Recovering Baptist

Facebook is such an interesting phenomenon. I never thought much of it until our new pastor started making great use of it; as it turns out, FB is a great tool for churches. It makes it so much easier to keep tabs with a congregation care for them when you have a tool which makes it that easy to keep up with who’s doing what and how everyone is feeling.

And the good and bad of FB is that it’s easy to find people. On the one hand I’ve been found by friends that go so far back that my memory of our times together is hazy, and then on the other I keep running into ex-girlfriends. But hey, if they’re the ones adding me as friends, then I guess I couldn’t have been that bad a guy. But those aren’t the ones that have me thinking; it’s all my old Baptist friends. I suddenly have a better understanding for so much of what Paul has to say.

My old Baptist friends are good people. They all know why I chose to leave the SBC; I disagreed with its theology and its culture. Oh yeah, I also left because of a girl (who isn’t my friend on FB), but that’s irrelevant. And the further I get away from the SBC the more I think that God was in a lot of things that happened thirteen years ago. Yet I still find myself wanting to gain the approval of my old Baptist friends, and that means being tempted to change what I say on Facebook.

This is where Paul comes in. It seems so strange that Paul’s writings to Jews would apply to an ex-Baptist, but they do. Paul reminds members of the Way that they are not only called to follow Christ, but they are also free, and in some ways even called, to give up their culture (and don’t forget Peter who was specifically called to sit down to a meal of tasty pig). He reminds them of God’s grace, and he exhorts them to walk that fine line of loving the people who cannot give it up while living firmly in a new one. And so I’ve been purposely updating my Facebook page with statuses and comments that many years ago would have convinced me that I’m a backslidden Christian, not only because that’s who I am now, but also for the sake of my brethren who need to know that Christ would drink good beer with friends and sinners alike.

Honestly, does it get much better than riding your bike home in the rain from a friend’s house with a slight pipe tobacco and alcohol buzz?

After pulling nearly a 60 hours week, here are my weekend plans:

• Friday night - sleep
• Saturday - play with the family
• Saturday night - drink massive quantities of good, high gravity beer with friends
• Sunday - stumble into church (it’s good to be Pesbyterian!)
• Sunday night - sleep

Have a great weekend everyone. Here’s hoping your week wasn’t as stressful as mine.

Tomorrow we enjoy my Christmas present - the ski shell and the trip to break it in. My wife is the best in the whole world. If you don’t believe it, then show me one who has bought her husband a grocery cart full of Belgian Trappist Ales, built a custom pipe holder, and bought him a ski trip. Oh yeah, then there are the things I can’t put in print…

Have a great long weekend everyone. We won’t be back for a few days. Hopefully I won’t break anything this time, or I may be silent for a bit longer.

We figured that avoiding amateur night on the roads was probably a good idea, and a cabin near Ellijay turned out to be perfect. My family and two others spent four days playing pool, shooting off fireworks, and sitting by the fire. The kids played well together and actually behaved except for bedtime. As dull as it may sound, the adults pretty much did, too. We played pool, sat by the fire, and ate. And drank. And ate. And drank. And ate some more.

Our menu for the weekend pretty much consisted of every cholesterol filled, sodium saturated, carbohydrate heavy foodstuff possible. And to drink we had a wide selection of great beer and limoncello. And while I love to eat and drink, at some point even I realize that even the Romans put an end to their feasts at some point.

And so now it’s back to the real world. One nice green leaf is about all I can stand to eat today. I even tried to head to the gym for the first time in many, many months, but someone pulled the fire alarm. So much for a healthy 2008, but if how you ring in the new year is a representation of how you’ll spend it, this is looking to be a fun one.

Two other families joined us at our house for Halloween last night, and we had a great time. Trick-or-treating is always fun, but it’s better in a group. Since one family has a tiny baby and another wife is pregnant, the women stayed home while the men walked with the kids. We started to walk out with half-a-glass of beer, but I thought that a bottle of beer would be better all around. When we got to one neighbor’s house I was informed that we’ve messed this whole thing up.

Trick-or-treating and alcohol have apparently gone together for a long time, and it seems like the 70’s were the highlight. In those good old days the women stayed at home while the men took the kids around the neighborhood. So far, so good. The difference is that the men did carry a glass with them, and went up to the door and said “trick-or-treat!” The wives performed their duties and refilled the glass with whatever they had on hand. The last women’s duty of the night was to collect the husbands before they got really hurt.

So spread the word for next year. Our street is pouring hard liquor for halloween. Trick-or-treat!

For a while during my very Baptist college days I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. I wasn’t so much interested in the financial part of the paper, but it was the best “conservative” paper at the time and it gave discounts to students. My favorite parts were the editorials (I’ve always been a political geek) and the human interest story in the center column of the front page. It was there that I first learned about Michael Jackson. No, not the black-white musician-pervert. The other one. The guy who introduced the masses to good beer.
The article described his passion for good beer and the tours he would make, almost daily, of breweries. Brewers knew that they wanted him to visit late in the day after he’d already enjoyed a few rounds, as he generally more favorable then. I don’t know why I was so interested in him then - I’d never had an interest in holding a beer, much less tasting one. It must have been the same sort of force that made that witch that I sat next to in class so attractive (in my defense, she was very cute and not bitchy, and very few girls at GT fit that description).
It’s fitting that tonight I was headed to the beer fridge when I decided to check the news one last time and saw that Michael Jackson has had his last beer. I’ve been wondering why I haven’t heard much from him now that I’m a certified beer snob, and the article shed some light. He’s been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for 10 years. So, in his honor, I’m cracking a bottle of New Belgium 1554 Enlightened Black Ale.