Beer and Jesus

In my quest for answers to questions that I cannot clearly articulate, I spent the afternoon with some friends trying to figure it all out.  When I got home, the discussion was continued with Danny and Ashlyn.  It turns out that I may be being harder on myself than I need to be but I don't know.
We discussed a lot of things today about God and religion and the bible and judgemental people and beer and wine.
God loves me, this I know not because the bible tells me so because I am still not sure how I feel about the bible but because God tells me so in all that He has blessed me with.  I know that I am worthy of His love and His forgiveness.  I have felt His arms around me in various forms throughout my life.  I know I am secure in the palm of His hand.
Religion is different than faith.  Faith is what I have, religion is, in part, how I show my faith.  But not really because I am not very good with religion.  I struggled with whether or not I am catholic.  I decided that I am catholic because (1.) I remember a nun telling me that once one is baptised catholic they are always catholic and (2.) I believe in the Eucharist.  It is not a symbol for me.  Of all the stuff I have read in the bible, that is the one thing that I know is true, this is my body.  I have a pretty decent analogy that explains how I feel about the Eucharist.  When I got my prescription for an epi pen it came with a practice pen. The practice pen is a symbol of the epi pen.   Oh, it is a lot of fun to play Pulp Fiction with, but when it is life and death, I want the real pen, full of life saving goodness.  That is what the Eucharist is for me, soul saving goodness.  So I am Catholic.  I am not a rule following Catholic, but I never was, so there's that.
The bible is a big ole struggle for me.  I have already shared a lot of that struggle in previous blogs.  I am going to read The Story and see how I feel about that.  I would like to read the bible, I would like to have an intellectual grasp of it.  I would like to stop being so frustrated with it.  I don't have the same struggles with the New Testament that I have with the Old Testament.  There is a lot in the OT that I don't think is necessary to believe.  The creation story doesn't matter to me as I believe that six days or six trillion years does not change the miracle.  But I have to figure out a lot of the other stuff.  That is going to take my big brain and a lot of bigger brains telling me what I am reading.  I am going to take it slow and steady and see where I end up.  My current take on it is that some of the Old Testament is written in story form to help explain the unexplainable.  Some of it is a rule book and some of it is the first version of ancestry.com. 
Judgemental people are really just people.  The discussion today frequently returned to the fact that it is easier for people to look out at sin then look in at the sins they have.  Man, isn't that the truth.  I can point fingers all day long.  I probably do.  It sucks that I am so judgemental.  I know that, I still don't seem to change.  I think there was a time that I would have blamed my lack of church attendance on the judgemental people in the pew next to me, but that is a cop out and I know that now.  I call that maturity.  If we are made in God's image, can we be that bad?
Beer was central to our talk today because we were in a pub and we all enjoyed a nice beverage.  The conversation drifted to the rules of religion and the commandments of the OT.  We discussed the sin of drinking.  I am quite confident that Jesus would be a regular in the pubs of the world.  He would be where He was needed and sadly, more people are searching for Him there than in the church.  My point here is that the rules that are set forth by the different religions were created by people.  Sure, people have come up with some good rules, but telling me the correct way to worship and honor The Lord is probably out of their realm.  I don't think partaking in a cold beverage is a sin, Jesus made the best wine at the urging of His mom.  How can a banquet beer be bad?
Thank you Jeff and Kari for hearing me out and sharing with me your open and honest views on all of the above.  Thank you Danny and Ashlyn for listening to me go round and round and round.  Like a record.  Thank you Lord for your sense of humor and your patience and your everlasting love and forgiveness.