(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Shopping Cart Theory”, originally shared on May 24, 2021. It was the 118th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
An anonymous meme of unknown origin blew up on Twitter in May of 2020 and pops up online every once in a while, over a year later.
It’s called “The Shopping Cart Theory” and it posited that, “The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.” Is it? Today we’ll take a look.
Grocery stores have been providing rolling baskets since 1937 at the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma. Other stores soon followed suit.
Shopping carts provide a convenient way to move your groceries or clothing or hardware, or whatever around the store and out to your car. And they enable you to move a lot more of it than you could carry in your arms or in your own shopping bags. Some have room to carry your children, or to distract children by letting them pretend they’re driving a car. There are electric versions for people with mobility issues.
So you pick up your cart, freshly sanitized during the pandemic, you select your stuff, you pay for it, and you roll it out to your car. Then what?
Do you leave it in an adjacent parking space? In between parking spaces? In a landscaped area? Or do you take it back to the collection rack?
I’ve mentioned many times that one of the best definitions of “character” came at the Eagle Scout award ceremony for one of the young men in the church that I served in San Dimas. The main speaker said, “Character is what you do when there is no reward for doing the right thing, and no punishment for doing the wrong thing.”
By that definition, what you do with your shopping cart could also be said to be a test of your character, in addition to your capacity for self-governance.
I suppose one could think that by not returning your shopping cart, you are assuring someone of a job. But having to pay someone to return the cart that was loaned to you by the store as a convenience results in higher costs for the business, and therefore higher prices for you and for the community.
But, what about people who don’t have private transportation and can’t afford to pay someone to transport their stuff? What if they decide to push their stuff home and then abandon the cart? Now we’re in a middle ground between concern for low-income persons and the costs to the business of wrangling the carts or paying for their replacement, which also gets passed on to the consumer.
Shopping carts cost between $75.00 and $150.00 each, and some can cost between $300.00 and $400.00. Some stores hire companies to retrieve abandoned carts and return them to the store for a fee. Aldi stores, in some places, require a $.25 deposit to provide an incentive for returning your cart. Does that work?
And who hasn’t seen the homeless and destitute, the mentally ill and the abandoned whose only means of storing and protecting all their worldly goods is a poached shopping cart. Should there not be some understanding there and acceptance of the cost on the part of the community?
In addition, people with mobility issues may find it difficult to drop off a cart, or persons lurking near the shopping cart rack may make you feel unsafe, or you may have just put your child in your car.
For most of us, however, I think that the shopping cart test IS a good measure of the kind of person we are in the community, one who cares about others or one who does not.
Whether or not we roll our used shopping cart back to the storage mother ship in front of the store or to the shopping cart return areas conveniently located within the parking lots, our actions are not an expression of what we do or our fear of the law but of who we are.
The first reading from the Bible that is heard on Reformation Sunday every October in churches all over the world are the words of God through the prophet Jeremiah, the 31st chapter, starting at the 31st verse:
*Jeremiah 31:31-34
We celebrate the Day of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was given to the first believers; it is the birthday of the Church. It is the fulfillment of Jesus promise in the gospel of John, the 14th chapter beginning at the 15th verse:
*John 14:15-17
The law of God is not something external to you; it is within you. The presence of God within us is life that truly is life. It makes of us a new creation, a people set apart. We are born again. We do what we do not from fear of punishment or hope of reward, but because of who we are, and who we are is whose we are.
We return the shopping cart and do anything that is right, because we have been given a living relationship with the one true living God. If there are loose carts around us, we return them, too, because we are servants of one another in response to what God has done for us.
The Christian life isn’t a “must do”, it’s a “want to do” and a “get to do” as people whose joy in the Lord finds its expression in love for all people.
What do you think? Is The Shopping Cart Theory a good measure of who is a good member of society?
The Shopping Cart Theory is limited because it speaks only of who is capable of self-governance, in my opinion. The in-dwelling presence of the Holy Spirit helps us know what is good and do what is right just because of whose we are. A new creation.
Signs of the end of the pandemic are springing up all over in Southern California. Masks are no longer required in some places. It’s now expected that there will no longer be any pandemic era restrictions in California on June 15th, less than a month away.
Do we still wear masks now that they are no longer required? Will we return to normal behavior after June 15th?
Or do we set an example? There is no reward and no punishment. One third of the adults in California are still not vaccinated. That is a pool of people who, though the likelihood has gone down because of the actions of the other two-thirds, are still susceptible to sickness and death.
We are guided by the formation of the streams of living water that is a Biblical metaphor in both the Old and New Testaments for the Holy Spirit. We are no longer under the law. Repent, receive forgiveness and receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Whether returning a shopping cart or wearing a mask and avoiding crowds, we are guided by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. We are like salt and light and leaven, bringing new life like streams of living water. Receive that gift today and live it.
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