Many people enjoy a cup of coffee, or one of it’s various relatives such as the latte, cappuccino, mocha or espresso. And, in most lands, you can even get your coffee served iced and chilled these days.
For me, as a resident of Brussels, Belgium, I enjoy the coffee of Europe. My wife likens regular coffee in Brussels to American cappuccinos in that Belgian coffee is quite robust and full. I do agree. And if your not careful, the coffee over here might just put a little extra hair on your chest. Careful women!
And nothing helps while reading and writing, at least for me, than a cup of coffee. Not for the caffeine, per se, but just that warm beverage to sip on while things are stirred in heart and mind. It could be a nice cup of English Breakfast tea, or Earl Grey, but it’s better with a piping hot cup of coffee.
With regards to works of fiction, the imagination, and other lands far, far away, a cup of coffee might just help us get there. Alagaesia or Narnia or the Shire are easier to envision as the warm steam from that darkened liquid wafts upward to nose and eyes.
The coffee bean stands as a creation of God, and he declared everything good in the beginning. (See, I told you I would put theology in here somewhere.) But just maybe, possibly, He put a little something extra into those beans to awaken and enliven the mind in all its creativeness, to enjoy while we envision our dances upon those streets of gold.
I wonder what John Ronald Reuel or Clive Staples would say about coffee? But, who knows, they might argue the glories of a pint and a pipe…And I wouldn’t stop them either.
To all theologians, and those who do not consider themselves theologians, I lift a mug!
The Prodigal Thought 
According to this logic, consider also that God created marijuana and tobacco 😉 Though I personally don’t use or recommend them, I hear they have relaxing and imagination-stimulating properties, too.
Well, you could always visit Europe and head to Holland to try out a relaxing joint in a coffee shop. 🙂 We were just there last week, but no attempt at finding a coffee shop. This is an interesting question to consider, though. Normally we would say moderation of anything is ok – coffee, tea, tobacco (I used to occasionally smoke my pipe), beer, wine, video games, blogging, etc. But people find it hard to travel ‘over the hump’ with marijuana.
Interesting fact I heard on NPR (to the best of my memory, as it was a while ago and I was driving when I heard it): Apparently, naturally-occurring marijuana doesn’t really make you that high because it has another compound in it that basically counteracts the “make you high” property of THC, and has additional painkilling abilities (this was in a program talking about medical marijuana). The stuff people are buying to get high has been bred specifically to have a ton of THC, and not as much of… the other compound. According to callers, there is a huge difference.
So, in the case of marijuana, God’s intent doesn’t seem to be to get people high. I’m curious if other drugs have similar stories.
Ah, yes. The theories on the goodness of marijuana. I have heard things argued to make it ok. Sometimes I wonder why people look to justify it, like when people need to justify smoking cigarettes. The overwhelming desire for some to justify makes me think heart motivation is wrong. I am not saying you are doing that, Matt. Just recognising that this can happen. I have been there before. But I will personally stick to a pipe of tobacco if I feel an occasional stirring to smoke.
Oh, I’m certainly not trying to justify anything (and I didn’t interpret your reply as accusatory). I have zero desire to smoke the marijuana (or anything, really). I just thought it was interesting that “normal” marijuana really is just a painkiller, not something to get people baked out of their minds. It’s the sort of detail that makes the whole conversation more complex (and more interesting) than a simple, “is it morally ok?”
Not that I’m trying to start that conversation here. This is actually the most thought I’ve dedicated to it in a really long time. Medical marijuana has been on the radar in Michigan for the last several months. We legalized it a while ago, and the flaws in the legislation are starting to cause problems. If not for that, I doubt I would have had so many sentences on the subject today.
But yeah, I’m with you on motivation/justification… generally. However, as a longtime lover of fantasy literature, I’ve often found myself on the defensive in regards to my bookshelf. It’s not such a bad thing to think through for when the haters inevitably gotta hate.
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I just want to drop a plug to make sure all our coffee is Fair Trade coffee ;-). Coffee is one of the worst industries for exploitation of laborers. Fair Trade coffee ensures that Western coffee purchasers are not complicit in perpetuating a system of slave labor, and Christian should be at the forefront of such initiatives.
As a side note related to the above comments, that’s very interesting that natural weed is less high-inducing (?) than specially-bred weed. But then again, simply draw the correlate with alcohol: we artificially manufacture/produce alcohol of differing alcohol contents, etc. Should only “naturally aged/created” alcohol be legitimate, or is it all legitimate? Personally, I’ve never smoked weed before (and tobacco only in a pipe), but I think if alcohol is legal (with all its attendant dangers and mind-warping effects), then certainly weed should be.
I think it is part of the sinful human nature that those things which God has provided to us have been abused, altered and enhanced to the point where the good things of God have become detrimental in the way we use them. Countless studies have demonstrated the benefit of a glass of wine with a meal, (something Christ must have know when he performed his first miracle), but a Friday night binge of a whole bottle of Tequila – not so much benefit, unless you consider a pounding headache the next morning a beneficial side effect… As with most behavior – it seems the “morality” of it is driven by the motivation, rather than the act itself. If you have a glass of wine with dinner, to help your digestion, or as a complimentary beverage to the food, that is one thing, if you are drinking because you have turned to the bottle to relieve your pains or problems rather than having turned to God – well, that is problematic, and should be honestly examined in ones self. Of course Paul clearly states that if your having a glass of wine with dinner causes your brother to stumble – then better to have a nice glass of Iced Tea…
Coffeeological: A theology of coffee. Loving it! 😀