How Starbucks Has Out-Churched The Church

As one of the first Americans to be fired from work for my faith, I'd like to further articulate why it was, indeed, an attack on my sincerely held religious beliefs.  Now, granted, in America, businesses can do whatever they want.  I don't believe there are any Constitutional grounds for forcing a business to do the right thing.  That's because as consumers, we can choose to patronize businesses that do the right thing, and warn others of businesses that don't, and those businesses have a right to do what they're going to do.  If it's not a case of life or death, let the haters hate.  Let Brookstone function improperly.  They've gone bankrupt since as a result of their bad policy, despite help from the Federal government in its zeal to evangelize employees in the name of Sodom.  But there is nothing acceptable, there's nothing loving, there's nothing charitable, and there's nothing productive about firing Christians for believing in marriage, and for expressing that sincerely held truth in the workplace or elsewhere.  Truth is, we live in a time period unlike any before in history.  The lines between church and state are blurrier than ever before - and this is not the doing of the authentic Christian - this is the doing of the dying but very hateful anti-Christian counterculture which has aged into the ranks of leading businesses, courts, and other societal institutions.

 

There are many ways that one could go about illustrating how Christians who are fired for speaking out against the evil of homosexuality in a time when it would seem, media-wise, to be unpopular to do so, are not merely being deemed victims of a personality conflict at work - they are, in fact, victims of religious discrimination.  We, as believers, could remind you all that ultimately, telling a homosexual that the lifestyle is wrong is, ultimately, the most loving thing to do.  And usually, that's an ineffective way at encroaching upon the heart of the problem, since most of the motivators of homosexuality are subconscious, and rooted in the depths of a Willy-Loman-like delusion or personality disorder (if psychologists were as honest as they used to be up through the DSM-III when homosexuals harassed them into changing it).  So, you try to call a homosexual out on his or her deviance, and they become irrational, impassioned, and logic is the enemy.  DNA is the enemy.  All that matters, to them, is their delusion.  And so, taken en-masse, along with technological determinism's bias toward this delusion - because delusion is highly profitable to the television producer seeking an audience (see former posts) - this seems like convincing proof to the rest of the world that the honest, congruent, Christian of integrity who stands by the less-stylish, but more meaty truths of his faith - is really a prejudiced intolerant hate-monger.  That is, after all, what the more discontented hate-mongers who write the teleprompts for your favorite Ron Burgundies sincerely believe, as their religion.

Christianity As The Hate-Monger

Now, the Christian as the intolerant hatemonger myth, like all myths, do have some truth in them.  Which is how it has come to be such a popular cultural myth, and furthermore one rooted in Television, and, by implication, technology's, evangelization of, essentially, what amounts to - well, many things.  I mused about some of the possible bottom-line meat of the overall social media message.  Which is to say, what does it all mean?  The tweets, the basketball wins, the puppy dogs - all of it- if you were to take it all and interpret social media, television - all media as a whole, what would it say?

Here are some of my previous best guesses, as one who studies media on a regular basis.  (click here).

But what does all of the above (in the link) come down to?  Well, what's the point of trying to summarize, to distill social media (or anti-social media, as I call it) for what it really is -- anti-social media?  We're humans, so I'm going to distill the human element, the humanity-relevant element of anti-social media.  Why's it anti-social?  Why is it dangerous to human development?

And the answer is this.  If the so-called social media were a person influencing our lives, saying all of the above things in the post above, which most of you agree with, from the likes and uncomfortable laughter evoked by that reflection -it would be one heck of a master manipulator.  Again, check this out.  Do you like people who act like, who say what social media says?

Let us never forget that Facebook began - because you've all seen the Social Network -

The whole premise, the whole philosophy and underlying database theory and database application that makes Facebook tick - the heart of Facebook, the basis for all future "social media," began with one anti-social misfit's plight to - if not, like any misanthropic nerd's trust in machines over people to fix a human relationship, like billions now use the site to do -- 

The very heart of social media began with one anti-social misfit's endearing plight to compare human females to barn animals.

Let me write that again so it sinks in.

All social media, including the means that you are interfacing with the technology necessary to read the original publication of this post on LinkedIn -

began with one troubled young man's American dream of comparing females - female humans - to barn animals.

I could compare Zuckerburg to misfits of previous ages who might take out his social angst on a journal in personal reflection.  Lots of conclusions that could be drawn here.

