I thought about entitling this post, “Much Ado About Nothing”. But that could be said about so much in our society today, couldn’t it? There is so much noise about pseudo-issues that it is so difficult for the real things to which we should be giving our attention to get any notice at all. When we stepped happily into the information age, it never occurred to me that we would not be able to distinguish the crucial information from the frivolous. With facts coming at us at warp speed, twenty-four hours a day, it does become a challenge.

As a follower of Christ I must ask for, and practice, discernment. Holy discernment is the only way I will be able to sift through all this clutter to find the things on which I need to focus my attention.

I don’t play tennis, but I’m going to use a tennis analogy anyway because I think it’s good enough that even a spectator like me can grasp the concept. You real players just be patient with me here. Imagine you are on the tennis court, and your goal is to practice hitting the ball back over the net… essentially the entire premise of the game, right?

So you set up one of those ball launching machines to send tennis balls your way so you can improve your returns. So imagine there are all these yellow balls coming at you, but you are only supposed to hit the butter yellow balls, not the lemon yellow balls. Sounds doable, right? But what if the balls were coming at you super fast? If you aren’t paying attention, and discerning the subtle differences in the balls, you might find yourself swinging at them all and failing at hitting any of them.

I think we are swinging at the wrong balls here. So Starbucks decides to have solid red cups this Christmas season and you’d think they had stepped up to Christians as a whole and slapped us in the face with a proverbial glove. Apparently, there are many believers out there who think that this last straw move by Starbucks will succeed in taking Christ right out of Christmas, and they are not going to stand for it.

My questions is why this issue and why now? Do we really think a plain red cup constitutes persecution of Christians in this country? I would imagine there are some Middle East Christians today who would like to sock us in the nose over that one. You know, the believers who are getting their heads lobbed off? The ones who would be aghast that this is what we want to protest?

Starbucks has in no way ever made the claim that they are a Christian corporation. And with the actions by outspoken Red Cup Christians encouraging others to boycott them, they will likely continue in that vein. We are stomping our feet and once again asking non-believers to behave like believers. We aren’t happy enough that they at least recognize our holiday with a red cup? It also has to have a snowflake and a Merry Christmas wish on it, too? Have we forgotten that Christ will be in Christmas as long as He remains in us, cup or no cup?

We have some legitimate balls to hit these days, and the red cup issue is not one of them. If you want to stand up for something stand up for those Christian brothers and sisters in foreign lands who are suffering real persecution. Contact your government officials and put the pressure on for something to be done for them. Pour your energies into helping the poor, the homeless, or the victims of human trafficking. Make a stand for the unborn or for healthy families.

But for heaven’s sake, hush about the red cups.

It’s embarrassing.