Why Beer is a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe

By Keith Lindstrom

Published: November 23, 2009

/Christian News/ — Have you ever wondered why we have such big desires – why we have a tendency toward eating the whole bag of chips, drinking significantly more than one beer, or running up huge amounts on our credit cards? Why do we struggle so much with things like weight, alcohol, drugs, sex, and money? Last night I ate almost an entire bag of Mother’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. Why? I certainly didn’t intend to eat that many. I figured I’d have about four or five, but not the whole bag. But we humans are like that, aren’t we? We have this incredibly strong, beguiling, frustrating impulse toward overindulging — towards consuming things that are good, pleasurable, powerful, fulfilling, transcendent, absorbing. I like the way author Brennan Manning puts it: “Aristotle says I’m a rational animal. I say I’m an angel with an incredible capacity for beer!”

Manning is getting close to it when he says that we are angels, because our extraordinarily large appetites are really signs that we have extraordinarily large souls. Deep inside we all yearn for something FANTASTIC! We all yearn for something incredible, absorbing, eternal, satisfying, transcendent, pleasurable. We have incredibly great appetites generated by incredibly great souls that are meant to be satisfied by an incredibly great –- God. You see, these appetites are not all bad (those of us who have ever dealt with addictions take note.) They are actually a clue to the meaning of the universe. They are a clue that we were created to be fulfilled by something truly extraordinary, and that something is God.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 in the Bible says, “He (God) has made everything beautiful in its time; He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” In other words we were made for beauty and we were made for eternity. God has set it in our hearts (and souls). We were meant to be this way. We were given these appetites for a reason, because these appetites were meant to be satisfied, and they were meant to point us toward God.

Of course, the important distinction to be made here is that we are not to remain stuck in our earthly appetites but actually find God, who is more satisfying than words can describe. We are to personally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally experience an authentic relationship with God — a relationship that is powerful, wonderful, intimate, transcendent, healing, and satisfying at the deepest possible levels of our being. One person who is a recovering addict recently put it to me like this: “God is so awesome! No one ever told me how good Jesus could be. No one ever told me that I would find satisfaction and even ecstasy like this. This is way better than drugs!” This person is simply experiencing the reality that when we turn to God, the appetites begin to heal because we are getting what we really want — God.

So how are your appetites doing these days? If your answer is that your appetites are out of balance, whether you are a Christian or not, the answer is to turn to God who is revealed in Jesus. This is what the psalmist means when he says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” – Psalm 34:8. This is what it means to grow in our spirituality. This is what it means to be on a spiritual journey. The important thing is to find and intimately commune with the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ –- the God who is love and nothing but love –- the God who satisfies the deepest longing of the human soul. These longings are real and legitimate. More importantly, they can be satisfied. Could this be what our love for beer has really been trying to tell us all along?

Keith Lindstrom is a husband, father, pastor, and musician in Los Gatos, CA who hasn’t had a beer in five years. He is the founder (with his wife Wendy) of Breakthrough Ministries Silicon Valley, a ministry of healing, recovery, and restoration in Jesus. Keith can be contacted at keithlindstrom@yahoo.com.

Tagged with: addiction, Christian living, meaning of life