- Not The Only One!
- 30 Dec 24
- Post #170 “
- Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk”
- Howdy!
- Welcome again. I don’t know why I’m always feel as if I’m just running back and forth over people’s toes, but here we go again ☺️☺️. My thought process strikes me as so bizarre as how certain things will trigger other things in my brain. I’m pretty sure that it’s a normal occurrence for us as human beings, it’s just that mine are so unrelated that it’s a little scary . I’m a moody writer and I will confess to starting way more of these post than I ever finish and see through to the end. There are various reasons for that, but nothing consistent enough to say definitively that this is why that happens. If I’m being totally honest, much of what takes place here, comes directly after spending time with God. They are related somehow and I don’t want to speculate as to why that is, and I’m definitely no prophet☺️☺️
- I have from time to time shared about some of my past asphalt and back in the early nineties, I was an area sales manager for Miller Brewing company. Yes, I was in the beer business and it was a great job for the most part . It encompassed a lot of perks, such as travel, expense account and a company vehicle. There were golf outings and entertaining customers at* skyboxes and things of that nature. It was a fun time, and just like everything else in life it had it’s detractors. Long before Bill Clinton got the idea about crushing the tobacco industry, they had been doing that for years to the alcohol industry, just in smaller * increments . It’s like the taxes that they steal from your paycheck each week. If it’s done in small increments and before you get it, you are less likely to notice and complain about it ☺️☺️. A significant amount of taxes on your favorite twelve pack☺️. Something else that was making major waves at the time was M.A.D.D. I’m sure that they are still out there, but there have just been so many refinements made to the alcohol industry, it has probably weaken their impact. I’m not saying that they don’t care as much or are some how ineffective, it’s just that education and legislation has made a significant impact on drunk driving.
- I want to say as an industry we took the high road, with pouring millions of dollars into anti drinking and driving campaigns, which on some levels was a C. Y. A thing, yep cover your ass☺️☺️. I’m not saying that we didn’t take it seriously, but we saw the possible litigation coming down the road. Whenever we went out, we fully modeled the designated driver program and preached it, but there was still a little bit of a wink wink, especially from some of the old guard. Trying to capture the hearts and minds of the consumers of our products was difficult, because for decades advertising for beer and cigarettes was synonymous with fun and having a good time . I think that we found ourselves walking a tight rope as we were heavily promoting our products at every sporting event that we could find and at the same time preaching personal responsibility and limits on consumption. Talking about a conflict of interest ☺️☺️ . It’s a much more complex issue than I have time to get into here, but one of the things that interestingly came out of our research was that many people who drink are looking for an escape. Yeah!, on the surface that maybe a duh! , but it goes much deeper than that. It’s much more than about going out on a Friday night after working all week to blow off some steam. We were encountering individuals who main goal was to be completely blitzed, out of their minds and who enjoyed the black out drunk, can’t remember what I did last night. ☺️. It’s almost as if they were looking for any reason for being a hellion, and the alcohol was going to be both the driving force for that , and an alibi as to why it took place.
- Dating myself here, but it was like one of those old Flip Wilson bits where he would say that the Devil made him do it. We had people who were out of control and wanted desperately to be out of control. They looked at it as a right of passage. The thing that I began to see from the studies were that people had deep emotional needs and problems that they were attempting to hide in a bottle. It struck me as odd as they could have so little regard for themselves or others, when it came to their right to drink and get drunk. Things that were best handled by either a shrink or a priest, we turned our efforts to loved one’s. The outcome of that was that ” Friends don’t let friends drive drunk”. It was paired with the designated driver program. It was all about taking the keys away, we were still a couple of decades away from Uber☺️☺️. I almost hate making this analogy, but similar to school shooting of today, a drunk driver would kill themselves or someone else , and we would be sad for a little while, a little rage, a little caring, and if it didn’t some how touch our own little corner of the world, it was business as usual. 🥲🥲.
- So, it’s a caring question and as to how much. There is just so much to consider here, and I’m just barely scratching the surface. How do we encompass the property damage , loss of life and everything in between into a few short paragraphs? The script is endless with people loosing life and limbs. Life behind bars. People who are sentenced to the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or something worse. People scared and disfigured from being pulled from a burning vehicle, and all because someone else doesn’t have self control and wants to have a good time. I have confessed before to being a little on the slow side of things, but I just never got how having a party is no more than just getting stoned out of your mind. Is the equation really that simple, party = drunk? I have ask this question of my own off spring, so it’s not like I don’t have skin in the game. We are having a party! Ok, what are you guys going to be doing, ? Just drinking, really? …that’s a party?. Sounds to me like a little lack of imagination ☺️☺️. I know that drinking is sometimes accompanied by an alter ego. Some people when they drink , just fall asleep, some become mean or belligerent, or both ☺️☺️. Some turn into dare devils and super heros and are just fearless. I only make mention of this because sometimes taking the keys away may not be as easy as it sounds. I am getting close to having to cross this very same bridge with my elderly mother ☺️☺️, another story for another time, but still involving the removal of keys ☺️.
