Sunday School

So I’m sitting in the pew (I know, you’re saying: “Shut up you hypocrite! What business does an agnostic have sitting in a pew?”...I guess that’ll be the subject of a future blog entry) and the priest says to the congregation, “The other day I got a phone call about one of my sermons. In the sermon, I wondered that maybe, just maybe, the wealth of wealthy Americans sometimes comes at the expense of poor people in other countries. Well, the caller was outraged that I had said this. It’s getting so you’re not allowed to wonder about things like that! In our country, CEO’s are paid millions of dollars while their foreign workers make twenty-five cents an hour!”

I glance around, attempting to gauge the reaction of the congregants.

Later, as I escort my little family to our little family car, I notice a Hummer parked in the church lot. We wait to see who owns it. A man and two kids hop aboard. We follow them out of the lot. Two blocks later, they pull into their driveway. Round trip to and from church in their Hummer: four blocks in the tree-lined streets of flat suburbia.

I thought maybe I should make a big deal about this, however, in accordance with my Glass-Half-Empty philosophy, I imagined that the Hummer had been the vehicle manned by the man’s wife, who had been killed in Iraq, which is why the family had the Hummer brought back to the States, in memoriam. And then wouldn’t I feel stupid?