O'Charley's Girl

I was at O’Charley’s the other night with some friends. The waitress was a young girl who was very friendly. It was one of the guys birthday so we asked if they would sing and bring a dessert…just for the fun of it… but she said that they did not do that anymore. She then proceeded to ask how old he was, and he told her 21. Her immediate question was, “don’t you want a drink?” He told her no and that he never has had one, and never will. She was curious as to why and immediately inquired. Another guy with us, the b-day boy’s brother, told her that none of us drank because of Jesus. She began to ask why being a Christian meant you could no longer drink. She said that the Bible talks about people drinking, but only says it is wrong to drink if you get drunk. She then asked about tattoos because one of the guys with us had a tattoo. She began to tell us how her parents are always telling her to stay away from her friends because they drink and she does not need to drink, and how tattoos are wrong and she can not get one. It turns out that she and her parents were members of our church, and not only that, she had been a member of our church since she was 2 years old. After conversing with her and trying to answer her questions honestly, I discovered that at the heart of what this girl was getting at is that she really wanted to connect with God, but her perception of what that meant was that she had to adhere to all kinds of rules that she felt would bring great demise to her life. To her connecting with God meant following rules, not following Jesus.