THE PROOF OF THE BEER IS IN THE DRINKING OR THANKS FOR BEING YOU
“I could hardly function at work today after staying up till 2:00 a.m. last night reading The Beer Drinker’s Guide to God. Thanks for being YOU and for sharing YOURSELF with the rest of us!”
A Bishop in the Episcopal Church
“John the Baptizer came fasting and you called him crazy. I came feasting and you called me a lush. Opinion polls don’t count for much, do they? The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
Jesus, Luke 7:33-34 (The Message Translation)
The only stories that I can tell with any sense of authenticity are my own. And the only stories that you can tell with any sense of authenticity are your own. We are uniquely made, yet in all of our storied and gloried uniqueness, we actually reflect the divine image. We are all different. God made us that way. And that makes for a much more interesting story, not to mention interesting life.
John the Baptist was not Jesus. And Jesus was not John the Baptist. Yet neither was immune to the critics. The same people who complained that John fasted complained that Jesus feasted. The same folks who thought John’s asceticism was nuts, thought that Jesus’ indulgence was offensive.
But Jesus understood clearly that you cannot please everyone and that God does not ask us to please anyone – except the One who made us and knows us best. In the Kingdom of God, opinion polls don’t count for much. The proof the pudding is in the eating. And the proof of the beer is in the drinking. Whether you prefer one to the other is beside the point.
Being yourself and living out your own unique calling as a singular child of God like no one else is precisely the point of the spiritual life. Henry David Thoreau observed: “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I know as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I require of every writer, first and last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives.”
Fortunately for all of us, Thoreau lived and wrote what he knew from his own experience. Criticize him if you want, but he was Thoreau and for him, that was enough. I believe that when he got to heaven, God did not ask him “Why were you not Shakespeare or Yeats or Charles Schultz or that actor who portrays the most interesting man in the world in those beer commercials!?” Nope, God asked simply “Were you Henry David Thoreau?” If the answer was yes, the response was “Come on in and have a beer.”
The best compliment I have received thus far about my new book came from a Midwestern bishop the day after it was released. He said simply: thank you for being you, and for sharing yourself with the rest of us. I can’t imagine higher praise. So allow me to say to each one reading this particular story and my unusual take on the spiritual life: Thank you for being you. Ultimately, that is all that God requires of each of us.
