SELLING OUT: version 1.0

I had just turned 21, never having tasted alcohol until the day before my birthday, and that was in taking communion. I was, and still am to a degree, a responsible, obedient citizen. I respected and listened to my parents who respected and obeyed the government. So, it wasn't that my parents were against drinking, Dad often had a beer with supper on smouldering summer evenings, it was just that I hadn't reached the age that had been decided on by wiser-than-we politicians as the moment I could start.

Now I had reached that milestone. At the time I wasn't at a party school at all. Far from it!
I chose to go to a conservative Baptist college in Tennessee mostly because it was cheap, so it would keep both me and my parents from going into debt. Again, a responsible decision. There I was taught that drinking was wrong for any Christian, even if they had passed the government-sanctioned age. What could this substance be exactly, I wondered, that it needed to be regulated and banned? Is it possible that something God created could be essentially evil? And wasn't Jesus' first miracle the changing of water into wine?

So I decided to write my essay for an English Composition class on whether or not Christians could drink in good faith. Desiring an objective approach, I decided to wait until after I'd done my research before proposing a concrete thesis statement as to alcohol's immorality or morality. Our professor brooded over us like an over-involved kindergarten teacher, explaining each and every step of the writing process in detail. When we came to "writing a clear thesis statement," he had us each read ours aloud. When it was my turn, I told him that I would study the stance Christians should take towards alcohol. Being completely imbued with the ideology of conservative Protestantism, he assumed I meant that I would write an argumentative essay outlining why Christians should not drink.

I didn't correct him.

So, although I found more Scriptural evidence supporting reasonable alcoholic consumption by Christians than not, I focused on the verses that could possibly, if interpreted within a conservative Southern worldview, convey alcohol as an immoral beverage for Christians.

I got an A.

But now I drink.

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