As if people needed ANOTHER reason to hate Christians...

Well, Applebee's has gone and done it. To add insult to injury, they've fired the server who uploaded a photograph of a customer's receipt to reddit.

The Yahoo! News article can be found here.

The pastor has been identified, and it seems to me that she (the pastor) is sorrier that she got caught and publicly humiliated than she is for actually doing the deed. Yet another example of a Christian who has veiled their avarice with piety and passed it off without consideration of justice. As someone who worked several years in the restaurant industry (Olive Garden and Steak 'n' Shake), I certainly sympathize with the server—far too many Christians don't know that servers depend upon tips just to make ends meet. Most (though not all) servers make only half of the state minimum wage.

The Facebook group Pastor Alois Bell Should Be Fired has received well over 600 likes today alone. Yet perhaps the Jesus-like way of dealing with this problem would be for the disgraced pastor to apologize to Chelsea, help her find a new job, and actually pay the tip owed her from the meal (and then go and learn what Matthew 23:23-24 means). That would be a truly divine act of penance. But we don't see many Facebook groups being formed around that idea, do we?

To anyone reading this who might think Christians are selfish, self-righteous, unjust, and judgmental: I am so, so sorry that this is the most exposure you have to followers of Jesus. Trust me in my saying that pastors like Alois Bell are more like the Pharisees Jesus criticized than they are like Jesus himself.