You should know this.  The reason you should know this is because I may come across as someone who has never had beer before.  If I’m being very honest with myself, I hate beer.  It may be because of my taste for the sweet, and that beer comes across to me as so bitter – like nasty bread or something.  Today I praise God that He has delivered me though from believing in some way that beer in itself is evil.

I love my parents, but they were fed a line of crap all their lives from a group of overly pious religious leaders who, in the early part of the 20th century, teamed up with an overly pious group of feminists, to launch an incredible attack on anything “pub” driven.  This of course trickled down to me as a child.

Enter yesterday.  I attended a party of a group of people who love Jesus and who drink beer.  I didn’t drink the beer.  Remember, I think it tastes like nasty bread most of the time.  But I did appreciate the relational nature the beer brought to the party.  I know there’s a lot of whatifs involved in the subject conversation of beer – “What if”someone’s an alcoholic?  “What if” we cause someone to stumble?  These are important questions that should not be ignored, but by-in-large the same people who highlight this piousness choose to ignore  the waste that goes on in America or never see the problem with attending the  buffet and stuffing themselves silly on a regular basis.

The way I see it, if Jesus were at the party I attended yesterday, his interest would have nothing to do with what the people were drinking or eating, but he would have looked at their hearts, and started from that point.

Oh yeah, and he probably would have thought beer tastes like nasty bread.