But, bottom line, in addition to all of the above, the ultimate meaning, the ultimate bottom line of all social media is - and you'll want to read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman to understand this in greater depth -

The bottom line of all anti-social media is, in the tradition of television and photojournalism, is the American cultural myth of Instant Gratification.

It is this myth that forms the basis of deception upon which all highly manipulative masterminds operate.  Only - when we engage in social media, really, any kind of media in the tradition of photojournalism (again, read Postman's AOTD to further deepen the understanding here) - we buy into a certain premise of salvation through progress.  I developed this line of thinking a little more in the article linked here (click here).

I call it a myth because to a point, yes, technology makes our lives easier.  But consider how young people - including myself as a millennial - are objectively dumber than previous generations.  Our grandparents could compute things in their heads we simply can't do without a calculator, and our vocabularies are 60% smaller than theirs.  Our IQ's are 15 points lower (on average, of course).

And both because of our increasing stupidity as Americans, which perhaps we can all at least agree upon evidence of this stupidity lies in the ever dumber pool of presidential candidates (no matter what side of the aisle you're on, we all disagree with all of them.  Nobody is contented by any of them, and we all feel like our choice in a candidate is, at best, the lesser of two evils, whether you Trump or Clint).

And it's both - GET THIS- it's both BECAUSE OF this increasing stupidity - this increasing ability to think, and it's a RESULT OF this increasing stupidity that, just as you're afraid to do long division without a calculator - well, you're afraid to draw moral conclusions, now, which are ultimately, as the great philosophers agree, rooted in logic (and maybe I'm talking to the men here a little more than the women, and I'm just fine with that) rather than emotion, which -- emotion, I am certain (again to the men) is also rational when congruent and felt out by men of integrity.  And- women too.

Truth is, millennials are emotionally confused.  And what do we do when we're confused?  Well, we trust what's safe.

We don't trust ourselves to feel things out any more, to check, say the Bible, or even our own emotions.  So, what are our touchstones of truth?

You guessed it.  Not the Testament-verse, but the Twitterverse.  Why?  It's small bites we can understand.  Which, by the way, our parents were acclimated to in the form of the infamous "sound-byte," which is the predecessor of the tweet.

Bite-sized nuggets that irrational, unthinking, cultural babies - super-sensitive cultural babies (read Millennials) can understand.  Sung to us by a pretty little Taylor Swift shaking something off or around or whatnot, and cooed in the female register, like a mother's voice lulling us to sleep with a bedtime story.  And it provides, at least, momentary gratification, as all the best cultural myths do.  Which is how they become cultural myths.

What on earth does any of this have to do with why firing Christians for opposing homosexuality in the workplace is a de facto assault on faith itself, on God Himself, and on religion, rather than a mere attempt to be conciliatory?

Well, I'd like to state very explicitly why.  Many other Christians have tried, as I have tried to do so in the past.  But the problem is-

The problem is, one cannot really communicate a logical truth to a generation which - are you ready for this?

One cannot use logic to communicate, to argue, a logical truth to a generation that has been trained to treat logical arguments with distrust.

You, perhaps think I am being fair to other millennials here.  You perhaps think I am being extremely prideful.  Maybe you're wondering how I would answer your question, if you were to ask me, well, what makes me different?  How is it that I am thinking logically, while most of my generation think about homosexuality in terms of emotions which, as I developed above - emotions are only as good as the logic underlying them.  Emotional thinking, at its best, is logical thinking.  When one's the emotional thinking - when one's feelings - are at odds with one's explicit moral system, well, there are fewer better definitions of cognitive dissonance.  Of incongruence.  Ultimately - of a deficit of not only attention, but integrity.

And what do I blame this lack of attention (everybody today has ADD/ADHD, etc) on?

Yep, you guessed it.  Television.  Now, the smartphones, given to infants in their cradles to provide an everlasting source of instant mental gratification.

And if you have questions, because I am trying to keep this focused, "reach out to me" (that's "contact me" in non-millennial-speak) for further development.

But to get to the point many of you are already starting to grasp as you keep up with my posts -

Technology is training us to believe, through artificial stimulation and ever-lasting distraction, ever more in a common technological myth that even C.S. Lewis observed in the relatively simple technologies of his time.

