Why is alcohal such a big deal in the American church? Actually I know and came from a dry house. We never had alcohal in the house and I remember looking down on other people from our church who did drink. It is frowned on in many evangelical circles, and I have never really drank because of working with teens and being an example. I have been re evaluating my stance and my attitude toward this subject. In my reasoning previous it was always with the thought of avoiding the appearance of evil. Is alcohal evil? Of course the abuse of alcohal is evil, but so is the abuse of money, over eating, and many other issues that us American Christian's are good at.
I was having a conversation recently with a pastor friend of mine and we were talking about reaching our neighbors and into our neighborhoods. The question of alcohal came up, my neighbors stand in our neighborhoods on a nightly basis and drink beer. I have turned them down everytime they asked. Of course in my self righteous stance I am doing the right thing. The quesion is am I doing the right thing? As my conversation with this pastor progressed he told how he had done the same thing with his neighbors in a previous neighborhood, after the third time someone had asked if he wanted a beer, before he could answer one of his other neighbors said"no he is too good for our beer."
I have been thinking a lot about this since this conversation. If my neighbor brought me some food that they had slaved over and wanted me to eat it would I stick up my nose and say that smells funny or I am too good to eat your food? I am not going to just use this as a justification to drink? No but I am thinking that the general attitude of turning down beer from our neighbors may be a way of us giving the attidue and the air that we are better than them. The problem is we may actually think we are.
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When I went to Greenville, it southern enough that people were more lose on this drinking issue because, hey everyone has a drink every once in a while! Even our pastor here in LA is talking about small groups and says "ok, let's not try to say Jesus didn't drink wine, or that it wasn't fermented because... duh it was... but NO alcohol should be offered at these small groups okay?" so there is definitely a line to draw, but where is it? I normally will only drink with selected friends ie: Tamra, Jared, some college friends. But I also think that turning down a drink isn't judging, there could be a million reasons why someone turns down a drink, medication, driving, smell, don't like it(heck I only like dark dark beers, others taste like pee water) so I wouldn't worry much about turning it down. But I wouldn't worry about taking it either, because to me those who look their nose down at you aren't looking for the presence of evil, but the presence of stuck up "perfection". You should go out with Tamra, Jared and I when we're back in town :)
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