#68 Using Stewardship as an Excuse to be Cheap

For many white Christians, giving a tenth of their income guarantees their status as good stewards. Others insist that everything belongs God and feel the need to be good stewards of all they have. You might think this would involve sacrificial giving of their finances and time, but stewardship is more commonly used by white Christians as an excuse for being cheap.

Being a good steward allows the white Christian to save money that otherwise would have been wasted on other people. It is much easier to justify purchasing the 99 cent sympathy card instead of the $3.99 card for a bereaved friend when it is seen as an opportunity to display stewardship. White Christians often feel the call of stewardship when dining out - not while selecting the restaurant, mind you, but when calculating the tip to within a penny of 15%.

Good stewardship isn't limited to the individual, but is an aspiration for all Christian organizations. White Christian churches model stewardship for the congregation by purchasing paper thin (and paper tasting) wafers for communion instead of real bread which would be very costly, possibly approaching pennies per person.

#67 Superficial Lent Sacrifices

Every year as winter turns to spring, white Christians begin their annual tradition of giving up something for Lent. The Lenten season is meant as a season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter. Traditionally, personal sacrifices are made during this time in attempt to bring Christians closer to God.  

It's also the time of year where white Christians are sure to give up something completely insignificant for Lent like chocolate, cheese, or cola. Lenten sacrifices are frequently a delightful hybrid of sacred covenant and dietary convenience.  Food sacrifices combined with it's calendar convenience (only a few weeks after they abandoned the original resolution), make Lent the white Christian's "New Years Resolution 2.0." Why are they willing to make such sacrifices? Because abstaining from chocolate is an exact parallel to the suffering that Jesus endured on the cross.

Many white Christians get peer-pressured into Lent.  The question "What are you giving up for lent?" is regularly asked, implying that EVERYONE gives something up for lent.  In this case, fast-thinking white Christians (typically unwilling to part with culinary delights), will cleverly give up abstract concepts such as "The rat race," or "negativity." 

Catholic white Christians often wonder why Protestant white Christians partake in something that is largely a Catholic observance.  For some unknown reason, Protestant white Christians have Lent sympathy-pains. It's the one season each year that wanna-be Catholics permeate the Protestant white Christian masses.

Hard core white Christian protestants, of course, take it up a notch and join the world's 1.14 Billion Catholics in the annual global freak-out that is the Ash Wednesday.  It's the one day each year that co-workers world-wide wonder, "What's with that guy's forehead?  Does he work in a coal mine?"

SWCL helpful hint:  For next year's Lent sacrifice, consider giving up "giving things up for lent" for lent.

#66* Numeric Symbolism

One of the most important goals of white Christians is to have superior knowledge of the Bible as compared to their fellow believers. To gain an edge on those who merely read the most popular passages, many white Christians will become experts on the Bible's numeric symbolism.

Unfortunately, almost every number up to one hundred has some sort of spiritual meaning, making memorization quite difficult. Also, the application of this spiritual meaning easily devolves into semi-mystical obsession. The white Christian who embraces numeric symbolism soon finds himself trying to determine the exact location of the Garden of Eden by counting the verses in Lamentations and plugging the corresponding coordinates into his GPS.

Numerical symbolism is as close as white Christians get to superstition. They have no problem with walking under a ladder on Friday the 13th or smashing mirrors on black cats, but if a particular business is located at 666 Main Street they will avoid it like "Gay Days" at Disney World.

*We were going to skip post #66 for obvious reasons (that whole "number of the beast" thing), but if we simply went to post #67, we knew that our astute readers - like hotel patrons on the 14th floor who know which floor they're really on- would know the difference.

#65 The Stealth Restaurant Prayer

The Great Commission calls Believers to make disciples of all nations.  This has driven many white Christian to "Go tell it on the mountain."  Unfortunately, the "mountain" somehow doesn't apply to restaurants.  In fact, many white Christians actually attempt to hide any outward appearance of their faith when they are in restaurants. This especially applies to the pre-meal prayer and has necessitated the invention of the stealth restaurant prayer.

The holy-habit of praying before every meal is an important routine in a white Christians life, yet, for some reason, many white Christians feel awkward doing this when they eat around others.  Enter the stealth restaurant prayer.  This prayer- the text-message equivalent of a normal prayer- fills the pre-meal prayer obligation (or "probligation") while allowing the white Christian in a restaurant to blend in with his secular surroundings like some sort praying human/chameleon hybrid. "Hide it under a bushel, YES!"

