February 1, 2013

• "I Give God 10%. Why do you get 18?"

  Ah yes, perhaps that quote looks familiar to you.  And of course it would, because that is what was written on a receipt at an Applebee's restaurant in Misouri, and the picture of it is now viral.  It's the current story that people are clamoring over, the sort of story that will no doubt be replaced by something else that gets people's attention.  Gotta love the fickleness of mankind.

  Anyway, I of course shook my head upon learning of that.  Anyone who professes to be a pastor ought to be ashamed of themselves.  And what's worse, it's things like that make other Christians look bad.  She did not show good judgment or wisdom, and unfortunately, it took the thing going viral for her to realize her blunder. But perhaps it took something like this to shed light on other areas that needed light on when it comes to her life.  Perhaps this is what she needed in order to do some soul searching.  Sooner or later, we all of us have to face our demons.

  So people are angry at the pastor and angry at Applebee's, and for understandable reasons.  Obviously the pastor, who seemed to be have exercised a selfish, pompous attitude about the whole thing for not cheerfully giving of her means (in this case money) as the Bible commands.  And Applebee's for doing some firing after the pastor made it known what was going on: her receipt being posted on the internet with her name as clear as day and the tip scribbled out.  I've researched this event and came up with my own following conclusion:

  Shame on the pastor, of course; that much I've made known.  But I can't say shame on Applebee's.  Why?  Because apparently, after closer inspection, the waitress who was fired wasn't the waitress who actually served the table.  No, it was another waitress who decided to share the receipt with the world with the customer's name clearly visible.  Another exercise of poor judgment.  Had she cropped out the customer's name, none of this would have happened.  And the effect would have been the same.  The world would still be all ruffled and disturbed and quibbling over religious people and whatever else, but without a name to go by.  Whether or not Applebee's still would have fired that waitress had she decided to eliminate the name, I can't say.  But their reason to fire would have been non-existent.  It's a shame that a waitress had to lose her job, but even she should have exercised better judgment. Blacken out the personal info!

  There are indeed real Christians out there.  I am one of them, after all.  There are also "self-proclaimed" Christians out there who merely claim the label and nothing more.  And there are real Christians who still stumble, who still can't quite get it right, who still give in to their fleshly human ways than they should. It's a whole big mess of a situation that unfortunately can confuse a whole heck of a lot of people out there who aren't religious in any way, shape, or form.  And it's a saddening fact that Christianity in general gets too poorly misrepresented by situations like this that it makes us all become a laughingstock to the world.  This pastor sure left a bad taste in the mouth of not just believers, but unbelievers alike.  Why should you give the girl 18%?  Because giving is what you're commanded to do.  It's as simple as that.

  In conclusion, this pastor failed in doing the Christian thing. I can't fault her for that, as I've been guilty of doing the same.  We're all definitely still human and we're all still going to make our mistakes.  We'll have our poorly thought out responses to situations and screw up badly.  There's no reason to not apply that to this pastor as well.  But as I mentioned earlier, perhaps this moment shedding a negative light on her is just what she needed to see her true character, and whether or not she's as Christlike as she's supposed to be. Sometimes it takes our sins glaring back at us to help us realize that we still have some repenting to do.  I hope she'll take the time to reflect on this matter, and to not let her embarrassment be more of the issue than even choosing to write what she wrote in the first place.

  I've said my piece. Now onto the next controversial and/or "spicy" news bit....whatever that will inevitably be.

  • 11:33 pm
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