A Snack for Reflection as We Drink

I have long identified with the following quote attributed to C.S. Lewis.

My happiest hours are often spent with three or four old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs–or else sitting up till the small hours in someone’s college rooms, talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes. There is no sound I like better than adult male laughter.

I read that passage some time ago in Jim West’s Drinking With Calvin and Luther!: A History of Alcohol in the Church, shortly after graduating from college and at a time when I was developing a taste for dark imported beer. The author begins the book by tracing the history of alcohol consumption and the church. Did you know that the term “teetotaler” originally meant someone who was “totally off tea?” John Wesley gave up the caffeinated brew after drinking it for 26 years, but just happened to remain an aficionado of ales. West also explores issues such as the Christology of drinking wine, exegetical blunders of the Old Testament and the weaker brother argument.

While I heartily agree with West that wine and beer were created by God for our enjoyment, I am also accutely aware of the need to be sensitive and alert to the movements of my own heart as I exercise my Christian liberty.

This perspective is underscored by a recent article by Frederick Meekins, Boozing Epidemic Among Young Adult Church Groups, in which the writer not only points the finger at the twenty somethings of my denomination,

In discussing her book “Thrill Of The Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On” on the Albert Mohler Show, journalist Dawn Eden made an observation that many young adult or singles ministries are centered around drinking.

This author is to be commended for exposing what is probably a little known and shocking fact.

I myself came across this startling truth when I was visiting a PCA Presbyterian Church (a supposedly more conservative denomination) off and on a few years back.

Though I never attended any of the functions since I could just as easily stay home and feel like less of a total outcast since hardly anyone in the Sunday school class would hardly even speak to me at church so why bother elsewhere, it always seemed an inordinate number of the e-mail invitations for class social functions mentioned alcohol would be present.

…but also at some of the elders that serve in it.

However, the blame cannot be placed solely on the indiscretions of youth.

After all, for in this case, they are only mimicking the behavior of their elders.

And in this case, I literally mean elders. For eventually pictured on the pages of the Washington Post in a story about a men’s book discussion was a photo of two elders of this church in question boozing it up in some bar.

While I think that Meekins’ tone and choice of words makes him come off sounding less reformed and more legalistic about alcohol, his article is still has a helpful, if not sobering, perspective to pass on to those of us in the church who do drink (especially shepards of God’s people). With church socials looking more and more like the cocktail hour, the question posed is worthy of reflection: When does the desire to be culturally relevant cross the line to being co-opted by the culture?