Misinterpreting the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector to further their social comfortability, the white Christian reasons that they would rather identify with the "Publican" than the Pharisee.  This leads to a remarkably quick prayer: something along the lines of, "Lord, thanks for the food, Amen."  All unnecessary words having been removed for the sake of expediency:  "Dear Lord, thank(s) you for the food that you have provided for me.  In Jesus' name, Amen."  

To further camouflage the stealth prayer, all other recognizable outward signs of prayer are altered.  If a family is accustomed to holding hands during prayer, the restaurant version of family prayer won't include hand-holding- only muted mumbles across the table.  If the solo-dining white Christian typically closes his eyes and folds his hands for prayer, in a restaurant, a simple bow of the head and a quick eye close for 51% of the prayer will do just fine.  "Was that person praying, sneezing, or simply leaning in to savor the smell of his food?" wonders the average restaurateur witnessing a stealth prayer.

The stealth prayer can lead to some even more awkward situations- particularly in the business lunch setting.  Due to the incredibly short nature of the stealth restaurant prayer, the white Christian may try to squeeze this prayer into any number of situations including when the lunch-mate is ordering food, when the conversation turns the attention in a direction away from the table, or simply during a lull in the conversation.  If caught in mid-stealth prayer, the lunch-mate is forces to either an awkward apology, or at the very least a confused conversation stumble.

Faith Themed Tattoo Contest Winner

Congrats to Jaime Langley for winning the Faith Themed Tattoo Contest held on the Facebook fan page. Truly horrible tattoo. Jaime wins a free photo print from the newly redesigned Wozofoto.com!

Wozofoto.com is a deal-a-day site offering fine art photography at unbelievable prices. Please check it out (I run the site) and let me know what you think of the new design.

#64 Tithing

The white Christian's commitment to church goes beyond weekly church attendance to include a financial commitment known as tithing. People may bicker about whether to tithe on net or gross income, but the beauty of tithing is that once a white Christian has given his 10% he can then spend the other 90% on junk food and video games and still be a good steward.

For the white Christian pastor, preaching on the subject of tithing is fraught with peril, due to the potential conflicts of interest. While tiptoeing around the issue to avoid scaring away each and every visitor, a pastor will frequently mention the blessings that accompany tithing. This is usually construed by white Christians to mean that tithing is something like a Christian stock market, only with guaranteed returns.

Few things make a white Christian as sick to his stomach as the sight of deacons passing around the offering plates just as he realizes the checkbook has been forgotten at home. He has a few options at this point: just pass the plate quickly with his head down, drop in cash (forgoing the tax deduction?!?), or, the most clever of all, drop in an empty special offering envelope.

White Christians could avoid all this drama by simply signing up for direct deposit of their tithe. However, it appears that most white Christians trust their church with their souls but not their bank account numbers.

#63 Polarized Nursery Philosophies: New School

There are two distinctly different philosophies in white Christian church nurseries around the world. Stuff White Christians Like continues this in-depth, two-week study of these differences, their positives and negatives.

Week 2: The New School

Toys
Safe, learning-oriented, and eco-friendly toys were purchased, not donated (anything donated is promptly forwarded to the homeless). More laboratory than nursery, the new school represents an intentional 180 degree pendulum swing away from the old school. In a video-monitored environment that can best be described as sterile, the new school is full of padded floors, rounded corners, and pristine cleanliness. These "nurseries" are literally just a fume hood and a an eye bath away from qualifying for full-fledged laboratory status.

Germs

For germs, if ignorance is bliss in the old school model, the new school intentionally seeks and destroys all known germs. At the end of each nursery session, all toys that have come into contact with homo sapiens are isolated and hermetically sealed. Nursery staff then takes all tainted items to the church's toy autoclave for complete antibacterial cleansing.

Due to potential choking hazards, the new school philosophy frowns on any food within a 10 foot radius of children. There are some acceptable snack options, but these are limited to bite-size, dissolvable, gluten-free, allergy-aware, soy-based quasi-food.

