Someone contacted me and questioned my liking beer in my about me page. This is not my defense of beer. It is a brief response to why I have freedom in Christ to drink to the glory of God.

I had renounced beer as worldly and evil by the time I was 20. It certainly can be. I’ve now lived for over a decade since I had that conviction. As my faith grew I began to no longer hold to certain extra-biblical convictions such as equating drinking beer with sin. I’ve shared Christ and grace over a beer before and hopefully will again.

Yes, I like beer. I drink it seldomly and pretty much always drink beer at a bar or restaurant. I do not usually have beer in my house. In nearly eight years of marriage we have purchased or been given maybe three to four cases of beer.

Some sincere Christians object to the fact that non-believers seeing a believer drink is a bad testimony. I do not believe that God’s glory is diminished when I drink legally or responsibly. When I go to a bar or restaurant I do not wear a WWJD or AbreadcrumbandFish shirt as my form of evangelism. Actually, I do not wear shirts like that at all. I do attempt to share Christ when appropriate in bars and restaurants by living a life that is astonished by the glory of God. I want a non-believer to see a life transformed by the grace of Christ even if it is over a beer. My philosophy on beer is grounded in 1 Corinthians 10:31.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

I love to live to God’s glory. I now drink a beer or have a glass of wine to the glory of God just as the saints before me.

Martin Luther drank beer. Calvin drank beer. They absolutely lived to God’s glory in every aspect of their lives. We would be foolish to think that they were merely captured by their culture or that the beer they drank was not fomented. Luther and Calvin both warned against abuse of drinking beer to the point of drunkenness but did not forbid the consumption of beer! They enjoyed beer as a foretaste of God’s goodness. If you want to know more on their view then I recommend reading Drinking With Calvin and Luther: A History of Alcohol in the Church.

The prohibition in the Bible regarding fermented drinks have always been against drunkenness not against drinking. Saints and sinner alike throughout the ages have drank beer and alcohol because it was a foretaste of relaxation, rest, and the liberating grace of God’s intoxicating joy. God created these and demonstrated his good pleasure in allowing us in intoxicating drink a foretaste of the unbelievable goodness of God. This is illustrated in Jesus first miracle recorded in John 2 and I will be blogging about that tomorrow.

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