{"id":1053,"date":"2013-11-24T09:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T09:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/gospel-of-selfishness-pervades-american-christianity.html"},"modified":"2013-11-24T09:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T09:16:00","slug":"gospel-of-selfishness-pervades-american-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/gospel-of-selfishness-pervades-american-christianity.html","title":{"rendered":"Gospel of Selfishness Pervades American Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. Not because they want to sleep in, but because it\u2019s a widespread belief that the post-church crowd is loud, demanding and unwilling to tip appropriately. In the food service industry, \u201cChristian\u201d is synonymous with \u201cselfish.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
Unfair stereotype? Probably. Big groups, regardless of affiliation, tend to tip poorly. More to the point, waiters probably remember the bad Christian tippers more because the hypocrisy is so stunning. The image of a man piously preening about what a good Christian he is in church only to turn around and refuse the basic act of decency that is paying someone what you owe them perfectly symbolizes a lurking suspicion in American culture that the harder someone thumps the Bible, the more selfish and downright sadistic a person he is. And that perception\u2014that showy piety generally goes hand in hand with very un-Christ-like behavior\u2014is not an urban myth at all. On the contrary, it\u2019s the daily reality of American culture and politics.<\/span><\/div>\n
Bill Maher recently had a rant on his show that went viral addressing this very issue, bad tippers who leave sermons or notes scolding waiters instead of paying them what they\u2019re owed. His larger point is a much more important one: It\u2019s absolutely disgusting how the politicians who make the biggest show of how much they love Jesus would be the first in line to bash him if he returned with a message of clothing the naked and feeding the poor. The Jesus of the Bible multiplied the loaves and fishes. His loudest followers these day gripe about feeding people, claiming it creates a \u201cculture of dependency.\u201d They may even comb through the Bible to take quotes out of context to justify their selfishness toward the poor, as Rep. Steven Fincher did when he claimed the Bible says, \u201cThe one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.\u201d The fact that those jobs are unavailable didn\u2019t give him a moment\u2019s pause when suggesting this very un-Christ-like plan to his fellow Americans.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. Not because they want to sleep in, but because it\u2019s a widespread belief that the post-church crowd is loud, demanding and unwilling to tip appropriately. In the food service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGospel of Selfishness Pervades American Christianity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. 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