Profit Sharing with God

I was going to post my "blogs of note" for the month along with a little rant/review about some of the various blog surfers out there. However, while I was out reading blogs, I checked on DC-Giants post for the day. His rant about Catholics reminded me of an idea I had a few years ago. I could say that it was an idea for a rant, but that would be untrue. No, this was an actual thought-out, balls to the wall, tongue-splitting adventure type of idea. So today, I've decided to turn it into a rant.

It all started a few years ago. Money was tight. The economy was a pile of shit. I'd been laid off for almost 8 months straight at the time. I'd had an offer to make a little extra cash via some various illegal activities, but I'd turned it down. After all, I was a father now and had to think about my kids. Most of the kids I knew growing up who had jail-dads didn't exactly look real favorly on them. I was actually pretty proud of myself for turning it down as only a few years before I would have done it in a heartbeat for nothing more then something to do let alone for the money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a gangster or anything like that, I just had a lot of close friends who were.

Well one Sunday, I went to church with my wife and two kids (I'm far from a regular but I do make my occasional cameo appearance). Trinity had only been born a few months before so she was sitting in my lap during the service. At some point she got a little fussy, so I took her out into the hallway and played with her on some large rolls of carpeting that were sitting out there.

The church my wife attends is a pretty big church. If I had to guess, I'd say it seats between 2-3 thousand. Which is one of the major deterrences to myself as I prefer much smaller crowds. For a church of that size I expected the hallways to be fairly occupied even during the service.

This was not the case however. The hallways were empty. Me and my daughter were the only ones out there. So it wasn't too suprising that when two elderly gentlemen carrying a large gold bowl and walking out of a previously unnoticed doorway that they caught my full attention. They didn't notice me as I was behind them. Nor did they notice my daughter as they both looked to be of the age where hardness of hearing is fairly common. As I watched them toddle past the side entrance to the church, it came to my realization who these men actually were and what they were doing. They were ushers, but more important was what they were carrying. The offering. All of the checks and cash that people had donated that week.

At the Catholic church (I can't believe they actually have a website) I grew up attending, the weekly tithe was about 1-2 thousand dollars. I figured probably 60% of which was in checks. So as quickly as the thought of beating up these two old guys and taking the money had passed my mind, it was as quickly dismissed because what was the point if most of the money was in checks anyways, not worth the risks of getting caught that's for sure. Or at least that's what I had thought at the time.

Like most of my ideas, it was never actually truly dismissed. Procrastinator I am, quitter I am not. Over the next few weeks it began to fester. Why don't people rob churches? The security is low. It's all donations and its insured. You don't have to worry about getting shot at if something goes amiss (unless you live in Texas). The only thing I could think of is that you'd be stealing from "God." And even if you don't have much sense for karma, that's definitely one of the worst things you could do. But there had to be more. No sensible thief in his right mind worries about karma. After all, they make a living out of screwing over other people, why should screwing over a probably non-existent religious figure be any different. Well after weeks (and now years) of thought, I still have not figured it out.

A couple months later, I attended church again. Triny was old enough to stay in the nursery by this time. While I was sitting in the pew, thinking about the next character I would make to play in Neverwinter Nights' module Demon, I started reading the weekly bulletin. It didn't take long before I found myself staring open-mouthed at the numbers in the weekly offering. $63K. Now that's a lot of fucking dough. Especially for a non-holiday weekend. Figure half of it is from each service, with the later service probably being the larger of the two. Then figuring high at 75% of it being in checks, that left give or take 8-9K left in cash. My brain was crunching numbers at full tilt. Money. People needed to do a job like that. Chance of getting caught. Risk vs reward. Everything. If you've ever been high on any kind of speed, you'd know what I was going thru. My mind was literally racing with all of the numbers, plots, and ideas passing thru it.

The ideal of course would to be to use as few people as possible. After some calculations and mapping out the churches hallways, parking lot, the nearest path the ushers could take to get help, I decided it could potentially be done with only two people. Three would be safer, but two was possible. Next was when. Obviously, the best time would be second service. More people in service, more reward. Also, more of the type of patrons who would be more likely to use cash (teenagers, collegiants, and young adults). The only downfall about second service would be that the parking lot would be fuller and thus slightly harder to navigate out of in a hurry. While not getting caught was more important then success, the additional risk seemed minor enough to be easily outweighed by the reward. When would be the best day to do it? While the smaller services during the week would be fairly easy to pull off there was little reward in it. This was a one shot deal. Once it happened, it would never be easy again. I decided that the Christmas eve candlelight service would be the best. After some research I found that the donations made on that night could be upwards of $80K for just one service. Cash was also more likely on that particular night, I figured. All that was left was to find someone crazy enough to do it.

An acquaintance of mine (and the guy who first came to my mind) was a thug. Not like the little gangsta wannabies that populate are malls, this man was an honest to god thug. 6'4" 250#'s of sheer muscle and testosterone, while not exactly dumb he was not known for his brains. He had a past history of several break-ins and a descent amount of jail-time to go with it. After asking around though, I found he was completely loyal and had never ratted out anyone. A quality that I have always held in high esteem. And from the way I had planned it, if anything went wrong, I would be the one who got away. Everything was fitting together nicely. A conversation with the thug (whose name was coincidentally also Josh) found him to be in a similar finacial situation as myself. His girlfriend had just gotten pregnant and they'd just gotten evicted for falling to far behind on their rent. Not exactly the ideal environment for raising a kid. To me this was excellent news though I only expressed my sympathies as I explained my idea. See, since his girlfriend was stuck in this situation with him, she would probably be willing to help for no extra cut. And to no surprise, she was. While not exactly experienced in robbery, she had been involved in a few petty thefts from gas stations and such. Everything was going according to plan and it was only November.

Aside from setting everything up and making sure it all went as planned, my role was now almost non-existent. This suited me just fine as I was the best improviser and the most likely to be able to change plans on the fly if something went wrong. Josh was going to be doing all the actual dirty work. I was going to stay at the church and make sure everything went as planned. His girlfriend would do the driving. She'd even stolen a license plate from a similar looking vehicle to put over hers for the night. Everything was going great. I was starting to get anxious.

Well, long story short, about the end of the first week of December, I got a phone call saying Josh had got in a fight, put some guy in the hospital, and was going to be spending the next several months in jail. I guess with his previous records, he had been more or less put on a permanent probation. That is to say, that if he fucks up at all, he goes to jail. Well, I never did rob the church. And Josh got out last August, only to find his way back in a month ago. Someday though, if someone doesn't do it first, I'll be profit sharing with God.