This story can be read firsthand on pastor Thomas Steagald’s blog, His daughter is a waitress at a Chili’s restaurant, and witnessed the following incident when working on a recent Sunday night.
A group of six church-goers came in last night after their evening services and sat down, not in her area but in another server’s. When the girl came to greet them and take their drink order, one of them said, “We want to tell you up front that we will not be tipping you tonight because…”
Are you ready?
“…we do not believe in people working on Sunday.”
The girl was taken full-aback, stammered out something that sounded like “I wouldn’t have to work on Sunday if so many church people didn’t come in,” or some such. She was furious. So was the manager of the restaurant whom she summoned to deal with them. I think he should have tossed the people out on their…uh…Bibles. To his credit, and demonstrating something like agape all around, he did say to them, “Well, we don’t believe in making our people work for nothing, so I will be serving you tonight.” And he did.
In this scenario, whose actions best exhibit What Would Jesus Do?
Ironically, it is not the church-goers. It is the selfless manager who did not try to use reason to change their minds, nor did he kick them out. He did what i imagine Jesus would have done. All i can say is, that manager has more forbearance than i.
Now, these church-goers are not representative of all church-goers. But i have a few questions for these particular church-goers, or any others who share their attitudes.
- Why are you patronizing a restaurant on a Sunday in the first place? If you do not believe people should work on Sundays, then you should also not create work for others by going out to eat.
- What about your pastor? Wasn’t he working at the church service you just attended? He gets paid to preach, so isn’t that “work”? Do you refuse to tithe on Sundays?
- If you got food poisoning that night, or had a medical emergency, would you go to the hospital and accept treatment? Would you pay your bill if the work was done on a Sunday? Would you be judgmental of a doctor who saved your life on a Sunday?
Frankly, i suspect this particular group was just being extremely cheap, and using their beliefs to justify it, daring anyone to question them, ready to wave the “freedom of religion” flag if anyone did so. This kind of thing appalls me. Yes, you have freedom of religion, but you still have the responsibility to be a decent human being.