As parents send their kids off to college, Townhall.com conservative columnist Doug Giles has some thoughts on Christianity and alcohol.
As some of you know by now, I’m a Christian. As a believer I have no problem whatsoever with either you or me having a mug of beer, a glass of wine, or a snifter of brandy, enjoying in moderation what the good Lord has blessed us with. <...>Or, as I might have put it: moderation in the pursuit of happiness is no sin.
Both the Old and the New Testament are rife with celebration (feasts) in which alcohol was involved. Alcohol was a part of the God-ordained festivities. And it wasn’t for medicinal purposes, or because the water was rancid and they didn’t have any Evian, and it wasn’t a non-alcoholic grape drink like Welch’s or Juicy Juice; it was a buzz-generating knock back just like the stuff we drink today. Period. End of discussion. Deal with it.
Y’know, I hate to bring the Bible into this, but one of the first snapshots we have of Christ in John’s gospel is Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana turning water into wine. <...>
So, what’s my point? My point is this: If the Son of God drank wine and God “gave wine to make the heart merry,” and if your kids are going to be offered it sooner or later, then you’d better get busy teaching them how to get pleasure from it without going Lindsay, if and when they decide to drink.
Jesus, Beer and Your College Kids
by Doug Giles
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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You know, in http://www.fermentingrevolution.com/ the book about how to drink beer and save the world, Chris O'Brien poses the same question, and comes to the conclusion that Jesus would have drank beer, not wine. To start, he states that what the word that was translated into 'wine' is actually just 'strong drink'. He goes on to ask that if Jesus was a common carpenter, would he be drinking wine, the drink of the elite, or beer, the choice of the commoner?
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to forgive me for not remembering the rest of the argument, but it is interesting and worth reading.
My feelings are that alcohol is an amplifier of human emotion. I don't believe that in itself, it is wrong (or a sin), but that it is often made a scapegoat for bad behavior. And 1-2 drinks a day can EXTEND your life.
Everything in moderation.
Maybe before his time on the cross, Jesus was a beer man (although he did change water into wine), but I've got a feeling that when the rock rolled back, Christ became a bourbon kinda guy.
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