My husband and I have spent the last two years living in his mother's basement. His mother and her husband are Evangelical Christians and very, very conservative. They go to church every Sunday, do Bible study, and volunteer at Christian summer camps. Everything they do is related to their faith in some way.
Her husband (not my husband's father) is a very black and white person. For him, there are no shades of gray: it's either right or wrong and there's nothing in between. Like most conservatives, he has an idea of who is deserving of help and who is not. We fall into the undeserving category because 1: we aren't as religious as he is and 2: we are profilgates who have spent our way into our current mess and we need to learn to manage our money better. So, he has never really wanted to help us in any way.
To add to that, his mother offered us the basement without telling her husband that we were bringing our dog. Not really liking dogs, he wouldn't have allowed us to stay had he known about it – it would have been too much for him to accept. This was strike number two against us, even though we did not know she hadn't told him. Had I known that he wasn't ok with the dog, I would have never agreed to have come here.
In our time here, he has made it very clear we aren't welcome and that we're an imposition. From the very first, we offered to pay rent and we've been doing so ever since we've been able. The only time we weren't able to pay was during the first couple of months after our arrival since my husband didn't even have a job yet. He begrudges us this time. If he were able to, I'm sure he'd squeeze us for those first few weeks' rent as well. We should be grateful that he doesn't.
He's called us thieves and we get blamed if anything breaks. Right before Christmas this past year, he took away our parking spot because he bought a new car and he needed space for his old car. If our car got towed away because parking on the street is limited during certain hours, he couldn't see how it was his problem.
We are finally moving out at the end of the week. We found an affordable apartment that accepts dogs, something that is very difficult to do in a city with a vacancy rate of less than one percent. As I look back on the past two and half years, I don't know how to feel about the "help" we were given. I don't even know if I should consider it help. Does help that you have to pay for qualify as help? I'm not sure. It certainly would have been more helpful if we were only asked to pay for our share of the utilities.
Jesus Christ commanded his followers to treat others as they would like to be treated and to help those less fortunate. It's hard for me to understand someone who claims to be a good Christian and yet begrudges any assistance he may give to those in need. I am not even a Christian and yet I help others when I can. I don't care what they believe or how they came to need assistance. To me, everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect by virtue of the fact that they're human. I need no god or gods to tell me that this is the right thing to do.
