NEW LEAVEN

With my asthma I couldn’t smoke a cigar to the glory of God.

Having celiac sprue I can’t drink regular beer to the glory of God but I can drink gluten-free beer to the glory of God. Wine is OK too.

If it was good enough for Barth…

“Well, dear friends, you know that some men can do to the glory of God what to other men would be sin. And notwithstanding what brother Pentecost has said, I intend to smoke a good cigar to the glory of God before I go to bed to-night.” -C. H. Spurgeon

I’ve always liked that quote by Spurgeon although that was before the Surgeon (take away one letter from Spurgeon) General’s warning.

I smoke a cigar once every 2-3 months. I always have a great time praying and reading when I do. The smoke reminds me of prayers going up into heaven. Although I don’t inhale, smoke still goes in the mouth and nicotine gets absorbed into the body but I believe the body can easily recover from this if it’s infrequent and it’s not something that immoral unless it causes another to stumble of course.

Beer goes without saying. Paul does talk about not drinking too much. My personal rule is never two or more nights in a row and never more than two in one night although two is very infrequent.

I never realized Paul may be speaking about wine in 1 Cor 10:31.
Jeff

@tc robinson: It was a signature of someone at the Puritan Board.

I don’t smoke myself, both because I am a teen and because I don’t plan on it for health reasons (which were’t known in Spurgeon’s day).

Amen, tc.

You called a pastor friend in THE South to talk about drinkin’ and smokin’?

*shaking head*

I’m with Betsy above. In the south???? You either have the courage of a lion or… well it does give us interesting posts.

TC:
I don’t know if liberalism is what I would pray for…maybe instead that we would come to realize that Christianity is a much bigger thing tent than Southern Baptists.

I was born and raised in the South (and love it) and I attend a Southern Baptist Church, so I guess I can say that. I’m actually serious, though. You should hear some of the conversations I have down here. I was having a conversation about the Book of Revelation recently with some friends, and upon hearing that I was amillenial one of them quipped “you know, I’m the only one here that wasn’t raised a Christian, and I’m still willing to take the Bible literally, unlike you”. She didn’t mean it in a nice way. I smiled and told here that we had a very basic disagreement about what the Bible is, and that she ought to know that her brother, who is a children’s pastor in the PCA would disagree strongly with her on that. She didn’t even know that Presbyterians (or any Protestant, for that matter) had different views on this.

TC:
I went to a Baptist High School, and come from an Assemblies of God family, so believe me I know about the dispy preimil.

She wasn’t abrasive toward opposing views, she was unaware of them. I can deal with abrasiveness. What I don’t understand is the attitude that Historic Christianity doesn’t matter. This may be a symptom of American protestantism in general, though, I don’t know. It’s something that really bothers me these days for some reason, and I find myself praying about it quite a bit.

BTW, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that all Southern Baptists are this way. I am a Southern Baptist, after all, and I love my church.

I once heard the following story: a pastor went to Spain and as the mediteranean diet includes wine at every meal, he was praying to God for discernment how to handle the situation as he wanted to stay true but not alienate his host. Just then the hostess asks him in a shocked voice if it’s true that americans drink coffee – the devil’s brew- with every meal?!?

The apostle Peter could have helped him out…

TC:
Historic Christianity doesn’t matter in that we don’t seem to place much value on tradition, and the universal church at large.

Examples? Putii ng doctrine to the side and focusing on practice, we don’t say the creeds. We don’t take communion except maybe once a month, and maybe less. We don’t even, paradoxically, put much value on baptism itself. In another conversation recently, someone at my church told me that they had not been baptized, but they knew they were saved so what difference did it make?

In the same conversation that I mentioned above, the young lady (who takes the Bible literally ) got to talking about a Jewish friend who was crazy because he believed in a resurrection of everyone and a future life on earth (this is what started the discussion on Revelation). I told her that a resurrection is what we also look forward to, and have always believed as a faith. She seemed confused.

This young lady (and one of the others there) were graduates of Liberty University. How on earth do you graduate from a Christian college, attend church every Sunday, and not know one of the most basic tenants of the faith?

Now, again, of course I’m not saying that all Southern Baptists are this way, and this is somewhat of an in-house critique by me. BUT, it’s hard for someone like me, who has gradually grown to think of “the church” in a little higher and broader terms than “the building up the street” to not be concerned about it, you know?

Scary posts!
Modern man is very arrogant in believing that as he/she lives in the ‘information’ age he must know better than all the previous generations. I always find it amazing that the great minds of yesteryear had sold-out performances where they brought their ideas to the general masses. I am speaking of Mozart, Beethoven, Livingstone, Newton etc etc. Now? we sit with uneducated people that are only experts on the local sports/game and the soapies on TV.
Why is it necessary that a blog must exist thousands of miles away for you to find someone to talk things through? How much difference is there between the current age and the dark ages where people were ignorant and uneducated? How come a church gives everyone a grape for communion? or folded piece of palm leave to wave around during Palm Sunday? And nobody questions the rationale behind it?

heathens!

tc, you joke, but there was a Spirit-filled Baptist Church in Abilene, TX which shall remain nameless that we attended for a while, and one of the men’s nights was a movie, wild game and beer night (and not the wussy American beer either, I’m talking the hard stuff-imported, home brew, etc.) One of the elders was something of a connoisseur. As it happened, I couldn’t make it, but I soooo wanted to. I heard it was a blast.

oh, and did I mention it was held at the church.

I think he’s an associate pastor now, if I’m not mistaken (at the same church). I love it.

Nice blog with a very nice title to be discussed “Drinking Wine, Drinking Beer, Smoking Cigar, all for the Glory of God!” It was nice going through it. Keep it up the good work.