Originally posted by blackbird:
I'm not gonna take you up on the challenge. Its not because I know I can beat you "hands down"
"Hands down"? Are you proposing a game of SlapJacks instead?
--I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could--
And I know beyond the
substance of
faith that I would give you as much, or more, than you could handle.
in fact, I know I'd win the challenge--even if you and I were face to face and the only beverages we had before us was Folgers Coffee and Nehi Grape sodas!!
And
I'd win if you kept drinking one of those after the other. You might need an old can to spit in.
Thats how confident I am in the gift of preaching that Almighty God gave me!
Coffee and grape soda confident, huh? {Getting serious} Preaching is not a gift; it is an ability.
But to challenge you to a "Sermon Duel" with you holding onto your liquor as some sort of leverage in helping you to "top" ole Blackbird--
That was not it-- you made a silly boast that you could "do anything a hundred times better" than I if I sipped wine while doing it. The "leverage" involved was on your part. I did not claim I can better you with wine; you claimed you can better me {by 100x}
without wine. {Incidentally, "liquor" normally means
distilled beverages, much higher in alcohol content; not fermented juice.}
(1) would be showing my lack of dignity and respect for the gift that God gave me
Maybe; maybe not. No telling how many persons may have read what you [and I] would have written, and whether it may have been a positive message for them.
(2) would be like Matt Dillon challenging Festus to a pistol "Draw" out on Main Street. Especially when Festus has just walked out of Miss Kitty's saloon tanked up!
Hey, bringing
Gunsmoke into this really makes a connection between us! That is my favorite television series of all time, and I have written about 15 fanfiction stories based on the characters, including one 'novelette' where some of the characters from the movie
Shenandoah [with Jimmy Stewart, Doug McClure, et al] come through Dodge City while migrating west. But perhaps this should be a different thread.
Anyway, there were, and are, differing theories about gunmen and liquor. A target shooter cannot be as accurate if he has had a few nips, or more. But if he was actually fighting a gunbattle with the fear and agitation upon him, the liquor may actually quell some of that, and even organized armies or defenders of a settlement applied this principle in times long past as they were preparing for battle.
The best to you and yours!
And to you and yours!
[ August 27, 2002, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: ChristianCynic ]