fresh meat

Today’s cartoon “fresh meat” (is this your experience?)

Yes

I worked for a church that had a culture of gossip and backstabbing. Because I was the administrator, people thought part of my job was to be their sounding board. I ended up quitting for various reasons, but mostly because the work environment was so hostile.

Interesting. That’s not the image I had when I first read the title “Fresh Meat”, although your imagery is certainly apt. My mind immediately jumped to the disgusting proselytizing that so often occurs right after a natural disaster or human tragedy – whether in a family, or on a larger scale. That theme might require it’s own cartoon.

It’s lucky for you, then, to have such a fantastic community as an asset to sell to others.

I’d be happy to pay you, too.

I am NOT ok with contributing to a site where other people are barred from my contribution and the collective community unless they pay you.

I’m also not ok with the lack of honesty and transperency that is wildly uncharacteristic of you. You tell me it isn’t a community first, but you advertise it as such. You say you aren’t selling community, but practically speaking, that’s exactly what it is.

That’s paying for lessons. There’s a big difference and I think that’s clear. If you are paying that just to be allowed to talk to other enthusiasts, then I think that’s wrong, too. But even more so when you’re trying to put a price tag on spirituality generally. Your additional materials could be charged for without charging for what you are advertising as essentially a support group. Pay $10 to get into an AA meeting and then we’ll talk.

And see, now you say there’s nothing wrong with charging for a community. You do believe in community – spiritual community – for sale. I get the site, but yes, I do not get that.

Yes, it’s been clear you’ve wanted to do this full time. Definitely. And you’re doing it now because you are no longer employed in your previous job. You don’t want another salaried one – and I’m not saying there’s inherently wrong with that, as long as the way you are making money is appropriate.

I appreciate you’ve been doing much of this for free. But so are a lot of people – for whose efforts you are now also making money off of. And lots of people make money of it in many other ways than exclusion.

And Christine…I hate to disagree with you as I have great respect for your comments and point of view most of the time. But really…how the hell can you call charging a membership fee to a private site a “genuine wrong being done”? You have a far clearer understanding of the wrongs committed against others than most. This comment makes absolutely no sense to me.

Gary – Thanks for responding as well. I expect I would find the site worth my $7 as well – but it’s not my $7 that concerns me. If I were the only one paying, that would be very different. It isn’t about the personal cost to me, but a principled stance on whether the collection of such fees is appropriate and good. Having the right to do something is not the same as doing the right thing.

I do believe David sincerely wants to – an absolutely does – help people. I also believe this means in this case is about money, yes. I don’t even think David is contending now, even if the original launch presented it otherwise.

Nor do I think David is being – or has ever been – intentionally deceptive about everything… but we all have our blind spots and rationalizations at times. That’s why we do all need the challenge function. I don’t know that that’s what’s happening in this case, but I’m certainly convinced that it isn’t that.

Finally, as I said, there are other – and in my view – much better (in the sense of equitable, not efficient) ways to make money off such a site. We can treat our spiritual connections as just another commodity in a free market, but should we want to? What does that mean for any community that forms there? I think the wrong being done is also about betraying the spirit and potential of what has existing here already, on this site, for quite some time, and what our spiritualities really need. If David’s other site goes nowhere, little harm done, but I say this genuinely believing it has may very well be something significant.

If indeed a worker is worthy of pay, shall we not charge for prayer? I am an experienced prayer and I will prayer for your loved one – $1/minute. Shall a start a 1-900 prayer line? Credit card number up front, please.

I could, of course. I have the right to, no doubt. But should I? And should you pay me to?

At what point do we draw the line on commodification of spirituality? Up to what point are even our spiritual communities – not even goods or services and of a group and not just the payee – up for sale?

Going to bed. Please reflect on our discussion as I assure you I will.

Christine, Stay strong my friend.

So, I’ve been avoiding this conversation (not just this particular one but the topic of the new paid site as a whole) because let’s just say that I can be less that diplomatic about certain matters and am not generally out to offend people. This is not to suggest that I am not intentionally offensive to some people when I feel it is necessary to make a point, but generally I am much more careful with people that I consider to be friends and/or people that I hold in high regard. So, not wanting to offend you (David) and honestly not feeling that what I have to say would be likely to have any positive outcome, I have held my tongue (or fingers if you will). But I feel I have reached the point where I must say something, however it might be taken.

The connection between money and spiritual things has long been a particular sticking point for me. The TV preacher who insists that if you send him enough money God will answer your every prayer; the guilt trips that go out over many pulpits to squeeze a little extra money out of the parishioners; the massive waste of the offerings that do come in to most churches with little regard for the important matters of outreach into the community that could be done with those funds; the many sickening and extremely unbiblical teachings around the subject of tithing; the preferential treatment shown in many churches towards those with more money to give; the list is very long so I’ll cut it short and move on with my point. Your cartoons have been helpful to me in dealing with these issues (as well as others) and I very much appreciated the way you have tackled things head on. When I first heard about the concept of your new safe space website, I was thrilled, not so much for myself to be honest as I love the uncensored environment of nakedpastor and have developed a rather tough skin over the years after numerous attempts at attending churches that billed themselves as safe spaces and eventually turned out to be anything but once you pulled the wrong thread and it all started to unravel. And let’s face it, I have a way of pulling the wrong thread and I am frankly unapologetic for such. In any event, when I learned that you had put a subscription fee on your safe space I was completely and utterly shocked. After a moment of complete disbelief, my first reaction was how could it possibly be a safe space if it starts out by attaching a price tag? I can’t tell you how many of my experiences of people who have been hurt by churches and turned off by churches can trace their experiences in one way or another back to issues regarding money. Once the shock wore off though, I realized that money abuses and issues, while endemic within churches, still only account for a portion of the many ways in which churches have wounded people and thus there is undoubtedly plenty of people in search of a safe place who do not have any of the same issues that I have with linking money and spirituality, so really you were only excluding a certain portion of people from safety by attaching a price tag to it, those for whom money issues are a sticking point and of course those who simply don’t have the extra funds to commit. I’m sure there are plenty of people you can reach who have both the means and the comfort level with paying for spiritual community. I am not one of these people, though certainly not for lack of means.

