Dear Readers, 

The title might have shaken the life out of you. Especially for the Christians out there – we being the “temples of the holy spirit” and outlining certain boundaries must have crossed your mind. I want to take a moment, or two, to make it clearer. 

First, God is not the cosmic killjoy you think He is. He wants all of us to be happy and fact is He – and the bible – never specifically prohibited celebration. Nor does He call for complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. Remembering Jesus’ first miracle (as mentioned in John 2:1-12) may help. 

Now, it all depends on your definition of a “party.” The bible says yes to “fellowship” (social interaction or participation) among brothers and sisters in Christ while eating food with gladness and drinking wine with a joyful heart (Ecclesiastes 9: 7) – quite similar to Jesus’ celebration of the Passover with His disciples – but says no to the get drunk and rage notion. 

It’s not about whether you are ALLOWED to go to those parties. It’s more about what you can DO at such parties. Today’s party culture is pellucid: the drunkenness, binge-eating, too much gossiping, kinky plays… overall, all inappropriate behaviors that are clearly condemned by the Bible. 

Nevertheless, nothing forbids you from celebrating – the “right” way – as long as you refrain from playing with fire. 

My idea of a “good” party would be rediscovering biblical stories through lip-smacking foods and drinks. Let’s see how!

Prepare and Prepare

All preparations must be made before the d-day and I strongly recommend assigning tasks. Once it’s decided who’s gonna come over for the bible party – it still sounds a little weird – sort out who will be responsible for what.

At this stage, pretty much everything – the location and time of the party, who will take responsibility for the food and drink and all the activities to be carried out– should already be discussed and decided.

You might want to look for some more creative ideas from the net or go for suggestions.

The Food Area

Be it a biblical or birthday party, food is always the chief guest.

Before hopping on to some fancy and tasty canapé-style snacks, take note of the particular food allergies of your guest, including their health.

Better I think would be to cater the foods as per a Bible theme. Let’s take some illustrations:

1. In The Beginning, God Created…

Style your food in different colors while picking out the days of creation:

• Yellow-colored food for the creation of light
• Blue ones for the creation of water
• Green represents land and plants
• Orange for the sun and stars
• Grey symbolizes sea creatures and birds
• And, finally red for the land animals

2. Manna And Quail

 

If you still remember the story, during forty years the Israelites were wandering in the desert, they pleaded for food to God when they faced harsh scarcity of food. Miraculously, they were provided with “manna” – known as bread from heaven. After they started kvetching about the free bread and missed the meat from Egypt, God gave those ungrateful quail (everything’s found in Exodus 16).

To match food with this Ancient Testament’s story, I suggest buying some sweet bread and if you are quite the fancy and rich type, then you can have some quails’ eggs.

3. Food From Promised Land

If you know your bible well, you’d know that the Promised Land was referred as “a land flowing with milk and honey” (See Exodus 3:8).

To explore this biblical chapter, I suggest the plain and simple: milk to drink and some honey on slices of bread.

 

There are so many more creative ideas you could use to make your biblical learning experience a great one. For more information, come back for part 2!