Letter to Editor: A sin is a sin

Dear Editor,

I can not sit around anymore and keep quiet about this beer issue any longer. I am a Christian woman living in the Diboll area. I have been keeping up with the controversy over Brookshire Bros. selling beer and wine both through your paper and watching the cable channels that air the city council meetings.

I can not believe that these people call themselves Christians! I have never seen such an all out example of judging other people and setting poor examples of how a Christian should live. It is not Brookshire Brothers fault that the people of Angelina county and Diboll (two different times) elected to make the sale of these items okay in the county and city.

I personally do not drink, but I have read the Bible and find nowhere in it that says not to drink or sell items that contain alcohol. On the contrary it mentions wine or alcohol over 200 times in the Bible and very few of those are in a negative context. The only negative I could find was not o1erindulging. Actually it talks about Jesus himself turning water into wine among many other times about wine as a thing of reward or as a gift.

I shop at both Brookshire Bros and Wal- Mart, but I am planning to start shopping only at Brookshire Brothers because of their commitment on how this will be handled in Diboll. I wonder if these people doing all the complaining ever over eat. It is just as much of a sin to over eat as it is to over drink. At least my understanding of a sin is a sin is a sin. I also hear that the Mayor was being ridiculed at Church for his deciding vote to allow them to sell beer and wine. I can not believe that a church group could do exactly what it says in the Bible not to do...Judge others. I hope all these people that gave this man heart ach have the answer they are going to have to give when they are standing before God answering for their sins.

In my opinion it is our jobs as parents to teach our children right from wrong. Seeing beer and wine for sale in a grocery store will not persuade our children to choose wrong over right. If it does then we have failed as parents. It is not fair for us as an individual to not allow a company that always is there for the community to not be competitive. Maybe the people that are down at the city council trying to change the decision that was made need to redirect their efforts to actually doing something to lead people to the word of God and not judge and ridicule others.

This is the way I feel about the whole ordeal and am hoping these people will leave this company alone. Do they not understand that the young people that this company employs need jobs? If they are not allowed to be competitive they will not be able to stay in business and we will lose our clean, friendly place to shop. Not to mention the tax revenue that our city generates from this company. Let's drop this issue and move on to something that really matters to us all!!

Sincerely, Leigh Shelton