The Importance of a Title

This past Monday, I published a blogpost titled, "Beer: one glass a sin? (an open letter to Phil Johnson)." In some responses I've received to that post (including Mr. Johnson's initial response on this blog), it seems that people thought, since I was reacting to Mr. Johnson's statement, "I don't think it's a sin to drink a beer," that my position is that it IS a sin to drink a beer. To clarify: I DON'T think-- and didn't think when I wrote that post-- that it is either technically or necessarily a sin to drink a beer. I DID-- and still do-- think that there may be [many] times in which drinking a beer is a sin, especially due to particular circumstances in American culture, and THAT is what I was trying to argue.

But I think that I framed the argument wrong at the outset. In the initial part of my title-- "Beer: one glass a sin?"-- it seemed as if I were posing a simple yes/no question [with me as a "no"], when my whole position is that the issue has become too complex to give a simple yes/no answer. I should have just skipped that part of the title and gone straight to the "an open letter..." part.