Security

The new school separates age groups into distinct sections: infants and toddlers. Each unique age group has a specified nursery ecosystem that is developmentally appropriate for all physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. This is in stark contrast to the old school where there is simply "the nursery," and children ranging from infants through third grade are cattle-prodded into their one-size-fits-all cell for an hour-long term.

Furthermore, all children are tracked with the meticulous precision of a FedEx package (perhaps the reason that many white Christians refer to babies as "bundles of joy"). Children are literally given stick-on name-tag labels with barcodes. On the plus side, the barcodes ensure that white Christian parents won't accidentally bring home the wrong child. On the other hand, barcodes inch the nursery experience dangerously close to 1984.

New School Positives:

Churches have removed any potential legal liability inherent in child care, and parents can rest assured that their child will live through the nursery experience- though the restaurant-like buzzer system will likely call them out of worship the nanosecond that their child emits the slightest whimper.

New School Negatives:

We're relatively confident that our society is raising a nation of wimps.

#62 Polarized Nursery Philosophies: Old School

There are two distinctly different philosophies in white Christian church nurseries around the world. Stuff White Christians Like takes an in-depth, two-week study of these differences, their positives and negatives.

Week 1: The Old School

Toys:
Toys were donated to the nursery sometime in the mid 80's. The church nursery staff was grateful for these toys, placed them in a bin, and haven't thought much about them since. In the years that have passed since the Reagan administration, these fuzzy germ-ridden bacteria traps have literally absorbed generations of infant drool, mucus, and other bodily fluids.

Germs:

The germs born as a result of these fluids have the luxury of incubating in the disease-friendly wooden toy box that was donated to the church nursery by one of the handimen in the congregation. This box has been constructed with authentic American lumber, fastened together with metal screws and finger-pinching metal hinges. In addition to featuring splinters and sharp-angle toddler falling hazards, this box acts as the perfect germ catalyst- constantly maintaining the ideal environment for legions of bacteria to thrive.

Security:

Old School nursery duty is typically in the quasi-capable hands of junior-high girls. Unfortunately, these volunteers are not necessarily the most reliable workers, and won't always (wo)man their post. In the case of an empty nursery, parents are surprisingly comfortable with this situation- they drop their children into this biosphere whether there are people to watch their children or not. "After all," reasons the white Christian parent, "the nursery is where children belong- much like ducks belong in a marsh or cows belong in a pasture." Ironically, both cows and ducks are likely visible in painted mural on the cinderblock wall of the nursery.

Old School Positives:

In an ironic Darwin-esque twist of fate, if your child can survive the litany of choking, falling, splintering, and bio-hazards of this nursery experience, it is likely that he or she will posses a near super-human immune system. The old school definitely subscribes to the "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" Nietzschean child care philosophy. Additionally, there are claims by the elderly members of the congregation (though these claims have not been scientifically verified) that this nursery format "builds character."

Old School Negatives:

Your infant might die.

Stuff White Christians LINK: Secret Bible Coded Jesus Rifles

Secret Bible codes? Jesus Rifles? Hound of Heaven? Waaa?

And the winner is...

Wilhelmina Peppermints!

The ever-last Dutch favorites dethroned the King... beating King Peppermints by a score of 11 to 5. 

Wilhelmina is officially the preferred church-time mint of white Christians (though some have proposed that Altoid might be a formidable foe).

#61 Christian Athletes

White Christian love celebrities as much as anyone, especially if there's a chance that someone famous might share their faith. They are quick to embrace anyone who mentions God in public as one of their own. Unfortunately, "Christian" celebrities usually disappoint.

The only "Christian" celebrities in existence today appear to be Jon and Kate Gosselin, Heidi and Spencer Pratt, and Jessica Simpson. Because of the constant revelations of questionable behavior by these individuals, such as Heidi's "nude witnessing" in Playboy, white Christians turn instead to Christian athletes for their role models.

The criteria for an athlete to be known throughout Christendom as a believer are not very strict - thanking God (or the "Big Guy") in post-game interview or dropping to a knee to pray after a touchdown will do it. White Christians everywhere will then cheer for this athlete and he will be featured on the cover of Sports Spectrum magazine, despite any recent reports of positive drug tests, illegitimate children, or strip club beatings. Once they're in, they're in - the athlete will remain a upstanding disciple in the minds of white Christians despite any and all indiscretions up to a double homicide.