As Neil Postman wrote, we're "Amusing Ourselves to Death."  As Marshall McLuhan famously coined the expression, "The Medium Is The Message."  I've developed over and over again in my posts, even this one, what social media is trying to tell us, but there are some things that, from the horse-and-buggy to the implantable satellite cell phone brain-chip all "technology" and "progress" stands for, and this is the heart of what is killing us and our ability to understand not just homosexuality, but ourselves and our place in the natural world.

And this "progress" myth, this "faith through technology" myth - is rooted in a more obscure, implicit premise that most of us don't like to consciously think about, but which we submit to, sign ourselves up to any time we turn on a television or click on a tweet, or even "google" - excuse me - "alphabet" something.

This is the underlying premise of instant gratification without consequence.

It is this premise - this highly deceptive premise, that Google relies upon to keep you "engaged" in its content - in fact, every social media marketer ever (antisocial, of course) relies upon to keep you hooked.

And it's the reason that the Christian- he who relies upon truth- appears to be an "intolerant scumbag" when countered with the (laugh) "human progress" of one man placing members of his body in places that - deep in our hearts, all of us - even the most delusional among us, let's not forget - delusional by some very unloving trauma, by a delusion exacerbated-for-profit by technological profit interests - 

It is our thinking-averse, dangerous over-reliance upon technology to be the arbiter of truth, of logic which makes it possible for the most loving, most fulfilling - in fact, the very definition of love, and its creed, and the people - the Christians - who ascribe to this creed of Love Himself - which is God -

It is our ever-distractable world of CEO's which have faith in - not even the perverse "social gospel" of history, but the algorithm -defined -- read, artifially-intelligently-derived Gospel of the twittersphere, which is merely the latest iteration of the mediasphere, which is itself an offspin of photojournalism - which -- if journalists are honest with themselves, has a history which is more checkered with neatly-framed bloodstains than the crusades.  You think there'd be race riots all over the country if it weren't for the media fanning the flames of Chicago all across the country?  You think police would be painted as the enemies in the very eyes of people they're trying to help without the help of profit-driven technology?  All without a factual error in the papertrail.  Journalists are masters of papertrails.  It's our bread and butter.  And you thought the accountants were bad.

Journalism profits best when it exacerbates conflict, pits one side against the other, and, like any corrupt businessman, outruns the implicit cultural malice faster than they can be held accountable.  The electronic nature of so-called "journalism" today greatly aids the process, as a new story is out and reported, in one ear and out the other of the audience before yesterday's story is completely forgotten.  And because there are so many "facts" flying around, everything gets forgotten.  And you wonder why millennials are a generation of ADD/ADHD/whatever they'll call ADD next.

All that remains, after all the useless bits of media trivia flood in and out faster than anybody can keep track of them, are the patterns in the brains which have been well-worn by these most intrusive metaphorical Farenheit 911 Firemen, stomping around in the corners of our brain, burning down natural sensibilities faster and with more efficiency than the ADD millennial has the ability - with endless deluges of fire-hose-grade velocity-and-volume TRIVIA.  Puppy dogs!  Cute-bombing videos!  Gut, knee-jerking reactions!  News of terrorist strikes!  Tweets from celebrities!  Another implicit media accusation of that other group they're trying to turn you against to get your attention.

But what in tarnation does it all mean?

And the fact is, it's really a little game that the media- that Google, that Alphabet, that the nightly news anchor and his team of technologically-inclined allies perpetuate in order to - distract you from figuring out.

One more click; one more news story - it promises; one more nightly comedy sketch - and, it promises, you're being filled in with another puzzle piece about the world you live in and yourself.

Except - the exact opposite is happening.  And if you need proof of that, then you just ask yourself, after a week of watching the nightly news, how many of the "facts" reported to you you actually remember.  And of course, we don't.  They're all unrelated bits of trivia that don't tell any kind of human story except - except, well, the one that the nightly news marketers, and google brand into our heads, as evidenced by the only consistent action we take when consuming their "technology"- or being consumed by it - regularly.  And that is (again read Neil Postman's Amusing ourselves to death, which I develop further here --

"Keep watching.  All the answers lie here.  You can be instantly gratified (and of course you never are, for any long term, or beyond five seconds) by using this technology, from which we profit from your use of it."  Along with the other anti-social messages I have documented personally and linked to in this article.

