Day: September 5, 2012

First of all I have to say that Christianity in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.

Jesus had some important lessons and ideas that he taught beautifully.

So beautifully in fact that he became a threat to the powerful people of the time. By the way it wasn’t the Romans. Christianity’s threat to Rome came later.

The powerful people of the time were other practitioners of religion who simply hadn’t gotten around to wheedling the Romans into killing off all the rest of their enemies.

This is not to say that the Romans weren’t about killing, but the Romans knew if you keep the internal factions of a subjected people fighting amongst themselves… well those factions aren’t going to unite and fight you.

The Romans were many things, Chiefly they were excellent administrators.

The wealth and power of Rome was built on their imports, Trade, and tax collection. If you keep the locals squabbling and occasionally take out one of the more powerful leaders,  It’s a lot easier to collect taxes, look like you’re actually helping to keep the peace and keep the goods flowing.

This kind of duplicity is a wonderful tool when you’re managing a far flung empire. I personally think that the Christians learned all too well the lessons of Romans. Even today, it seems that duplicity and hypocrisy are the norm of many Christian organizations.

Recently, I became aware of a situation that is so classically typical I couldn’t help but write about it.

A Christian camp who shall remain nameless has a staff of young people.

For many of these young people this is their first job. For others it’s a Summer job in a foreign country. These foreign staff members hail from England, Australia, Scotland and Brazil.

Some of the staff are so-called “locals” meaning that they have homes 5 to 20 minutes from the camp. 

The rules were supposed to be;

All Staff stays at the camp while they’re on duty

All Staff rotates through the various activities so that they’re cross trained and don’t’ get bored.

All Staff would have a work schedule that was predictable and planned.

But in typical fashion

Poor management reigned supreme and then “We’re Christians”  was used as an excuse for mistreating some members of the staff and treating others preferentially.

For example, several of the “Local” staff were never given two consecutive days off. They were expected to make do with a day here, a half day there and they never had a schedule defining even those times off, which meant that they might as well have been working 400 miles from home since they never saw their families during the summer.

I know of at least one member of the staff that was never rotated to other activities, and who was arbitrarily stuck with 1/2 days off repeatedly.

The practical upshot of all this is that the kid never got to go see his mom who lives at some distance from the camp. Never was able to participate in any family activities because there was no way to plan since there was no schedule. Last but not least wasn’t able to do things like laundry or banking because the 2-4 hours they had off was on a Sunday night after 8 PM.

This kind of stuff is just plain bad management. It’s not about whether someone is Christian or not.

It’s made all the worse because the folks running the camp, knowing that they were technically abusing a couple of their employees decided to hide behind the “We’re a Christian camp” excuse. as if that would make it all go away.

What is the rationale there?

We’re Christian and we’re going to abuse the fuck out of you now but your reward in heaven will be proportionately greater?

What about “Family Values” aren’t Christians supposed to be about family? Or is it that they’re only about Their family?

This is one of the reasons that I and many people I know avoid Christians like the plague.