Goodbye, Burger King?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:06.000 | Jacob, a podcast listener in Louisville, Kentucky, writes in to ask this, "It seems like America
00:00:10.200 | is moving towards a culture where businesses such as Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, and Burger
00:00:13.760 | King are taking vocal stances on issues on which the Bible speaks very clearly.
00:00:19.000 | Should Christians proactively seek to patronize businesses that appear to line up with biblical
00:00:23.320 | positions and avoid those that would contradict the Bible's teaching?"
00:00:27.280 | A second podcast listener writes in and asks, "Pastor John, you recently tweeted, 'Goodbye
00:00:32.320 | Burger King,' because Burger King has gone supportive of homosexuality.
00:00:35.420 | By that tweet, did you imply that Christians should not eat there again?"
00:00:40.280 | What I meant in that tweet on July 4, which said, "Goodbye Burger King.
00:00:48.680 | If you wonder why, watch the last five seconds of the video and weep."
00:00:54.880 | And I put a link to the video that Burger King was spreading.
00:00:59.360 | What I meant by that goodbye was, "I don't intend to eat there anymore."
00:01:07.760 | Now that could change.
00:01:08.960 | They could change.
00:01:09.960 | I could change.
00:01:10.960 | But for now, I'm done with Burger King.
00:01:13.680 | But it did not mean, and it did not say, that others have to make a similar judgment.
00:01:21.080 | I think Christians are free to eat at Burger King without my judgment upon them.
00:01:25.200 | So don't go there.
00:01:28.040 | The answer to that question is, "No, I did not say that Christians should not eat at
00:01:30.960 | Burger King.
00:01:31.960 | I said, 'I'm not going to eat at Burger King.'"
00:01:33.480 | Now, here's the question.
00:01:34.600 | Why did I arrive at that decision?
00:01:37.440 | What took me there?
00:01:39.440 | And to be honest, it's two levels.
00:01:43.280 | There's a gut level, and then there's a reflective level.
00:01:47.080 | And the reflective biblical level always has to check the gut level.
00:01:50.760 | But I'll share the gut level with you, because I think most of our lives are lived at the
00:01:54.560 | gut level, and it's shaping our minds according to Scripture so that guts are good.
00:02:02.280 | It is the big business of the Christian life.
00:02:05.560 | Realistically, I am moved by my gut as much as any other way, and therefore I have to
00:02:13.280 | always go back and check.
00:02:15.440 | So here's the gut level.
00:02:18.320 | I thought the promotional video for Burger King that I'll link to in the tweet was disgusting
00:02:26.640 | because of its language, immoral because of its advocacy of sexual sin, and heartbreaking
00:02:34.640 | because of its exploitation of children, closing with a little girl, maybe four years old,
00:02:40.360 | hugging two women and saying, "I love my two mommies."
00:02:44.760 | So at the gut level, I was revolted and I was angry, and I wanted nothing to do with
00:02:51.680 | that kind of crude and destructive propaganda.
00:02:57.840 | But one must always check one's gut reactions by Scripture, since we're all imperfect in
00:03:05.200 | the way we respond to things.
00:03:06.960 | So here's the more seasoned thinking that leads me to stay away from Burger King.
00:03:15.360 | It's an application of 1 Corinthians 10, 27 to 29.
00:03:19.760 | Let me read it to you, see if you think it applies.
00:03:23.400 | If one of the unbelievers invites you to a dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever
00:03:29.860 | is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
00:03:34.680 | But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice to idols," then do not
00:03:42.440 | eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience.
00:03:48.360 | I do not mean your conscience, but his, for why should my conscience, my liberty, be determined
00:03:54.320 | by someone else's conscience?
00:03:56.040 | So here's the application I make to Burger King.
00:04:02.300 | They invite me by their existence and their advertising to come and eat their burgers
00:04:07.400 | and I am free to go, and happy to go without doing any research at all as to what the beliefs
00:04:15.320 | of the management are about anything.
