Worship Wednesday: The stuff we argue over . . .

I recently joined a Facebook group of Church of Christ bloggers.  One of the first posts I read was about Christians drinking wine.  The blogger believes Christians shouldn't drink wine at all.

I can respect his viewpoint.  I don't drink wine, beer, etc, because I don't know how much it would take for me to get drunk, and I'd rather not take the chance.

But on the group, the discussion quickly turned to, "Well, Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana."  From there, the question became:  "Was the wine alcoholic, or non-alcoholic?"

I've heard this argument before, which, as I see it, boils down to:  Drinking wine is a sin because you might get drunk on the alcohol content.  Yet, Jesus turned water into wine.  Jesus wouldn't sin, nor would he tempt anyone to sin.  If drinking wine is a sin because you might get drunk on the alcohol . . . then the wine that Jesus created must not have alcohol.  Problem solved!

However, wine is inherently alcoholic.  There is no such thing as "non-alcoholic" wine.

I'm not sure if the post is still on the group, but at last count, the number of responses to it was over 100.

I really don't feel like going down the rabbit hole of the argument of "was the wine in Jesus' day alcoholic or non-alcoholic".

Nor do I feel like going down the rabbit hole of the common arguments of Churches of Christ, such as instruments in worship, the "five acts of worship", etc. etc. etc. etc.  That's not the point of this post.

I just find it interesting that we can get so wound up over topics such as the alcohol content of the wine in Jesus' day, on whether or not we can use instruments in worship, on specifically what we can and can't do in worship . . . and in the meantime, we look at the world and see that it's lost and dying, that people starve daily, both physically and spiritually; that people are almost literally at each other's throats over this election; that people are fleeing death and persecution . . .

And we sit here, in our Christian bubbles, pointing fingers and arguing about what I see as inconsequentials.  (And when I say "we", I also mean "I".  I'm probably one of the most "bubbled-in" Christians that I know.)

I honestly think that if the worst happened and we Christians were forced to meet in secret, we Church of Christers would spend so much time arguing about the "authorized" way to worship that we would end up not worshiping at all!

If you feel led to comment here, I don't want to hear the arguments about how to worship, about wine vs. grape juice, about instrumental music, etc. etc.  Can we not focus on what Jesus' first and second commands were, which are, "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself"?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.