I No Longer Want To Be In The Same Room With The People Who I Used To Worship With
My church was worse than your average high school with petty gossip and cliques. My family was never on the "in-crowd" and to be given any sort of respect, you had to tithe. If you were not privileged enough to tithe, your time volunteering for the church was never good enough. I even received a lecture as a teenager when my mother had me attend private high school that there would be enough money for the church if she stopped being selfish and sent me to public school.
The disdain I have for the people who I used to attend church with is quite real with my mother, grandparents, and I put out for these people, yet they don't have to reciprocate. We were all heavily involved but in the eyes of the privileged there, it was never enough for them.
It all changed when my father died and very few people bothered to come to my father's viewing, a phone call, or even a card after all my mother, my grandparents, and I did for so many of them. A former friend of my grandfather's at church said "I needed to know the consequences of being shy and not tithing. "
In the years of following my father's passing, I ignored the people who I went to church with in public. I never believed that your faith should be a one-way relationship and the people you worship with should punish a teenager because their family was not part of the in-crowd because they didn't tithe.
My abhorrence of the people of my former church continued even until now when they cancelled a member of the church because he dared to question where the money was coming from for a pricy ministry. When he lost his battle with Alzheimer's, they cancelled him on All-Saints Sunday by excluding him from the alter. Those who justified it, said he needed to know the consequences of not giving until it hurts because in their eyes, he was he selfish one. My former church claims they are purveyors of inclusion when they are the symbol of radical exclusion.