00:04:17.320 | I don't care.
00:04:19.400 | That's behind the scenes and they're just serving up burgers.
00:04:21.760 | I like burgers.
00:04:22.760 | I'll eat the burgers.
00:04:24.720 | Doesn't matter if they're covetous or racist or sexually illicit, whatever.
00:04:31.520 | I'm free to enjoy the burger as a hamburger, not as a promotion of an agenda that I might
00:04:38.200 | consider offensive and sinful.
00:04:41.120 | Their upper management may be philandering and racist all over the place and I don't
00:04:44.520 | know it.
00:04:45.520 | I'm just enjoying the burger and my conscience is not implicated by that, and I'm not responsible
00:04:50.400 | for their motives, and I'm not defiled by their sin.
00:04:54.240 | But then comes this video where the leaders of Burger King are going out of their way
00:05:02.600 | to make sure that people know what they stand for.
00:05:06.880 | In other words, Burger King wants to make it an issue.
00:05:11.480 | They're making it an issue.
00:05:13.120 | They're making it an issue that their burgers stand for the endorsement of homosexual intercourse.
00:05:20.360 | This is not about the reality of same-sex attraction merely.
00:05:25.080 | We all have to deal with that.
00:05:26.600 | That's a reality.
00:05:27.600 | It's a broken reality.
00:05:28.920 | We've written lots of blogs and we've talked about the heartache and how to reckon with
00:05:34.600 | same-sex attraction.
00:05:35.600 | It's not about that.
00:05:37.160 | This is about the endorsement with great fanfare of same-sex intercourse.
00:05:44.040 | They want to go on record as publicly and as blatantly as possible that their restaurant
00:05:50.840 | represents the championing of homosexual intercourse.
00:05:56.640 | When that happens, I am put in a situation like the person in 1 Corinthians 10 who is
00:06:03.080 | told by his dinner host, "Oh, by the way, this meat that you're about to eat, we are
00:06:08.200 | celebrating the sacrifice to an idol."
00:06:12.280 | And Paul says, "Okay, now at this point, your freedom to eat at an unbeliever's house, which
00:06:19.180 | you certainly have, is overruled by an act of love that says the meat is no longer mere
00:06:26.960 | meat.
00:06:27.960 | It's a symbol of sin.
00:06:29.840 | So to avoid confusing your host or anybody else watching, don't eat it because now the
00:06:36.240 | idol connection turns your eating into a kind of endorsement or at least a statement of
00:06:41.920 | indifference to idolatry."
00:06:44.400 | So my calling is not to crusade against Burger King.
00:06:49.320 | I'm not called to lead a boycott.
00:06:51.640 | My calling is to have a clear conscience and to bear clear testimony.
00:06:56.840 | Burger King has chosen to make their restaurant a public brazen symbol of the endorsement
00:07:04.880 | of sin.
00:07:06.280 | That's why I said goodbye.
00:07:07.960 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:10.760 | And if you would like to ask your own question, please send it in to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:07:16.240 | And to follow this daily podcast series, be sure to download our free app for the iPhone,
00:07:20.000 | iPad and Android phone or device.
00:07:22.680 | And for those of you who use Androids, I have great news from our product manager, Ross
00:07:26.640 | Chasey.
00:07:27.860 | The redesigned Android app is now available in Google Play and the Kindle app stores.
00:07:33.000 | The new features include access to the full archive of episodes within the app, the ability
00:07:37.440 | to search all those episode titles, and also you can now listen while scrolling through
00:07:41.280 | and searching the other episodes.
00:07:43.580 | So props to Ross Chasey and Josh Eder and to our app developers for making this happen.
00:07:49.080 | So go to the app store and search for Ask Pastor John.
00:07:52.360 | So what tools do I need to study my Bible well?
00:07:55.600 | It's a question we get a lot and I'll ask Pastor John tomorrow.
00:07:58.280 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:07:59.280 | We'll see you soon.
00:07:59.920 | [ End ]
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