outrage on this one site alone. I have seen similar responses on other web sites reporting on this story. It strikes me that we are reaching a tipping-point where Bigots (whether professing, or purporting, God’s outrage or their own) are not only being overwhelmingly admonished, but, more importantly, are not being afforded the comfort to spew their hatred. In the movie Gentleman’s Agreement (1947 Academy Award Winner), the point was made that prejudice is the fight of the majority, of those NOT the target of the prejudice, and that “good decent people” too often are silent. I was a teenager when I first saw the film on TV years later, but I still look at every act of bigotry or prejudice through that lens. It is too easy to say, “That behavior is terrible” or “Shame on them”. Harder is to do something, say something that will make haters uncomfortable and deny them forums and venues. It does not take a marine’s courage to stop someone from starting an obvious ethnic, or victim, “joke”. And, perhaps, it will not move mountains, but I promise you it will start waves, and you will feel better about yourself. And, maybe, your simple act will encourage someone else, who said nothing but was outraged too, to speak up next time.
Lila, I agree the Bigots are neither christian, nor Christian; and nothing you, or I, say or write will likely change them. The owner of the restaurant, in Bridgewater, NJ, where this happened posted his comment that if, and when, the Bigots revisit his restaurant, they will be denied service and asked to leave. Ultimately, it is not about “them” and what they do, but “us” and what we do. Several years ago, in a small Midwestern town, you may recall, a hate group was throwing rocks through the windows of every house that had a Hanukkah Menorah in the window. Within 24 hours the Christians, and their Churches, responded: every single home in the town had a Menorah in the window. I hope to live long enough to see someday a sign in every retail store window that says simply, “Bigots Not Welcome Here”.
The Color of Lila
November 20, 2013
Robert, we can dream… hopefully, “bigot shaming” will never become politically incorrect.
Wyrd Smythe
November 26, 2013
Yeah, totally with ya (as usual). Gandhi is a favorite of mine for quotes on religion.
“In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity … The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.”
I draw a line between organized worldly religion (which I think is mostly crap or, at best, a sometimes useful social community tool) and the pursuit of a spiritual connection to reality (which is either a pointless pursuit or the only one that truly matters).
The Christian religion, of course, is based on the NT and the teaching of its central figure, Jesus. While faith is a core component in both OT and NT, there is a certain, “be faithful or die” ethic in the OT along with a vengeful, even spiteful, god. (I mean, come on, he completely fucks up faithful Job’s life over a bet with his eternal enemy. A figure like that gets no worship from me! (Worse: in order for the fundamentalists to be right, he had to create a universe that’s one giant-ass, in-your-face, stinking lie!))
The NT is, to me, characteristic in the addition of love. The Christian ethic, once you boil off all the “angels dancing on the head of pin” nonsense, amounts to simply this: Surrender to faith, love god above all else, love everyone else.
That’s being a Christian. Hate and exclusion is no part of that equation.
My man Gandhi also (supposedly) said (but the quote is disputed for lack of source): “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Right on, dude. Right. On.
The Color of Lila
November 26, 2013
Wyrd, yep. I’m thoroughly agnostic in the true Greek sense of the word: I just don’t know. I don’t know if there is or isn’t a God, and I waffle back and forth: how could all of this exist so perfectly just by chance? Why am I conscious, self-aware, here, now? On the other hand… the universe proceeds by the laws of physics, science rules, why COULDN’T it have occurred on its own? Monkeys typing Shakespeare and all that. And besides… if there is a God, where did he/it come from? Is he/it really sentient and purposeful, or is he/it just some kind of driving force behind the creation of everything?
One thing is certain, though: if there is a God, we can’t even begin to imagine the slightest understanding of him. We arrogant little chimps, in love with our own paltry and short-sighted ability to manipulate our environment, have NO CLUE what we ourselves are doing long-term, much less about the intentions and desires of a deity responsible for the creation of the entire universe.