So, my next step was to simply accept that this was not something I had any desire to be a part of but I thought I would just attempt to ignore it while continuing to enjoy nakedpastor. Try as I might though, it has in fact tainted my ability to view this community the same way. Recently, when you posted the cartoon “offerings down”, I had to walk away to refrain myself from leaving a very snarky comment to the tune that maybe those churches should just start charging a monthly access fee to attend their services. It was only then that I began to fully realize that nakedpastor had become in some ways like a church to me and that is precisely why I found this to be so ridiculously offensive. As bad as things get with churches and money, I have not yet come across a single church that would stoop so low as to have the audacity to charge an entrance fee before you can attend. They may go overboard in begging for your money while you are there, but they’ll always let you in free of charge. It hasn’t (at least not yet) become so commercialized as to require an access fee. And I thought to myself, if a church was to go to that next level, David would be the first one to draw a cartoon depicting the absurdity of it. But to me, what you are doing is essentially the equivalent of such. Now of course, your site is not really a church, but it is offering a spiritual community which to many would be a sort of replacement for a church to those who can no longer stomach the institutionalized church, just as it has become to me. As I think about it more, to me, it’s not like a church charging an access fee as you are still keeping nakedpastor free (at least for now) but charging only for those who want something more intimate. So it’s perhaps a little more like a church (of which there are many) that lets anybody attend for free but requires that you must say tithe if you wish to be a full-fledged member. I long ago passed the point where I had any desire to officially join a church, but that didn’t stop me from finding it too distasteful to regularly attend a church that requires people to tithe in order to obtain membership. And so I guess, in much the same vein, that is why I am finding it hard to ignore your paid membership while trying to continue to enjoy the free site.

I have completely given up on the idea of finding a church that I can feel safe in and find true community in. I have had many failed attempts and had pretty much given up on it before Christine and I got together. But then she convinced me that she had found the real deal in a small home church and it didn’t take long for me feel like I truly belonged there and that it was in fact everything I had ever wanted in a church. That went on for some time with only minor hiccups such as happens whenever humans gather until at some point, unbeknownst to me, we seemed to have slipped into this point where we were expected to have an affinity for the denomination and thus automatically hold its leadership in high regard and limit our criticism of such. Of course, nobody told us that we had slipped into this place and I was blissfully unaware until we had offended people within the community just by criticising the book of a denominational leader and it was made very clear that we weren’t supposed to do that because we were denominational insiders apparently. For my part, I really thought that I had been clear from the start that I had no affinity for the denomination this group was a part of (or for any denomination for that matter as I had given up on that many years before). I say all this to say that it is likely that that group was the final attempt that I would ever make to honestly try to fit into a church. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. I have gone a few times to other churches since, but really only because Christine wanted to and not out of any desire of my own. And I am 99.9% certain that I will never “belong” to a church again. But I do still have a great desire for fellowship with other believers. So, I guess for me, internet communities such as nakedpastor are the only hope I have left for any significant spiritual community. To be entirely honest, a part of me really wants your new endeavour to fail if for no other reason than my fear that if it succeeds it might start a trend that infects other spiritual online communities with this idea that such communities can be treated as commodities to be bought and sold. In the end, I will likely move away from participation in nakedpastor as a result of this, but I have other spiritual online communities that have not yet been commercialized, nakedpastor was the first for me, but I have since branched out. So I’ll be ok, I just sincerely hope that this remains an anomaly and never becomes the norm and even then it will probably always make me a little sad for what it could have been. A little like losing your first love but now I’m getting a little too melodramatic.

I did feel it necessary to address the idea of honesty and transparency with regard to the new site or current lack thereof as this is some ways got to me even more than the fee itself. While I will never agree that it is ok to charge for access to a spiritual community, I would personally appreciate it if you would at least own what you are doing. In the email conversation that you had with Christine, you were very clear that you did not see the new site as primarily a community but rather that you were selling access to a number of resources and the community portion was more of a side benefit. Never mind that if this were true you could easily separate the two and charge for one and not the other, but the thing is that quite consistently before and since you wrote that email you promote the new site as a community first with only a casual mention from time to time of other resources. Now you took great offense at any suggestion that you might not have been entirely honest or transparent about the new site, but what do you propose we call that if not dishonesty? Even in this thread, being confronted publically, you have basically waffled about whether or not you are actually selling a community. You know what I think? And I could of course be completely off base, but I think the reason that you are reluctant to simply admit that you are in fact selling a spiritual community (even though that is how you consistently promote it) is because you yourself are not entirely comfortable with the idea of turning spiritual community into a commodity. Am I right, or am I totally off base? Either way, you have to decide what you’re doing and own it because frankly the hypocrisy is really not becoming you. You’re better than that.