The primary reason to eat at a restaurant is because you like the food. The exception is vegetarian restaurants. Nobody likes vegan cuisine but eating it will impress your friends. Chik-Fil-A is radically different from vegetarian food in that it is delicious.
Awhile back, the CEO of Chik-Fil-A mentioned that he believed marriage is between a man and a woman. Some crazy people went crazy and accused the entire Chik-Fil-A corporation of hating LGBT people. Most people with a smidgen of rational brain function understood the accusation was so insane that it didn’t even deserve a response. But Christians responded anyway.
We Christians turned out in droves to show support for Chik-Fil-A by doing exactly what we were already doing – eating at Chik-Fil-A. Some of us were previously aware that the CEO shared our Christian faith, which was nice, but we were eating that chicken sandwich because it was delicious. The reason Chik-Fil-A was suddenly PACKED with people every day (but Sunday) was because Christians had turned a restaurant into a temple. We ate at Chik-Fil-A for the same reason people eat at vegan joints – to prove our piety.
The crazy people noticed our display of Christian unity and responded with more craziness. We defended Chik-Fil-A’s unremarkable statement about marriage which proved to the crazy people that we also hated LGBT people. In the mind of a crazy person, when you eat chicken from a restaurant whose CEO thinks marriage requires one guy and one girl, you hate gay people. Of course this is crazy but that shouldn’t surprise you because crazy people think crazy thoughts.
Recently, Chik-Fil-A stopped giving money to The Salvation Army. Some crazy people went crazy and accused the entire Chik-Fil-A corporation of betraying their Christian faith. This time, the crazy people is we. In our crazy minds, when a corporation stops supporting an organization that we support, the corporation doesn’t deserve our business anymore. Chik-Fil-A has turned toward darkness and allied itself with the evil one.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Chik-Fil-A has changed its charitable donations in an attempt to appease the crazy people. It is unfortunate if the decision to redirect funds away from The Salvation Army was a calculated move to extend an olive branch to the howling LGBT activist mob. Unfortunate because it’s not going to work. The mob was howling long before Chik-Fil-A’s CEO voiced his definition of marriage. If I were a betting person, I’d wager there won’t be a single member of the mob in line at Chik-Fil-A this afternoon at lunchtime. Hopefully this will be noted by our friends at Chik-Fil-A.
I’m not writing to the crazy people. I’m writing to my fellow Christians because I want to remind you of something:
You eat at Chik-Fil-A because the food is good.
The charitable contributions of Chik-Fil-A are none of your business. Your charitable contributions are none of Dan Cathy’s business either. The relationship between you and any restaurant’s CEO is strictly business. Eating at Chik-Fil-A has no impact on your relationship with Jesus.
Unless…
Unless you think patronizing Chik-Fil-A makes you holier than the crazy protesters. If that’s what you think, you’re an idolater. Eating Chik-Fil-A doesn’t make you righteous. Boycotting Starbucks doesn’t make you righteous either. If I were a betting person, I’d wager you didn’t know Chik-Fil-A donated to The Salvation Army before a couple of days ago. It is not the Holy Spirit telling you to be angry that a fast food chain is “selling out the faith”.
The only decision Chik-Fil-A could make that would constitute an actual sin would be to make their entire menu vegetarian.*
*It has come to my attention recently that a number of my readers do not have a sense of humor. If the last line of this article made you angry, you are one of those people. I do not actually believe that vegetarian food is sinful. I was making a joke. If you’re still angry, channel that rage toward something productive like protesting to shut down a chicken restaurant.
9 Responses
I do think it’s nice for Christians to have a major mainstream organization to point to as Christian. Obviously, this is not super important, but it’s still unfortunate for them to cave to the mob.
The only point I disagree with here is that their food is delicious.
Wistful sigh… there are no Chick-Fil-As anywhere near me, so this raging battle of crazy-stupid political correctness around a restaurant has been nearly off my radar screen.
I wish your posts were published in newspapers, broadcast on-air and read during sermons from the pulpit. This would:
1. Lighten everyone up
2. Expose how crazy, made-up Political Correctness is; that is a product of not wanting to offend the twitchy, socially cancerous insanity of a few unhinged, illogical unabomber-types.
3. Treat everyone to an experience of laughter and corrective logic.
4. Help Christians be genuine disciples, instead of social (my autocorrect jumped in and wanted to turn that into scopolamine 😀 i.e. “nauseatingly”) nice, inclusive, tolerant of anything goes, inoffensive, invisible, and now undernourished, weaklings.
There is more, but just wanted to say I deeply appreciate the refreshing healing humor, laughter and logical common-sense you bring. Thank you, John.
“…and now undernourished,” – 🙂
Excellent line! Thanks, Katy.
I was defending ChikFilA’s giving money to other charities and ended up having to defend their wanting to get back to selling sandwiches. How did people get to the point that they want ChikFilA “fighting the culture war” for them? And I think you got it, we turned it into a temple. We were cheering “Yay! They’re on *our* side!” And we made ChikFilA comedy and we made ChikFilA songs and we posted about ChikFilA. And that’s why all the online conservative pundits feel betrayed. We don’t need a fast food restaurant to fight our battles. Otherwise we’re in bad shape.
I actually understand why Christians would want a large corporation to be involved in the culture wars and fight alongside them. Maybe not to do ALL the fighting for us–but to make us feel less alone. It’s easier to handle being misunderstood and accused of “hatefulness” by a handful of people on social media when we can see the same things happening on a larger scale to Christians with plenty of money and a PR department. When you interpret Chick-Fil-A’s actions as “bending under pressure,” you wonder if it’s time for you to reevaluate your own strategy in the Culture War as well.
But–yes–I agree that we should strive to do what God has called us to do, whether we think there’s anyone else on “our side” or not. 🙂
Lots of gay people liked Chick-Fil-A before. Were they traitors or just fans of chicken sandwiches and friendly service?