I found out at work this week that I'm a "good Christian"

[EvolveOrConvolve]

Every year, my department at work gets together during the holidays and adopts a homeless family and buys them gifts and food and donates old items like Nintendos, etc. We usually get a list of 4 or 5 families with basic descriptions; "family one is dealing with the death of the father from cancer this year, has 3 children ages 4, 7, and 11, and needs clothing and maybe some toys"; "family two lost their home and vehicle after both mom and dad lost their job. They have two small children and a dog and would like bus passes, a coffee maker, and educational materials." We then vote by email which family we think should be the benefactor then buy the gifts or donate money that's delivered to the family sometime before Christmas.

Whatever the story, it's always fucking heart-breaking to read, and even more heart-breaking when the department can only scrounge up a couple hundred bucks and some old used clothing. Hell, we spend more than that on our Christmas parties, and many of the people in the department make good six-figure salaries.

Because of the shitty turnout (we've got a lot of "compassionate" conservatives in the department), a couple of us engineers met with the lady from the program separately and sponsored our own family. We bought them literally everything on their list, and we delivered it in person. We just thought it was shitty that you've got people buying second homes and new vehicles with their annual bonus money, and they can't even be bothered to chip in 10 bucks to help out someone in need.

We kept quiet about what we did, but the lady called to setup this year's sponsorship and asked the person who puts it together if we were going to sponsor two families again this year. Long story short, the department found out what happened, and my boss told me that I'm a "good Christian". It offended the fuck out of me - as if one needs to be a Christian to be good. As if we did what we did because of some precondition to getting into heaven or to prevent an eternity burning in hot lakes of fire.

For those believers who think it's a good idea to use this phrase as a compliment: think about it before you say it. You may be seriously offending someone. For example, one of the engineers in the group is from India - he's not a Christian, but still helped to make a family's life a little better during a rough time in their lives. Calling him a "good Christian" is implicitly questioning his motives.