You can't have my trash...

There is a church near where I live that has an interesting policy on giving. Recently, it added padlocks to the fence surrounding the dumpsters behind the church. I was told they were put there so that no one could get in to dig through the trash and take something. Now sure, maybe you are saying this is a policy to protect church confidentiality, so no one steals important documents. But all documents are already fed through a shredder, so this seems a bit extreme!

The same church has out door water spigots that do not have a handle to turn on the water flow. Instead, you need a wrench-like key. I was told this was done so that no one would steal the church's water to wash their car (or for any other reason). I can't even discern a valid reason for this security measure.

During a recent cleaning of the same church's under-used food pantry, about a dozen cans of soup were thrown away. I saw them, and looked at the expiration date on one of the cans. It expired in 2001 (ten years ago!). Now, I can think of two possible explanations for this. (1) The soup has been sitting in the food pantry since some time in 2000. (2) Someone just recently donated a can of soup that expired ten years ago and it was immediately caught. The first option would indicate to me that the church insufficiently distributes its food pantry goods, and also that it does far too little to monitor the food in its food pantry. The second option might be an oversight by the donor, or it might embody an attitude of "what's too bad for me should be plenty for the needy." I'm trying to come up with as generous of a reading as I can.

The question that really bothers me is this: how many ten-year-old cans of soup were given out before this cleaning? No matter how I look at it, the church seems to be sending a clear message to the needy: you can't have my trash, you can't have my water, but you are more than welcome to my ten-year-old soup.

The supreme irony of it all (or perhaps divine providence) is that the locks on the dumpster fence might save some impoverished dumpster-diver's life. Without the locks, he might find the disposed of ancient soup, consume it, and die.