One of the coffee shops I frequent, because of its proximity to my office, has great customer service. The baristas are great! The service is fast. It is a place of much generosity.
But sometimes generosity results in problems.
99.9% of the time I drink my coffee black. However, I’ve learned that I need to start saying yes when asked, “Do you want any room for cream?” If I fail to say yes, then my generous barista fills my cup nearly to the brim. This causes the lid of my cup to leak as I drive to the church’s parking lot, and then walk from my car to my office. Unbeknownst to me, this slow leak ends up dribbling coffee on my pants and shirt.
Generosity sometimes leads to a dry cleaning bill.
Most of the time my coffee is served in two paper cups. My guess is this is simply a generous means of keeping one’s hand from being burned. I greatly appreciate that. However, my two cups often come with an 85% post-consumer-fiber cup sleeve, which “uses 34% less paper than our original.” The reason for this environmentally friendly resource is “because we care about our planet.” Again, while I greatly appreciate the added protection, it seems the extra cup is counterproductive to creation care.
Generosity sometimes leads to more in the landfill.
The culture of generosity is greatly needed today in all walks of life. Of course, the Church should be setting the example in this area (Acts 2:46, 2 Cor 9:11, 1 Tim 6:18). However, wise Kingdom stewards do not shift their minds into neutral when it comes to generosity. Prayerful discernment and vision are important. Sincerity is not sufficiency. Sometimes our big hearts lead us to unintended consequences (For more on this idea, read Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert’s excellent book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself.).
Be generous, very generous. Create a culture of generosity. But do not give up discernment in the process.
Amen.
My eyes have been opened to this idea more and more with the BAM venture we have started in Uganda. We have several coffee shops there and the cost of to-go cups plus waste created is just crippling. Cups, sleeves, lids … Even if recyclable rarely are. I’ve since just given up to-go coffee and always ask for a mug. More recently given up kcups. I have never been an environmentalist, but it became too convicting when I saw first hand the waste we were creating just from our small business.
Thanks for sharing, Cody!