Like a fire-hose blasting through our conscious brains, circumventing the conscious mind every time the phone dings, and we automatically reach for it, while we're "thinking" of something else, while we're distracted by something else - no doubt the latest flashing nothing about puppydogs, or your best friend's dinner which he just had to take a picture of.

Like a firehose to your conscious mind, a virtual lobotomy.

Every time you "sign on" to the computer, to the cell.  Every time you - therefore and consequently, "sign off" from conscious, frontal-lobe thought.  Actionable thought - or at least consciously actionable though.

Make no mistake, the nightly news does inform you to take action as does Google.  In fact, they get rich off of it.  They make you think you're taking action by voting while better informed, but really if you took a step back and watched how the television were informing your civic duty, you'd find it more likely decisively informing what hamburger to "vote for," rather than what candidate.  

Questions?  Are you keeping up with me so far?  Because these are rather "deep" thoughts for the average LinkedIn viewer.  I need to stop here for now, because in the next section, I'm going to return to the original premise, which is how - a man getting fired from his job for disagreeing with homosexuality is an assault on the Christian gospel- and why an anti-social, technologically dependent culture of highly suggestible individuals has, it would appear, arrive at the verdict that the Christian fired for his faith, rather than the anti-Christian, anti-religious employer, is the aggressor, is the evildoer (even though millennials wouldn't call it that, the bad-guy, what have you).

The Gospel Of Starbucks

Now, I'm picking on Starbucks here, but Howard Shultz knows I'm only picking on them because, well, they're awful.  Incidentally, Starbucks' internet access brought to you by - that's right - Google-Alphabet.  

Consider again this video:

The truth of the matter is, there's no "what if" starbucks marketed like a church.  I consider this video perhaps as scathing a commentary on Starbucks as it is an actual church, although to be fair, yes, the church is very much like this video.

How?  And again I pick on Starbucks because they are the worst offender, but the rather seething reality of hoakiness and lying-through-their-teeth plasticity in most marketing today is lost on overly-sensitive millennials, who, as developed in the last section, have brains fire-hose-blasted to accept anything in keeping with the gospel of instant gratification through "progress."

If you were to tell my grandfather to "refresh his spirit" with McDonalds(click here for link), he'd reply, "I just want a cup of coffee."  Which leads us to exhibits "A" through - well, it doesn't matter, because you're a millennial, and you don't care about facts or logic.  We'll just say here's some interesting stuff for you to laugh at, Mr. Firehose-blasted brain.  Although, I'm afraid, no baby seals or laughing babies here.  Check it out:
EXAMPLE 1: McDonalds "Refresh your spirit" campaign.I'm sorry I don't have a picture- I lost the picture.  But I did find internet evidence of the campaign's existence.  What is McDonald's really selling to you here?  Well, like all the best salesman, peace of mind.  Comfort.  Security.  Nothing wrong with that, right?  Again, a link to the article I've archived for your continued convenience.

EXAMPLE 2: Panera's Beliefs

Recall again the Starbucks Video.

Okay.  Now check this out:

Did you catch that in the bottom right-hand corner?  "Our Beliefs."

If you're like most millennials, you don't go to church to pay your tithes on a Sunday morning.  You go to - well, Starbucks, or any number of Atlanta Bread-type places.  And isn't it kind of funny that most of them uses verbiage that, well, you normally wouldn't associate with a fast-food joint so much as a - well, a church.

I know what you're thinking.  Coincidence, right?  McDonalds is "refreshing your spirit," and when you buy Panera, you're not just buying your daily bread, - or your Sunday bread - you're buying -- according to Panera's marketing --

You're buying, explicitly, there for you to see - Panera's beliefs.  Hmm.

Moving on to:

Exhibit 3: "Hearts and cups are filled."

Wait, just a minute, Starbucks.  

Are you saying that my cup overfloweth not with the Holy Spirit but with - 

With a dark Vente?  Or whatever you fancy barristas call it?  A "tall" is the new annointing oil, I guess.  Straight from a Starbucks' Clover press.  (talk about shiny religious gimmickry!)

***************************

All of this, by the way, nothing new.  Marketers have always capitalized on sterilized religious suggestion in order to squeeze dimes out of unsuspecting consumers.

What's different about now compared with, say, Steinbeck's time, is that millennials are, en masse, choosing the first church of Starbucks over - well, over an actual church.

