heatdeathin church as a kid i heard a lot about the story of the birth of christ, how no one would take mary and joseph in, how sad that was. then i grew up and watched the same church turn the sprinklers on homeless campers in december
they were damaging the sod, you see. they couldn't sleep there. it's okay, we're pretty sure none of them were carrying the christ-child
i want my fucking tithing back and i want to spend it on getting someone a room for the night and i don't want to hear another word about being christlike from people who'd call the cops on jesus's parents if they saw them sleeping outside
and look, i know pointing out the hypocrisy of the church isn't exactly groundbreaking political analysis. i know we all know that they could do something - a lot - to reduce suffering for real instead of symbolically, but they don't because the suffering is a necessary feature of the system that keeps them rich. it's just that it still makes me incandescent with anger to think about it
Ludwig Vielfrass@heatdeath that was the end for me and my church over 30 years ago. We were charged by our church that morning to be moved to help those less fortunate. We met at other than our usual place and I got lost afterwards and wound up under a bridge in downtown Cincinnati and there were about a half dozen homeless people there. I went back to where we had been meeting because we were pretty poor back then. Nobody would help us with money to get groceries for them so they could eat. 1/🧵
@heatdeath so we spent the bulk of OUR grocery money on those homeless people, made them sandwiches and got portable healthy snacks for them.
Next weekend at church we had a “special giving session” and we didn’t even tithe as much as we usually did. They found out and asked why. We explained that we were very tight because we had spent much of our money helping those homeless people and nobody else helped and we just couldn’t afford to right now.
2/🧵
@heatdeath we got dressed down for not prioritizing Jesus over earthly concerns and that some people in the church were selling their wedding rings to cover the special giving. I told them I’d see what we can do.
We never went there again. I had long quit really believing but I had friends there and I loved the music. And helping others really spoke to me but apparently helping meant just giving more to the church.
3/🧵fin