Let’s start with the big news. I drank my first Budweiser yesterday, and it feels funny to write that. I have been drinking beer for around 25 years and I never had a Bud. I’d had Bud Lite, but never the regular Budweiser. The reason is simple. When I was in college Budweiser was too expensive and then once out of college the craft beer revolution had already begun.
That creates an interesting dynamic that because I drank a fair amount of Devil’s Backbone that I did have products from the company that makes Bud, but never the flagship beer itself. Instead I kept trying new and different things and even reached a point where I barely drank beer outside a brewery and even when I toured the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis I opted for something different.
How I ended up with a Budweiser is it was in a cooler and I had previously drank the last Modelo available. Everything else was either Michelob or something else I didn’t have interest in. I could have made a cocktail, but I opted for the Bud as I figured after 45 years on planet earth it was time I tried one.
It tasted like beer. It wasn’t really good or bad. It was just a beer and it was drinkable. The more important news from last night was I spent an afternoon having a very Presbyterian social outing. One where no one cared how many of the available oysters they ate, the host was kind and generous, and everyone there either liked each other or did a great job pretending.
If I could sum up Presbyterian religious beliefs in a sentence it would be, “It’s not that serious, but I want to know more.” I don’t think you’ll find many Presbyterians running strict households, banning D&D or Harry Potter, forbidding the use of alcohol, or trying to hang up the ten commandments everywhere. Yet when it comes to religion we have questions and want answers. It is just those questions are along the lines of, “What does the original Greek say?” or, “What were the laws in Roman provinces at the time?”
This is one of the main reasons I want to do a Bible study outside that circle. To see what happens when those questions start flying out of left field. Most people go to church looking for certainty. We go to church, and oyster roasts, looking to ask questions.