Well, here's my hypothesis.

There have always been con-men of all kinds, and they've always used religion highly effectively as a means of convincing people of doing things that are - how shall we say - less than holy.

Jesus didn't address the issue with words.  He went into God's house, which was being used for selfish purposes, self-gain - merchandising as a means to salvation, in other words -

(let that sink in)

and he turned over the tables of those business people who ran for-profit businesses in the name of evangelizing God rather than - using their businesses as a means to evangelizing God.  And again, much can be said about Chick-fil-A, but to the Christians out there, the central question we need to ask is -

Are we using business to serve God, or are we attempting (as if we could) to use God in order to serve our business?  And at the end of the day, a business is not an end in itself.  This is, for all our tech-blasted, conditioned brains, one thing that the media has yet to rub out of our collective consciousness.  Nobody ever said they'd spent more time at the office.  I don't care if you love your job.  You do it because- if you're honest with yourself- you want to do good for other people, if only in some roundabout way.  That's the essence of the Gospel, the essence of doing to others as we would have them do to us.  It's the reason our hearts beat, the reason we get up in the morning.  If we are in touch with our essence as humans.  I know it's not just I.  Why?  The Christian believes it's because we were made in the image of a Creator who is, Himself, love itself.  But one needs merely to look within one's own heart to discover that.  That is the underlying definition of what it means to be a social, extroverted being, and its the reason Mark Zuckerbergs, and Larry Pages, and Howard Schultzes are confused or deceptive.  Power corrupts.  It's distracting.  And so, as it were, is a false sense of power.

And that is what our media-saturated, conscience fire-blasted modern existence promises.  It's not a new promise - unlimited power.  In the story of the Gospels, it's how Satan tempted Jesus.  All these things - servants at your hand and foot, night and day, essentially - power.  Is what you'll have if you follow me.  With no effort on your part.  No hard work.

To the millennial, may I merely suggest today that - bread and coffee will not gratify you.  May I suggest that while I, personally, accept no artificial preservatives or food additives ---

Just like the electronic media's value system is an intrinsically negative one -- "No factual errors," it's great for wayward truth-accountants trying to cook the books and run before they can be held accountable.  But at the end of the day - it's not what the marketing messages of McDonalds, "refreshing your spirit," Starbucks "filling hearts and cups" and even Panera's "belief system" of non-additives - represents.

You don't go to these places - at least according to what their marketers think works - because you want a hamburger, bread, or coffee.  You go to these places because - again - based on these highly-paid marketers' best guesses, because you want self-actualization.  Congruence with your belief system.  All the things, that, in a social world, as opposed to a world of pussyfooting businessmen and pastors who can't make a decision without taking a poll, without consulting are afraid to really investigate.

You're not buying a salad.  If you're a millennial, with a likely father conflict from an androgynous parenting construct which was the birth of media-imposed feminism and now, homosexuality-as-a-legal-right mythology -

You're buying fatherly affirmation in the form of a fresh salad without artificial poison in it.  Even if there is a little sucralose here and there.

And why are you shelling out megabucks for coffee that - let's be honest, at least in the case of starbucks, and I mean - what spiritual shots is McDonald's using that makes it different from the bottle of Coke at the store, honestly?

What you're really buying, as a millennial, is fatherly affirmation in the form of a salad, a sandwich, a loaf of bread.

The sad thing is, in my estimation, as a millennial, you're better off getting these things at one of the better restaurants than you are getting them at most churches.

Because - as shallow, as sleazy, as underhanded as the marketing double-speak of McDonalds and Starbucks are -

At least McDonalds and Starbucks know what they are trying to do, and execute fairly successfully and consistently.  They're selling hamburgers.  They're selling coffee.  And the spiritual feelies - well, that's just a bonus to supplement the caffeine or momentary heartburn of saturated fat.  What's more, the government - and pastors are much too distracted by kids shooting other kids in schools, and moreover terrorists shooting civilians, and beheadings in Oklahoma - to worry about such unimportant drivel as false marketing promises.  After all, just like the nightly news, the sly marketers have committed no factual errors - at least, no factual errors, or promises, that can be legally contradicted as a lie.  And yet, your heart is telling you something different, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I need to wrap this up.

