For an entire generation, these words were synonymous with the fast food chain, Dairy Queen. I still remember listening to a fellow student reading a Bible lesson in grade six and hearing the phrase and thinking the reader was a smart-ass sneaking in a Dairy Queen ad into the Bible. The phrase has been brought into the present first as “wine, women and song” and then “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” The current generation has assumed an even tidier expression; party (as a verb).

Luke 12:19
And I will say to my soul,
Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;
relax, eat, drink, be merry.'

While these words surely appear in the Bible, that does not mean it is advice to live by. In fact, the opposite appears true, as the words are followed by, “You fool!” These words are also included in the story of the “rich fool” with reference to Ecclesiastes 8:15 where they are offered with cynicism. The kind of complacency they point to, where life is as happy and simple as eating ice cream, is a kind of complacency that is a very far way off from the call to “deny [ourselves] and take up [our] cross and follow Christ.” Matthew 16:24