By now, everyone must be nauseatingly familiar with the story of the small Indiana pizza shop that was ambushed by a local reporter with a hypothetical question, “Would you cater a gay wedding,” as if any self-respecting gay couple would ever serve pizza at such an event. When the pizza place said no, an African-American conservative talk show host opened a persecution complex defense fund that collected some half-million clams (isn’t eating shellfish Biblically forbidden?) before being mercifully closed. Virtually all of the donors were some church lady name Annie Nonamus; she must be loaded, no doubt a recipient of the prosperity version of the Holy Book.
Meanwhile, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Rodney Todd, a divorced father with custody of his seven children, tried to support his family on a kitchen worker’s salary. When the local power company discovered an illegal connection to their home on March 25, it was disconnected. Mr. Todd installed a gas powered generator in his kitchen to keep his two sons and five daughters warm.
The particulars after that are too sad to repeat. Briefly, family members were last seen March 28 and the entire family was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning on April 6. You do the math.
I am not going to question whether Mr. Todd had reached out to any private or public resources that may have been able to help him. In a world where so many fathers are criticized for walking away from their children, here we have a man who did all he could to keep his family together and cared for.
I am not going to criticize Mr. Todd for having the heater inside. This is no time to blame the victim.
What I am going to question until my last breath, however, is how one faction of society thinks nothing of running to their checkbook to fund a pizza shop in a town of under 2000 residents that was under no real distress, while simultaneously claiming that social programs that are designed to assist people like Mr. Todd are “handouts,” “wasting my tax money,” “for people too lazy to work,” etc.
Where are all these pizza Christians when people like Mr. Todd need help?
Standing on and shouting from their sanctimonious, hypocritical soapboxes, that’s where.
Jesus wept, indeed.
Religious Refuse 
Please don’t ALL Christians into this category … I don’t know if this man had a church affiliation or not. In our area here, I know that we have helped 20+ families who are struggling to survive… With food , shelter, heat, clothing, etc. sometimes people are just too proud to ask for help and we all can’t read each other’s minds. It’s a tragedy that this family had no one… We are all responsible….
Thanks for reading and commenting. No, of course not – I wrote specifically about pizza Christians, and defined them. Imagine how food banks or homeless shelters could have benefited from the half million that pizza shop received. Very sad.