I know, I haven't explained why all Christians are not intolerant scumbags.  And by Christians I mean those like myself who vehemently oppose homosexuality and all its cultural and legal insinuations.

I think it would be foolish of me to attempt to prove a point in that manner.

My goal for the purpose of this article isn't to convince you that homosexuality is immoral.  For most of you, such assertions trigger violent feelings.

I want to be very clear that, in the spirit of Charles Finney's words - a very wise pastor of ages past, I am not defending Church pastors.  I am not even encouraging you to "go to church."  Because I've been to church lately.  And as awful as modern businesses are in their deception, millennials, the kind of deception that our oversexed world is trying to convince all of us we need to buy into personally as an employee, trying to convince us to not only buy the lies but take a paycheck for promoting it as an employee of any number of businesses selling a hamburger as self-actualization--

Millennials, I'm one of you, and I'm with you.  The church today is not the church.  Just like Starbucks, it promises to fill your cup and heart - but - if you're like me and you went to the typical church- hundreds, perhaps, of them -- and I have - you read the Bible, and you discover that what the preacher is saying and doing are vastly different from what's actually in the Bible.  I elaborate on that here, but you're probably not ready for it.

You see, Television - and Youtube for that matter, even LinkedIn, implicitly promises your firehose-blasted brain (and mine, if I'm honest) the false promise of instant gratification.

Articles by me like this have been criticized as rambling on, lacking a point.

You know, the great authors often rambled.  They were paid ramblers.  We only can tolerate their abridged words today, often.  In high school, I read the abridged Les Miserables.  We don't have time for "flowery language."

I'm asking you to turn off your computer when you're done reading this.  Stop and smell the flowers.

I cannot tie up your discombobulated world and offer you self-actualization in one article, in a few chapters, even in a whole book.

But, where all the pastors in the world have failed you with their thinly-veiled bids for undeserved emotional, spiritual authority - Fatherly Acceptance, Fatherly Affirmation in your life - and where their sniveling cowardice as pawns in some poorly construed social game in which all those pastors are hypocrites, victims of their own pride and the bureaucratic games that we hoped only exist in the likes of Enron -

I'm here to tell you - spent hours writing this - there is a God.  And I'll even admit that you're more likely to find him inside Howard Schultz's hypocritical empire than the local Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

You cannot buy God's presence in your life, though.  He doesn't come in a cup of coffee that costs just a couple bucks fifty, or three bucks, whatever it costs at your favorite cafe.

I've witnessed all manner of mind-games of pastors, who, with no relationship, encourage you "Not to give" if you're just visiting - as if for some reason you felt so inclined to begin with!  At least at Starbucks, though both the church and Starbucks lack any semblance of integrity to the millennial-trained sensibility - at least at Starbucks you get the coffee.  And so Starbucks is more honest, in that regard, than your modern American pastor.

I've said, and will continue to say, many negative things about Starbucks.  But, to elaborate on that last sentence as my closing point, I need to say something positive about the satanic organization, as all cults have a note of truth in them, which is what makes them so very convincing and good at deceiving.

Hard work is close to the heart, if not the heart of the Christian ethic, of the Christian life.  A secular boss once chided me, "nobody complains when you do your job."  And he was absolutely right.

As psychologists affirm(click for source), the Puritan work ethic consists of three principle tenets deeply engrained in the American subconscious.  It is the manifestation of Christ and the evidence of this nation's Christian, Puritan continuing faith (if we don't know it) and historical heritage.

That Christian persona, in its three pillars, are this: Faith in God; Hard Work; and Conservative Sexual Behavior.  And it's straight out of the Bible, when lived out purely, as the Puritans who founded all the securities we think we have here sought with their repeated bloodshed to do.  They sacrificed, just like Christ did, for us.  So we could do the same for the next generation, and the next, and the next.  So we could save the world from Adolf Hitler.  And from Communism.  Are you hearing me?  Why are we safe in America today?  Why are our poorest the richest worldwide?  If you're liberal, consider it our evolutionary psychological advantage, okay?

Because of our rich tradition of 1)Faith in God; 2)Hard Work and 3) Conservative Sexuality.

Now, we live in an age in which Starbucks has number 1 wrong.  They have no faith in God.  They have faith in their own marketing message of promising self-actualization in the form of a caffeine buzz.  Does Starbucks have #3 right?  Hahahahahahahaha.

