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What Would
Jesus Drink?
Engaging the
Culture
By Mike Zehnder
How
the Church engages with culture is a crucial question. Is God at work in every
culture or only in the Church and in "churchly activity"? Augustine spoke of a
God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person that remains unsatisfied apart
from God. Is God at work even through that vacuum, drawing people to Himself?
Scripture speaks of the rain that falls even on the unjust and Paul noted, "In
Him we live and move and have our being," an obvious reference to the activity
of God among even unbelievers, a working beyond mere regeneration and
sanctification of Christians.
Recently
I saw a 20-something man sporting a T-shirt with the large letters "W. W. J. D."
Lest you think this was a sincere question you will want to know
that beneath these familiar letters stood a sarcastic interpretation of the
acronym: "What Would Jesus Drink?" Pictures of various kinds of booze and beer
bottles were depicted underneath it.
While
the T-Shirt wearer seemed to be asking an irreverent or impudent question, in
truth, the answer is that, in addition to water, Jesus drank some popular beverages
of His culture. His first miracle created wine out of water at a wedding party
that had already managed to blow through its main wine supply. At His "Last
Supper," he drank at least three cups of wine common to the method of
celebrating the Passover and commented that it was His last drink of wine until
heaven. On the cross, He drank wine vinegar.
What
would Jesus drink? Part of the answer is that He would drink common beverages
of His culture. However,
in some Christian circles, a person's faith would be questioned if he or she drank certain drinks, especially "unchristian" alcoholic ones.
Just
recently, the Southern Baptists of the Texas Convention replaced the bylaw that
required all SBTC employees and elected officials to abstain from drunkenness
(a biblical command) with a demand that all SBTC employees and elected officials
abstain from "the use of alcohol as a beverage." A popular SBC blogger, Wade Burleson, used the occasion to
make a tongue-in-cheek case for abstinence of all teadrinking
to separate oneself from this cultural practice as a means of proclaiming true
Christianity. His main points:
- Drinking
tea leads a person to addiction to caffeine.
- Tea and
coffee are destructive to the Christian's body, which is the temple of God.
- Though
the Bible does not expressly forbid the drinking of tea, there is an
overwhelming preponderance of Biblical evidence that tea drinking is a
sin.
- Though
some have the gall to say Jesus drank tea on the cross, it was clearly not
the same kind of tea or substance that tea drinkers consume today.
- The
argument that drinking tea is not illegal in the United States, and therefore,
lawful for the Christian, is an argument straight from hell.
- Some
cultures drink tea as a normal part of daily life, but that is no excuse
for Christians to drink it, since we are to be 'a cut above' the world.
- When a
Christian purchases tea he is supporting an entire industry that has made
a fortune by leading people to the mind altering, destructive, and nearly
impossible to break addiction to caffeine.
- It has
been scandalously reported that some young, Southern Baptist pastors are
actually having Bible studies in the local Starbucks in an effort to lead
people to Christ.
- A great
concern for the loosening of the standard of total abstinence from tea
drinking is the belief that those Southern Baptist moderates and liberals
who drink tea will eventually cause the Southern Baptist Convention to
turn back from a firm belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
- Drinking
caffeinated tea for recreational purposes physiologically acts as a "mind altering drug."
To
capture the full extent of Wade's humor and sarcastic questions about
Christians who engage the culture in a participatory way you really need to
read his comments under each point on his blog at http://kerussocharis.blogspot.com/2007/11/personal-holiness-by-abstaining-from.html .
The
point of such absurdities is that the Church too often divides "sacred" from
"secular" when for the Christian there is no such thing - ALL activity that springs from faith is sacred, whether a
"pagan" style of music used in church or a "pagan" beverage used at communion.
The most common of things in life - eating and drinking - are set apart for God
not necessarily by mere substance but by intent and consecration: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you
do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians10:31)
Considering
the profound truth of human activity, which
simultaneously touches the sacred and the mundane, someone curious about biblically engaging culture might ask, "What music
style would
Jesus prefer?," "What
movies would Jesus reference in His teaching?," "What
projection software would Jesus use for His sermon points?,"
"When preaching, would Jesus wear comfortable
shoes like Adidas, Rockport, or would he go with classic Florsheims?," "What
television programs would Jesus watch and discuss?," "What sports teams would Jesus like or use in His illustrations?,"
"What model of car would Jesus drive to
church or would He favor bicycles or horse and buggies like the Amish?," "Would
Jesus drink
Coke or Pepsi, caffeine free or regular, with or without lemon, sugared or
flavored with Nutrasweet?," and so on.
Can
the Church engage the culture in familiar activities such as worship, music,
or conversation? The answer is, of course!
In His ministry, Jesus would and Jesus did. His followers
would do well to follow and engage their cultures in faith for
the glory of God. As Paul wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "Blessed is
the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves." (Romans 14:22)
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