Building Wells, Old Christians and Fornication

The urge to be helpful overtook me this morning (no worries, like corn it soon passed) leading me to read the volunteers section of Craigslist. An area of the site I occasionally peruse, though admittedly far less frequently than the Free and Missed Connection links. What can I say? I’m more of a cheap voyeur than I am altruistic. And there, amidst the ads for the “Go to the other side of the world to build a well/teach children/save baby seals the people who live there are clearly not fully capable of building/raising/not killing themselves as they aren’t white and all” I found a post titled “Help Christian Older Lady Move!!! (Gladstone)”.

I get the relevance of “older”- the image of a frail slightly bent gray haired granny lifting moving boxes even tugs a bit at my tightly tuned heart strings. Not to mention that it makes the possibility of a homemade chocolate cookie reward a bit more likely. But why the fuck does it matter that she’s Christian? And what does it say about the whole good Christians helping all in need thing that this ad is thought better marketed to them by making it clear that she’s one of them?

No one would ever post “Help Wiccan/ Buddhist/ Atheist Older Lady Move!!!” unless it was a thinly veiled attempt to make it into the Best of Craigslist. Does her being a Christian mean she needs or deserves more help in moving her things? Since when does the fact that she’s an old woman living on her own somehow not warrant assistance without the added caveat that she believes in virgin birth?

What bothers me is that the word “Christian” is clearly used here to assure strangers that this is a good, kind person deserving of their help, unlike all those other lonely, frail, social-security-dependent but evil seniors out there. “Christian” does not automatically equal “good”, all it equals is “Christian”. It is irrelevant. Post your ad at a church filled with people who for the most part get your baseless connotations of a faith descriptor (which I’m sure contributes a great deal to all of your self-esteem), not on a public site where people are looking for opportunities to help anyone in need of it and not just those like themselves.

Oh, and check out my ad “Help Young Liberal Fornicating Heathen Pay for Alcohol!!! (Portland)”.