You've all heard of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, well, I grew up with rich grandparents and poor grandparents. My mothers side contained the poor ones growing up on a farm with hard-working country values. On my fathers side were the rich ones, who got into the religion business and used that as a springboard to start a number of successful regular businesses of their own.
My "father" met my mother and started a relationship with her. Things started getting serious and they got engaged. What my mom didn't know, was that shortly after meeting her, he'd begun an illicit relationship with another girl behind her back. He got the other girl pregnant first even though he was engaged to my mom. Then two months later, they conceived me. So here my mom is preparing for marriage and picking out her wedding dress when she finds out about the other relationship.
To say she was shocked would be an understatement, after asking for forgiveness, he assures her it wasn't serious and still planned on marrying her. Only later would she find out that the other girl was pregnant too...
His parents (my grandparents), were what you call fake status-seeking "Christians." Grandpop was the "Pastor" of two churches and ran other businesses. They were very wealthy. How do I know that? Because every summer I would go down to live with them and they never tired of telling me and my half-brother (from now o, I'll refer to him as my brother) just how wealthy they were. I would see them act holy in the churches and repeatedly collect donations every week. I always wondered why such a rich man would take money from poor people. We'll come back to that later.
Eventually, the grandparents found out that my dad had two girls pregnant at the same time. Remember, he was in a relationship with my mother first and still "engaged" to her. However, the other girl lived in the same town as my grandparents. What to do with this brewing scandal? They had a crisis meeting to figure out how to spin the story. It was decided that since the girl was local and had been impregnated first (by two months), he was to break up with my mother and marry the local girl, my brothers mother. And that's exactly what he did.
Now imagine the turmoil in my family. They think this fine upstanding son of a Pastor, is going to marry into our family. Now all of their plans for the wedding were for naught and my mother is going to be forced to give birth to an "illegitimate" child. My grandmother on my mothers side also had to deal with churches, and the judgment was swift. "What kind of parent was she? How could she lose control of her own daughter?" The didn't realize my mother wasn't the problem, he was. Grandmom told me that she was shunned and made to sit in the rear of the church due to the growing embarrassment of my pending birth.
So you can see how this wrecked two families.
My brother was born after a quickie marriage, but dad's actions against my mother caused such an uproar here, and a rift between my grandmom and my mom, that on the day of my birth, she told the nurses to put me up for adoption. She didn't want me. My birth was causing too much trouble. When grandmom heard about it, she freaked out and told my mother that she couldn't return home if she adopted me out to strangers. So she asked my aunt (who couldn't have children) that lived across town if she would take me and she said yes.
So picture this. I would grow up thinking my aunt was my mother, and my mother was my aunt. I was never to be told.
Well grandmom again stepped in and rejected this plan as well and threatened to throw her out if she signed the adoption papers. So she was forced (against her will) to keep me. Hearing about all of the commotion here, with my mom becoming the black sheep of the family, dad came back and offered to dump the other girl and marry my mother. He would end up spending the first two years of my life here with my mom, trying to convince my grandmother to allow the marriage. But she never trusted him and wouldn't allow it, the next paragraph will tell you why. She told me that she knew he'd have to divorce my brothers mother in order to marry my mom, and she didn't want the mess to get any worse. So he went back home to the other girl.
Now, I told you that my grandmother wouldn't allow him to marry my mom because she didn't trust him, here's why. What no one yet knew was that he had two other girls pregnant as well, even though he was "married." Meaning there were four boys born from 4 different girls. There was no way my grandmother wanted anything to do with blessing a union with a playboy like him. What would you do?
So growing up, every year I'd spend time in my brothers hometown. I saw them plan planting fake believers in the pews, who'd come up seeking salvation during altar call. The poor people on fixed incomes shamed to hand over money to a greedy pastor who was a millionaire many, many many times over. He would even call out individual members and tell them he knew they could give more. Publicly shamed, they'd reach in and dig for their last few dollar bills. I sat at the dinner table where my rich grandparents made fun of the poor church members and bragged about their wealth. He welcomed visiting delegations of other "pastors" and shared tips on squeezing even more cash from their flocks.
Once I asked him why he pressed for donations every Sunday (and Wednesday), even though he didn't need the money. Why not offer the church services for free and let the poor congregation keep the little funds they had? He looked at me as if I were crazy, and told me that "God helps those who help themselves!" and he was certainly helping himself to their hard-earned money.
I couldn't help but wonder; "Is that what Jesus would do?" But I already knew the answer…
Tomorrow: PART 2
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