- I’m going to frame it as a question of love. I think and believe that we protect the things and people that we love. Do you love your buddy enough to want to keep him from becoming a statistic? We don’t let our small children play out in the streets, why? Because of love. We keep our pets inside of a fence, why? Because of love. Starting to get the picture? If we love people, or say that we love people, sometimes we have to step up and take a stand. It may not be popular, pleasant, or even easy at the time, just necessary. Ok!, here goes more of that weird brain stuff of mine. Clint Eastwood made a few movies back in the day with an Orangutan . He would say right turn Clyde, and the ape would punch anyone sitting to the right of him☺️☺️. It’s time for our right turn. Friends don’t let friends go to hell. Maybe corny, and even a bit predictable, but it doesn’t change the validity of the statement. Where is our heart? Where is your heart? Where is my heart? Have we just landed at the place known only as complacency and apathy? I can look around in life and see so many places and things that can only be explained by a total and utter disconnect. We use words like exceptional or prolific to draw weight and gravity to a particular situation and I don’t think that this is ever more to the point then when we confess allegiance to God and be completely ok with people every day slipping off into the abyss of hell and darkness? Has it just become one more thing that’s like a school shooting or a drunk driver killing someone and we are just a little sad, for a little while?
- Do you ever encounter someone who just annoys you and it makes you just want to bitch slap them? I don’t know, maybe for you, I am that person ☺️☺️. My frustration is with believers who hide behind the banner of lifestyle . They think that people should just know that they are Christ followers based on their good, clean and moral lives. Yuck, yuck, there are plenty of people out there living moral lives that have absolutely zero to do with Christ. Yes!, we should live lives that point towards some moral code, but God said that we would be known by our love and the words of our testimony, which means that we have to open our mouths. Its great that your life is moral and clean and whatever adjective you wish to describe it, but people need to know the source of that and what do you do and how do you handle life when it’s not sunny side up. Look! I get it, none of us are perfect or even anything close to that, and trust me, I know how hard and difficult it can be in this world to keep the main thing as the main thing. However, at some point we need to do a gut check and ask ourselves if we really believe in the one true God, and all that goes along with that, because if we do, I some how think that our lives would look differently. Our priorities would be different. The way that we approach and see people would be different. The words that come out of our mouths and our actions, would all be different.
- They say that humor is a form of acceptance. If we can laugh at something, then on some level we are accepting of it. This might be illustrated by the things that some may think is funny but you find offensive. It can be about almost anything and it goes directly to our wiring and belief system. Someone can make jokes about aborting children or handicapped individuals, and others may cry over that very same joke, and be deeply hurt by it. It makes me think back to this episode of * Seinfeld, where Elaine’s boyfriend who is supposed to be a Christian is ok with her going to hell. ☺️☺️She doesn’t know all of the particulars of being a Christian, but to her credit, if you care about me, you shouldn’t be ok with me going to hell. It’s one of those episodes that I found highly hilarious at some point, that now I just find sad. Are we just laughing it up, while people who we say that we care about are just going to hell? The people whom I love , that don’t know Christ, never ever fall off or disappear from my petitions that I bring before God. There are people whom I have both met and loved, that have no idea how my heart aches for them and how much I pray for them.
- Earlier this month, we Commemorated the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Franklin Roosevelt, described it as a day of Infamy. Well…. another day that may live out in Infamy is the 6th of January. It’s just around the corner about a week away and four years ago, we absolutely lost our minds. Regardless of what side of the insurrection that you came down on, do you have that kind of energy and passion for people’s souls? What can we ever think is more important than someone’s eternal soul? One day we will all give an account, and somehow I don’t think that me being to busy, to shy and afraid, or as I like to do, playing the dumb card is going to somehow be sufficient, or acceptable.
- Each and every day for most of us, we encounter and almost trip over people who have no real prospective past what they can experience with their five senses. If they can’t see it, touch it, or somehow interact with what they know to be real, then it’s irrelevant and doesn’t exist, more importantly, has no impact on me, therefore a none factor. I’m far beyond *controversy , but do we go out of our way to avoid godless people? Do we react and treat them like we do , when we see certain people groups wearing a hoody at night walking down the street? Just a thought for a comparison 🤔. Do we view both as being a little scary or threatening? Ok!, how about just the people we already have some kind of relationship with? I get the one’s that we are closest to can be some of the most scary, or is it just awkward, like breaking up with someone that you were dating at work…do I need to find a new job?☺️☺️. Friends and family can be the toughest because they know us, which I think is probably the perfect Segway. They may be living in your basement or attic, or out in your garage, maybe with or without paying rent☺️☺️. They are the ones who see us and know us best.
- This is your story and your opportunity. If God can love me with all of my frailties, bad attitudes, bad decision making and not the best choices ever made, then He can certainly love you and wants to have a relationship with You. We get it twisted by looking in the mirror and wanting to disqualify ourselves, based on the places that we have been and the choices that we have made. Instead of it being a disqualifier , let it be the bridge that you use to introduce them to Christ. All of our screw ups , points towards God’s grace, patience and love for us. Here is another one to go along with hiding behind the lifestyle excuse, and that’s the not wanting to offend anyone, which is just us not wanting to being seen as one of those weird church people….own it. ☺️☺️. Frankly I’m just always amazed at the things that we will choose to share with people, that in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter much. Recipes, books, movies, office gossip, but nothing life giving. I can tell you that I know a ton, ok perhaps a slight exaggeration, but more than you may think, people who had some adverse effect from taking the covid vaccine…joke, not a vaccine at all, I digress. We can sound the alarm about the possibility of it being life threatening In some cases, but we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that everyone dies at some point , and we don’t sound the alarm about an eternity without God. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk and friends don’t let friends go to hell! What are we waiting for?
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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