Some Christian Businesses have no right to Claim Christ in their Description when They don’t treat Their Workers with Love

On a random Tuesday night at like 11:13 P.M, I was watching the television show Luther before drifting off to sleep. Which has been my nightly ritual for the last 3 weeks. About 40 minutes into the show I got a text from a old college professor of mine. It had been years since we spoke to one another due to the complex journey of life that separates friends and family. It wasn’t unusual at all to me that she contacted me at such a late hour. She typical doesn’t have time for anyone until she feels that her work is at point of satisfactory to. I knew it would be best for me to go to sleep. Who cares.. This was my beloved friend and not a associate. We text that night until we felt we were on common ground with understanding where each other were in life. We both promised to have a real conversation the next night. This excited me immensely.

Just a little history behind our friendship. She was my freshmen composition teacher with long dreads and blond tips. The way she dress, spoke, and expressed herself said she was proud to be a black woman. Her teaching style was highly dualistic, meaning she could teach the intellectual individual and the person who grow up hating school all the same. I was latter! I hated school and I was only there for the girls and to make people laugh. Just being honest. She laughed at every joke I told but she was so serious when it became time to handout graded papers (each paper she gave me had a red F on it with a note that stated, “I know you can do better, Martino. Why don’t you try?” Even though I didn’t give her class the smallest amount of effort my first semester, she never gave up on me. I passed her class (I cheated my way through it) and decided to take Composition 2 with her as my teacher once again. But this semester would be different. I was ready to try and take life serious. Me and few other students started come to her office after hours until like 10:30 P.M. We were hungry for learning and being around our favorite teacher. Our conversations in that office transformed us into close friends over my time in college. I graduated and joined the army and she continued captivating minds.

Back to the present. The next night I waited on her to call me and thought about the great conversation we were going to share about our new adventures in life. The phone rang. It was Her.

Hi Ms. — !

“How are you Martino? It’s been too long since we spoke. You are a Army man now. Tell me about that.”

I love being a soldier and basic training was crappy. It made me a better person though.

“But why the Army?”

It just seemed liked the smartest thing for me to do after college. Nothing against teaching but I just wasn’t ready to be a PE teacher.

“If your happy I think you made a good decision.”

So how has teaching been for you these days? I still think back on all the times shared in your class.

“Martino I don’t work at the school I taught at before. I was fired!”

This made my flesh boil with indignation. I just knew this couldn’t be true, “Are you being serious? Please don’t play like that.”

“I am totally serious. I went months jobless, depressed, and homeless. After ten years of working for that school I never thought this could happen to me.This school being affiliated with Christianity decided that I went against their beliefs when I got married to my wife. It was like they were embarrassed of me because I am a homosexual. This cut me to core of my heart.” she said with evident pain in her voice.

Before I could say a word, she said, ”And don’t start preaching to me Martino, you know I’m gay and it ain’t changing…” with a gentle tone to let me know she wasn’t rebuking me.

(moment of complete silence)……. Then we both bursted into laughter because she read me like a book.

Our conversation lasted for more time on more cheerful subjects. We encouraged each other to keep growing and exploring the slender of life. After ending the call with her I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth for some people who claim to be Christians but have the nerve to disrespectfully exile people based on their sexuality. Is this the example Christ gave when he walked in this depraved world. I think not! Christ accepted people who would be considered sinful, unclean, unholy, and outcasted as his own. He didn’t care about what people thought. Christ just loved people unconditionally.

There has to be a better method than just leaving a person in the world jobless. Just because a person choices to be homosexual doesn’t mean he/she should be treated like a 1940s African American who stood up for their rights. People will do anything to appear to be holy under the sun. The sun tends to go down for every human being one day and when that time comes appearances won’t matter anymore. What will matter is how you treated people when you were on the earth. Sometimes I feel that Christian organizations treat people more like shit than organizations that are faithless.