Well, I wanted to be in the world. I have a pretty sheltered existence in church work. Oh, I have seen everything you see anywhere else, but you put it off as an aberration and mainly occurring in the lives of people who don’t profess similar beliefs as yourself. I felt like I was working with the best of the best and not really having a chance to influence my world for the better. Now, I deal with people with people of all kinds.
I have always considered myself to be a little more open than the average minister type, but the opinions and interpretations of life that one can create in church isolation can be pretty hard to reconcile with modern American life. For example, Southern Baptist Churches say consuming alcoholic beverages is wrong and that if you drink you are leading others into temptation. Using that logic, you should not be allowed to eat Ice Cream, because I am fat. I have never had problem with people drinking responsibly (I never did drink anything while working in churches; just to make that clear). The Bible says that it is wrong to be drunk. I have always felt that we become like the Pharisees if we create laws around what the Bible actually says.
But… where I work, it seems like everyone drinks, and drinks to get drunk. Smashed. Sloshed. Wasted. I don’t want to say that drinking is wrong, but I do not want to be associated with irresponsibility. I want to enjoy Amaretto in my Coffee, but I do not want to be seen as participating in drunkenness. Should I even care what people think, as long as I hold to my beliefs?