Two Reasons To Give Up Beer

I like beer.

Well, let me rephrase that. I like some beer.

Let me rephrase that as well. I basically like three brands of beer.

My favorite is one that I can never get. It's out of my home state of Colorado, called Breckenridge Avalanche. It's great stuff. I once drank a couple of them at lunch at a ski resort, and then skiied the rest of the time a little tipsy. It was fun. I think it's why I decided to jump off more cliffs that day.

My second favorite is a more recent find, called Shiner Bock. I actually like most "bocks". My first bock was at the Beaver Street Brewery up in Flagstaff, AZ - I place I am looking at possibly moving to. Anyway, Shiner Bock is good stuff. It's too bad I didn't try it when I actually lived in Texas, since it's out of Shiner, TX.

My third favorite is also from Colorado, one you can find pretty much anywhere. Fat Tire.

I'm one of those kind of people who didn't drink much of anything until about the age of 30. Actually, pretty much until I moved to Arizona. It could be because it seems that most Arizonans are beer-drinking, jack-up your truck, white trash kind of people, and I wanted to do something to relate, and since I don't have a truck and don't need to compensate for something else, I guess I went for the beer.

I've always felt a little guilty drinking beer, because I'm a pastor and you're not supposed to do that. I don't know why, but that's what they tell me. But now that I'm not in ministry at the present moment, I've already had a couple of six packs of the Shiner Bock. You can get it pretty cheap at Wal-Mart. But now I'm afraid that I could end up as one of those fat guys who sit around, watch T.V., drink beer and yell at their kids to shut up. You know, an alcoholic or something. So I've decided that I need to figure out a couple of reasons to keep myself under control - maybe drink a couple every once in awhile, but nothing too crazy. I've come up with two.

The first one is something I read online at www.simpleliving.org , a website that is dedicated to, surprise, surprise, simple living. Since I don't have any money now and no job, this would be probably be a good step for me in my life. In fact, some friends of ours from Flagstaff took us out to dinner at a new place in the Phoenix area called "Paul Lee's Chinese Kitchen", and my fortune from my cookie actually said I would find happiness in simple living, no lie. So I've been looking at some things on the website and came across a Lenten calendar. I've never participated in Lent, I remember seeing a lady at my church with a smudge of something on her forehead and I had no clue what it meant. However, on the lenten calendar, it talks about beer. On the 13th day, it tells me to read Luke 14:12-24, and then says to oppose use of grains for beer and whiskey. I'm intrigued and I read on. It then says this: American breweries and distilleries use about 16,000 tons of grain a day, enough to feed 128 million people for an entire year!

Holy cow. That's not good. That website is basically saying that the average American Joe Six-Pack is causing people to die of starvation. I'm becoming the average American Joe Six-Pack. I do not want this on my conscience. Perhaps if I drink less beer, maybe that will make a difference.

The second reason is a little more personal. I grew up thinking my grandparents on my mother's side died of cancer. When I was 18, my mother - who was suffering from cancer and who ended up dying from it a couple of months later - came into my bedroom one night while I was studying or something (it may have been air guitar, I did a lot of that before I learned how to actually play) and told me to have a seat next to her on my bed. She then pulled out an article from the Denver Post back in the early 1960's. In that article, it talked about how an alcoholic husband and father shot his wife in a drunken rage and then turned the gun on himself. It then said that the first person to come upon the scene was my mother, age 14 I believe. I was obviously stunned. She told me that her father was two different people. When he wasn't drunk, he was a great father. When he was drunk, he would beat his wife, beat his kids, throw things around. I decided at that time that I would never become an alcoholic.

But here I am, age 34, and I like a couple kinds of beer. Could I become like my grandfather? I couldn't imagine hurting my wife or daughter. But would I even know if I was drunk?

I drank the last Shiner Bock in our house yesterday. The biggest reason was because my friends were coming over and they are youth ministers. I think I'll wait awhile before I pick up any more. At least that gives me one less reason to go to Wal-Mart.