After this post there will be no more Starbucks discussion for a while.  I promise.  But this morning I found something just too crazy to ignore.

A Christian group in San Diego has called for a boycott of Starbucks claiming that the retro-style logo the company has been using over the last several weeks is extremely offensive.  The logo - a throwback to their original branding of the 1970’s - features the barely discernable image of a topless, two-tailed mermaid, which apparently has its origin in some 16th century, norse folk art.

Now, I’m all for Christians taking a bold, vocal stance against things like pornography or the excessive and degrading sexualization of almost everything in our culture - right on.  But this?  This?  Am I alone in thinking this is nuts?

We live in a world where babies are getting aborted at an ever-increasing rate, our kids are being sexualized from the day they are born, gay marriage is about to become a national norm, and almost 150,000 people have died in the last week from natural disasters [pause] and this is what some followers of Jesus have their undies in a bunch over?  That alone makes me want to go there even more.

Now, I do think there is a larger discussion here about the common Christian struggle to discern art from atrocity.  That is, many Christians struggle to figure out when something is “okay” to look at and when something is a “sin” to look at.  The human form is a great example.  Are we to believe that Michelangelo’s David is art but an old Scandanavian drawing of a naked mermaid is inappropriate?  Why - because one sits in a museum and another is printed on a coffee cup?  I don’t think so.

Besides, even if we did decide to boycott Starbucks where else would we go for our overpriced coffee?  McDonald’s?  “Yeah, I’ll take a McGriddle and a non-fat latte…”  Now that would be a sin.