Drink while you Think?

In my first month of working in London, I have re-learned how much my own country's culture is centred on the consumption of alcohol. I think I knew this when I was a student, but 3 years in Japan when I didn't drink all that much with work colleagues, and then 2 years at Bible College where lots of people pretended not to drink (!), and actually probably couldn't afford to do so much anyway, kind of helped me forget the fact. That's why I say I've re-learned. Drinking is the focus of almost all social engagement. Nobody that I've met at work yet doesn't drink: very few don't drink to excess on occasion. More than I had imagined, frequent drinking is expected and promoted by every level of the company.

I don't really have a great (Christian) response to this. I like drinking alcohol, now and again. I enjoy going to the pub (on a limited time-frame) and I like a good party. Like most people, alcohol loosens me up, and my Japanese seems to become so much more fluent! But I don't like drinking to excess, partly as a Christian, and partly as someone who knows what a hangover feels like. Additionally, something inside me balks at the money that all this drinking costs, even if I'm not entirely sure whether that's righteous indignation or Scottish tight-fistedness... Couldn't that money be better-spent?

The flipside of all these reservations is that I am well aware that it is in the pubs and bars that relationships with my colleagues will start and develop. I just didn't realise the extent to which when God called me into the business world, he seems to have called me into the bars as well. Sometimes I need to walk a fine line. But I don't yet think that's a reason to retreat. To take the attitude, I'm not going to drink, or I'm not going to spend my money that way, may mark me out as different. It may even be laudable. But then I surely might as well not be here in the first place.

If you pray for me, it must, please, be with James 3 in mind. On that territory, I feel, will the battles be won or lost.