The Common Grace of Tailgate Beer

(Independence Pass, CO)

Benjamin Franklin was a syphilis-ridden inveterate skirt-chaser who thought the turkey should be the national symbol but he was right when he said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Wait. Google has informed me that Benjamin Franklin never said this. This, despite its numerous sources on sidewalk kiosks outside bars and breweries. We can all go back to thinking Mr. Franklin was just a chubby ol' creeper with a penchant for electricity and bad ideas (looking at you, Articles of Confederation [though, admittedly, the Constitution pretty much sucks too]). 

Whoever did say it was on to something. Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. 

The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is the author's written wrestling with the theological dilemma of existence and the perceived absence of God. The book has been referred to as the world's first piece of existential philosophy. The author lives in a world with a volatile economy, judicial problems, and new and disparate socioeconomic classes (no, not America; post-exile Persia) and confesses an existence that is contradictory and absurd, yet tries to make sense of it all. 

There is a common theme throughout Ecclesiastes that gives me great joy and hope: enjoyment.  

"There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their work. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" (2:24-25)

"I know that there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their work." (3.12-13)

 

"This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the work with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us." (5.18)

"So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them through the days of life God gives them." (8:15)

"Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long approved of what you do... Enjoy your life with the one you love and whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might." (9.7-10)

 

"Have you had a PBR with lime? It's the reason I still go to church." (my friend, Payton)

That last one isn't from Ecclesiastes but it works. The gulf between God and humans is bridged in these moments of humans receiving and enjoying the good gifts of creaturely life: food, drink, friends, and even meaningful work. The German theologian and Nazi resistance leader, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the message of Ecclesiastes: "We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelming earthly happiness, we must not try to be more pious than God himself." I grew up in a teetotaling culture that tried really hard to be more pious than God's own self. 

Oh, if the elders at Timberlane Church of Christ could have seen the pile of empty cans that accumulated throughout our stay in El Rito, New Mexico. Josh and I spent every day clipping bolts on beautiful, steep conglomerate walls in the dry desert heat and finished every night by a campfire with Doc Watson on the BlueTooth and a PBR in our hand. I spent the previous year in a "dark night of the soul" of sorts. But that week in New Mexico I saw the Deep Mind of the Cosmos in the panoply of stars. I heard the Everlasting Song of the Universe in the howls of coyotes. And I felt the Spirit of Creative Transformation in the conversations between two brothers, alone in the desert. 

Every can of cheap beer enjoyed on the tailgate of a truck or around a campfire with friends is a foretaste of the life of the world to come. At least that's the preferred vision for the future of Saint Brigid of Kildare. Brigid was an abbess in fifth-century Ireland known for her Christian virtue and “as a woman who likes to feast with plenty of ale and divine company.” She is purported to have prayed, “I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings with Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.” This is my entire eschatology.

Happy summer, megasplitter friends. I hope it's full of swimming holes, gravel rides, and tailgate beers. May the common yet good gifts of creaturely life mediate the presence of the Divine Mystery, whatever your religious persuasion. 

*

Like this post? Continue to support megasplitter by subscribing to the newsletter, commenting on, and sending the posts that you like to your friends.