CREEDE HINSHAW: Restaurant owner should have responded with kindness

Sara Huckabee Sanders, press secretary to President Trump, was denied service at a locally owned Virginia restaurant about a week ago. From what I have read about this incident, Sanders, her husband and six other friends were seated at the Red Hen in Lexington, Va. They’d been served drinks and maybe appetizers when the restaurant owner asked Sanders to step outside.

Once outside, the owner reportedly asked Sanders and her party to leave the restaurant. Many of the cooks and servers were upset with Sanders’ defense of her boss’s policies, including his refusal to accommodate transgender persons in the military and his separation of immigrant children from their parents at our borders. Sanders and her party left the restaurant, and Sanders tweeted the incident to the world.

I am no Sara Huckabee Sanders fan. Same goes for her boss. My only sympathy for Sanders is that she is almost daily put in an untenable position by her president and that she often endures ridiculous questions by self-righteous, ignorant reporters.

But what happened to Sanders at that restaurant was wrong from the standpoint of a follower of Jesus.

I turn to Romans 12 for a suggested approach to serving the Sanders party. As an aside, it’s interesting to find oneself in Romans, since Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions so recently misconstrued Romans 13 in defense of the Trump immigration debacle.

Paul in Romans 12 offers clear advice on how to deal with people with whom we disagree: love them anyway and treat them with greater kindness and respect. “Do not repay evil with evil … if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Romans 12: 17, 20 NIV)

How does a liberal restaurant owner and staff treat a conservative customer who represents the face of the Trump Administration? Feed them! Offer them the finest wine, the best hors d’oeurves and most delicious menu items. Kill them with kindness. If you want to go overboard, comp the whole evening.

This restaurant owner, wanting to placate her staff and agreeing with their angst, had to make a decision on the spur of the moment. Perhaps in retrospect, she would have done it differently. A more creative solution would have been to have served Sanders and her party with the utmost respect and kindness and discretely give her a letter upon her departure describing the profound disagreement that the restaurant owner and staff had with the policies of the administration, which Sanders daily defends. Tell her she was always welcome because the restaurant has open borders, even if our country doesn’t.

I believe that Colorado baker should have decorated the cake for the gay couple. He is in business to serve all customers when he opens his doors to the public. The same is true for this Virginia restaurant owner and staff. If we’re going to stop serving folk because of their political and biblical views, there may be quite a few establishments who will stop serving me, too … and maybe even you.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].