starbucks and guilt

How often do you think the average street person hear's the gospel? Bryant Simon is a historian who has devoted himself to an "ethnography of Starbucks." He points out how prevalent guilt is in white society and how that motivates vain attempts at social justice.

Starbucks is actually a very responsible company. Starbucks instituted C.A.F.E. practices in the 1970's before Fair Trade was what it is today. They also sell Fair Trade Coffee, donate food to local charities, and have begun an alliance with Magic Johnson to start strategically planting stores in low income neighborhoods to create jobs and offer health care. Simon makes the argument that while well intentioned, these stores, not necessarily for Starbucks itself, but for its customers, can offer a sense of relief from guilt. It allows the patron to indirectly free himself/herself from the burden that the cost of a $5 cup of coffee could possibly contribute to someone's quality of life increasing.

Taking the Starbucks motif in another direction, what must it be like to be a homeless person who hangs out near a Starbucks? If you think of the number of Christians in the world and the number of homeless, you realize homeless people must encounter a lot of Christians in their day. Further, a few Christians would stop and do the proper evangelical thing...stop and pray a 30 second prayer over the person, tell them the story of Jesus through some sort of systematic approach, buy them a small amount of food or give them some cash, and walk away.

Now imagine this scenario from the perspective of the barista. They stand behind the counter all day, watching the street person be approached throughout the day by different middle class people who do the same exact thing. The barista must think to himself/herself, this is an incredibly impotent system.

Lastly, think about when a Christian conference comes to town. People walk by with the zip up Bible cases, their national Christian ministry Nalgenes, and hundreds of them pray for the same people each day and maybe toss some bread at them. But no one ever takes someone home, showers them, feeds them, gets them clean, actually enacts change by spending relentless hours with one individual.

As Christians, we want to buy the figurative latte, support the company that builds the stores, promote the institution that will battle the injustice, go on the one week mission trip that costs $3,000, but no one wants to move to the neighborhood, or bring someone home, because we are motivated by relieving our guilt. Basically, have our cake and eat it to, by keeping our life static and tracking, but free from guilt over our prosperity's expense. We do the minimum we possibly can, motivated out of shame that we live better than others, but we won't kill our day, die to the problems of others, forget the latte.