But, you know what?  Your local church pastor also has number one and number 3 wrong.  Again, check it out (click here).  Your pastor doesn't value #3-children - not really.  And if he really had #1, faith in God - well, he'd believe #3, because that Bible he's always talking about in his unconfident, effeminate, hypocritical way -  well- you can tell watching him spew that nonsense that it is nonsense precisely because - well, you're a millennial.  You know B.S. when you see it.  Unlike your parents, you can tell a B.S.ser a mile away.  Because you've met so darn many of them in your life.

Which brings us to #2.  Hard work.  Your pastor may have worked hard on that sermon, but you can tell - he's spent more time on his oratory skills, his writing skills, than he's spent trying to address in his own life the questions he's afraid to answer.  Why does the Bible say women are saved through Childbearing?  He can't answer with a straight face.  Why do they have to make up so many lies to try to pussyfoot around the fact that the Bible is, in fact, patriarchal, and God believes the women ought submit to good men?

See, Starbucks, while failing miserably regarding two of the three precepts of American, Puritan Christianity- which is called Puritan because it is the purest form of Christianity.  It's the real-est, in millennialspeak.

Starbucks, unlike your local pastor of the local Assemblies of God franchise, so ashamed of its corporate brand that it tries to hide the fact that it's an "Assembly of "God" franchise behind more generic-sounding names like "Calvary Christian Church" in Lynnfield, Massachusetts.  Or "Eagle Heights Church."  And the PCA FRANCHISE- yes, it's a franchise, and I call it that because it's a more disingenuous lie factory than the lie-spewing marketers at Starbucks --

The Catholic Franchise, the Assembly of God Franchise, the PCA Franchise - and don't get me started on the Episcopalian Franchise -

See, all those franchises are zero for three.  They have 1)No faith in salvation through faith.  They 2) they don't work hard.  and 3) They threw away sexual conservatism a long time ago.

So, here's to you, Starbucks.  Congratulations.  You're winning the pursuit of religion in America because you have one of the three pillars of American puritan faith, where other, more religious-sounding Franchises fail.  And by the way- in the Perimeter church of the PCA franchise - they serve coffee, and pretty darn good coffee, reliably.  I kind of prefer it to Starbucks coffee.  Starbucks is too strong for me.  In fact, you know, even though Perimeter Church has perfectly good office space - their ministers frequent Starbucks, even though, for some reason - for some reason - the barristas don't frequent Perimeter Church.

Why?  Starbucks gets one of the three American Christianity pillars right.  It's not a church.  But it's more of a church than the pussyfooting corporate franchises which appropriate churches.

Howard Schultz, at the very least, works smart, if not hard.  And, as much as we criticize him for putting his admittedly marvelous talents to ill-ends, as Calvin Coolidge once warned us that most educated derelicts do - 

At least he's working hard.  He may not be evangelizing salvation through faith, or sexual conservatism.  But neither are today's pastors.  At least he's working hard at what he's trying to do.  And for an atheist running a coffee shop, somehow, that seems to be enough, when compared with people running religious franchises claiming to be in the integrity business who, in terms of Biblical integrity- the thing they claim to believe in - are - as it were, asleep at the wheel.

See, there's no such thing - contrary to the implicit myth of "salvation through progress" or, more acutely, "salvation through technological progress."  And while Howard Schultz's marketing team may preach to us, implicitly, that you can indeed get salvation through a cup of coffee and Internet access- he at least practices that one part of the Protestant work ethic even if he preaches a false, skewed version of the Protestant work ethic.  Which is better, the popular verdict is, and I would agree, than the pussyfooting pastor does, which is to preach it and not practice it.

And Capitalism, this beautiful capitalist system that is the legacy of Puritanism - has, once prevailed in the sense of promoting what is right over what is wrong. Which is why even I, yes, I, am guilty of having gone to Starbucks instead of having gone to church, on occasion.  And I stand by that decision.  Again, because I used that occasion to get something done in my vocation- which is more than I can say for 99% American pastors in theirs.

P.S.: And to the pastor reading this, please know that I'm not here to "judge" you any more than you're here to judge homosexuals.  Please read my earnest CALL FOR YOU TO REPENT, wayward American pastor.  If you do that, you might just save the soul of Howard Schultz.  And - it does need to be saved.  From the greatest sinner of all, yours truly, as Paul once wrote.

 

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