Posted on 04/02/2013 8:08:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A respected pro-family organization announced a boycott of Starbucks coffee. The group, which supports legal protection for traditional marriage, launched the "Dump Starbucks" campaign after a national board meeting in which the Seattle-based coffee company mentioned support for same-sex marriage as a core value of the company. Some Christians are wondering whether we ought to join in the boycott. I say no.
It's not that I'm saying a boycott in and of itself is always evil or wrong. It's just that, in this case (and in many like it) a boycott exposes us to all of our worst tendencies. Christians are tempted, again and again, to fight like the devil to please the Lord.
A boycott is a display of power, particularly of economic power. The boycott shows a corporation (or government or service provider) that the aggrieved party can hurt the company, by depriving it of revenue. The boycott, if it's successful, eventually causes the powers-that-be to yield, conceding that they need the money of the boycott participants more than they need whatever cause they were supporting. It is a contest of who has more buying power, and thus is of more value to the company. We lose that argument.
The argument behind a boycott assumes that the "rightness" of a marriage definition is constituted by a majority with power. Isn't that precisely what we're arguing against? Our beliefs about marriage aren't the way they are because we are in a majority. As a matter of fact, we must concede that we are in a tiny minority in contemporary American society, if we define marriage the way the Bible does, as a sexually-exclusive, permanent one-flesh union.
Moreover, is this kind of economic power context really how we're going to engage our neighbors with a discussion about the meaning and mystery of marriage? Do such measures actually persuade at the level such decisions are actually made: the moral imagination? I doubt it.
I'm all for protecting marriage in law and in culture, and I'm for that partly because I believe it is necessary for human flourishing for all people, believers and non-believers alike. But there's a way to do so that recognizes the resilience of marriage as a creation institution and that rests in the sovereignty of God over his universe.
Those who are scared of losing something are those who seem frantic or shrill or outraged. Those who are fearful resort to Gentile tactics of lording over others with political majorities or economic power. The winners, on the other hand, are able to take a longer view. We're able to grieve when our neighbors seek to copy marriage without the most basic thing that makes marriage work: the mystery of male and female as one-flesh.
But we don't persuade our neighbors by mimicking their angry power-protests. We persuade them by holding fast to the gospel, by explaining our increasingly odd view of marriage, and by serving the world and our neighbors around us, as our Lord does, with a towel and a foot-bucket.
We won't win this argument by bringing corporations to the ground in surrender. We'll engage this argument, first of all, by prompting our friends and neighbors to wonder why we don't divorce each other, and why we don't split up when a spouse loses his job or loses her health. We'll engage this argument when we have a more exalted, and more mysterious, view of sexuality than those who see human persons as animals or machines. And, most of all, we'll engage this argument when we proclaim the meaning behind marriage: the covenant union of Christ and his church.
Fear can lead us to cower and to hide a view of marriage that seems archaic and antiquated. That's why so many evangelical Christians have already surrendered, in their own lives, on such questions as round-the-clock daycare or a therapeutic view of divorce. But fear can also lead us to a kind of enraged impotence, where our boycotts and campaigns are really just one more way of saying, "I'm important; listen to me." Marriage is too important for that.
A Roman governor thought Jesus was weak when he refused to use imperial means of resistance. But Jesus' refusal to fight meant just the opposite of what Pilate assumed. "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting," Jesus said (Jn. 18:36).
Let others fight Mammon with Mammon. Let's struggle against principalities and powers with the One thing they fear: a word of faithful witness that doesn't blink before power, but doesn't seek to imitate it either. With the confidence of those who have been vindicated by the resurrection of Christ, we don't need to be vindicated by the culture. That ought to free us to speak openly about what we believe, but with the gentleness of those who have nothing to prove. Let's not boycott our neighbors. Let's not picket or scream or bellow. Let's offer a cup of cold water, or maybe even a grande skinny vanilla latte, in Jesus' name.
I was already boycotting Starbucks, mainly because I think their coffee stinks! But now there are multiple reasons to not drink their crud.
From Milton Friedman:
Look at this lead pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore.
This black center—we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite—I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? [Self-effacing laughter.] I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending … out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system: the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate, to make this pencil, so you could have it for a trifling sum.
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The point is this -— the products we use are created by thousands of people whose moral values you are not aware of. They could be Muslims, Sympathetic to Terrorists, they could be sympathetic to communists, they could have broken our laws, they could be immoral themselves, you just don’t know.
It would require something short of omniscience to know which maker of which product is or is not in harmony with your moral and religious values.
In the Religion forum, on a thread titled Should Christians Boycott Starbucks?, stuartcr wrote:
Perhaps some of them don’t like or care about loops, or are even in different loops?
How about being just loopy
I gather, you don’t buy things online at Amazon either...
&&&
Well, I have quit Amazon, as well as JC Penney, and IKEA because of their political stances.
I am sure there may well be many other companies that I am dealing with whose policies/views are inimical to my principles. When I discover such a discrepancy, I add that company to my list, insofar as I am able. I know I can never purge all of them, but I do what I can.
We sound like liberals now! My husband and I have ministered to many people that we met at Starbucks. Just because I don’t agree with their politics will not keep me from going.
Hey, you’re the one that mentioned loops in your comment that you addressed to yourself.
That actually happens often here.
If the CEO’s conscience dictates a screw you message and you don’t matter as a customer or stockholder then let your conscience dictate your actions.
I don’t go there because there are better coffee’s and I hate waiting to get simple black coffee.
Besides, McDonalds and the donut shop will put 5 cream and two Splenda in my coffee for me.
Never been to one, don’t intend to ever go to one. Nothing to do with my faith, though; it’s just too popular with undesirables, like college professors and other assorted progressive types.
LOL - I clean my coffeemaker more often than I clean my gun. I also use it a lot more often. :-)
I know, I wish I could use my guns a fraction as much as I use my coffee maker.
I have been boycotting Starbucks for years because of the heinous violence they commit upon a decent cup of coffee. :-)
I don’t call it “CHAR bucks” for nothing! :-)
Dr. Moore, Starbucks sounds like a great place for you to go and do a little ministering to the lost sheep. You might find a few souls there to save instead of preaching to the choir there in your regular church in Kentucky. But you sure as heck won’t find me in Starbucks when you go! But you will find me in Chic-fil-A except on Sunday when they are closed!
wimpy, wimpy, wimpy
I just like to support Christian businesses when I can and I choose not to support those who oppose Christians if I can. I enjoy spending my hard-earned money at places like Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby. I used to love buying Edwards Pies because they had a Bible verse on every box of pie. They would bought out, though. I still buy them but it isn’t the same. I miss the Bible verse.
I guess this is what some people would call “cutting edge”.
We could start by boycotting public schools. That is where a lot of your “changing social mores” begin.
I get a cup of “senior” coffee every morning at McDonald’s for .63. I am not that picky about my coffee as long as it has caffeine.
What will cause this country to sink?
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