If you check Facebook at all this week, you’ve noticed that your feed lit up like a Christmas tree over the latest battle in the culture wars. People are outraged that Starbucks would dare to remove all holiday symbology from their iconic Holiday cups. Instead, they’ve opted for the more spartan solid red Starbucks cups as seen above. However, I have a far more radical question to ask. Is Starbucks more important than Jesus? Because many Christian households’ budgets would make you think it is.
I’ve battled with tithing, many of us have. It is way easier to donate a significant chunk of your income and convince yourself that you are a good person for trying. While this is a little bit of a pot calling a kettle black, I think this observation that Christians are putting corporate profits and personal comforts before the work of the Church is valid so I’m going to hazard looking like a hypocrite anyway.
The Numbers Don’t Lie, Devotion to Starbucks is Stronger Than Devotion to Faith for Most
A recent Worknomix study found that the average American worker spent almost $1,100 annually on coffee each year. While it didn’t single out the green mermaid specifically, it is the likely destination for most of the dollars. In other words, the typical person goes and grabs a cup o’ joe at least once a day, and they pay for the premium stuff because the brew in the break room is “gross.” I had plenty of coworkers who had a religious morning and afternoon stroll to Starbucks for $2 coffees, so I think this study matches anecdotal evidence.
Another study by the website Frugalmom looked at church giving across 200 different congregations and found that the average annual donation was $1,038 per person. Take that in a moment. The question I posed earlier was if Christian families placed a higher premium on their coffee than on the their faith. These studies suggest that Americans value their coffee by about $62 more than the church they go to.
“Hold up! You’re being unfair!” you might say. “The population of both of these studies includes atheists, agnostics, and followers of other religions. You can’t count them in the calculation of these averages!” While you might have a little bit of a point, the median household wage in America is around $50,000. If the average donation is about $1,000 then that coincides with what a local Methodist pastor told me. He said that no matter what, it seemed like most people end up giving about 2% of their income to the church.
Don’t Boycott, Just Don’t Make Red Starbucks Cups a Habit in the First Place
I have a modest proposal. You don’t have to give up coffee. After all, it is really helpful to get up in the morning. With all the demands of family, work, kids’ extracurricular activities, schooling, and life in general bearing down on you, you go to bed exhausted. The way the typical American consumer responds to this exhaustion is a delightful trip to your local green mermaid to start each day. However, if you look at the breakdown of a $3.65 Starbucks cappuccino, the coffee only costs about 16 cents, according to coffeemakerusa. You could buy a coffee machine for about $50 and buy the beans yourself and save a ton of money and drink your coffee too.
This habit is extremely expensive over long periods of time. Rather than get a pleasant job, people use caffeine as a drug to stick in their veins to get through another boring meeting, disrespectful lecture from your boss, or pointless project because the mortgage, car payment, and private school tuition are not going to take care of themselves.
If you’re a Christian, don’t get upset that Starbucks changed their cups to remove familiar holiday imagery. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you might be spending more money on Starbucks than your church. If that’s the case, you care more about yourself than the God honoring work that could be done through your congregation. As Matthew 6:21 says, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” So let’s make sure that the treasure isn’t sitting at the bottom of little red cups, no matter what’s on the outside of them.
While I agree that spending money on Starbucks coffee is a waste, I would argue that spending money on tithe is worse. At least Starbucks is providing value in the economic sense. The business model of churches is to convince you at a young age to believe that you’ll go to hell if you don’t continue supporting the church. You then devote time and money the rest of your life to something just because they tell you that you have to and because of the familial/social pressure to be religious. Rather than spend money on tithe, which just supports the church, why not donate money to an actual charity? At least that will go towards helping those in need rather than supporting an institution that is based on scamming you.
I would disagree. The churches I’ve been a part of spend a significant amount of their resources operating homeless ministries , looking after the poor, and doing good work in the community. The difference is a church does these acts in the name of faith rather than just doing good works. This article maybe isn’t as relevant for secular folks but I felt like it was good to point out that we are spending more on Starbucks than churches, which should be the focal point of any Starbucks directed anger from people of faith not the red cups.