What am I afraid of.....?

This past weekend, my wife and I decided that we would like to have a glass of wine. We are not drinkers per se, we have a glass at my folks house (they are catholic) during the holidays and that's about it. But for some reason we thought why not. I got in the car drove to the liquor store and didn't stop. I drove by five times and didn't stop. What am I afraid of? I am 30 years old and am worried what people are going to say if I have a drink. It's not even about my witness, I am worried about the saved people who will see me and judge and condemn and say that I am inferior because I had a drink.

I have come across some interesting blogs this weekend that deal about the same thing. The first was at Reformissionary entitled Alcohol, Abstention and Redemption, I found Steve McCoy's argument very persuasive and I it began to resonate in my spirit.

And if we are working out our salvation through
being redeemed and redeeming, then our response
to cultural abuses is not to abstain but to redeem.
That not only pushes us to maturity by teaching us
how to eat, drink, and have sex to the glory of God
(though it won't come easy), but it is also a witness
to the world that God redeems. The pervert throws
away the pornography (abuse) and learns to love sex
with his wife (redemption). The glutton refuses to
order a 5 piece fried chicken and fries meal (abuse) and
learns to order a salad with light dressing instead
(redemption).The alcohol abuser stops drinking until
drunk (abuse) and learns to stop after a beer or two (redemption).

As long as we make the issue "abstaining," we will miss expressing
and embodying redemption. And I'm afraid the message we will
send is that good things can be perverted beyond redemption.

I began to think about something, I don't drink because my father was a alcoholic, I was never shown how to drink responsibly. My children will never be taught that lesson either if I don't teach them. I don't want them to be scared, I want them to be informed. Then today I came across this post One Big, Happy, Lie: Southern Baptists, Alcohol and Me. It is a well written post on the truth of drinking in the SBC.

I began to think again why all this talk at a time when I considered drinking a glass of wine. Was God trying to tell me something? Was something else happening that I didn't know about? Well yes there was. As I was rereading Steve McCoy's post again I noticed some links I had not explored and came across this FIRST-PERSON: Total abstinence on the BP news website.

What are my conclusions after all this thinking and reading. I still believe as I have always that drinking is not a sin, getting drunk is. Now, that being said is it alright for a growing Christian to have a drink every now and again. Sure. Will I be drinking, I don't know, but after all of this a glass of wine sure sounds good right now.