Abstinence vs Moderation

To Drink or Not to Drink?

We haven't received enough response to our "Abstinence -vs- Moderation" question to constitute an accurate survey of what the prevalent opinions are in the church today, but we can at least point to general trends among those who have e-mailed us. The majority who have written, for example, have taken a middle-of-the-road stance... "it's all right for some, and it's not unscriptural, but I'm going to abstain anyway..." Here are a few of the more interesting responses...

Mr. Kim:

It appears that the issue should be more on our actions and what is best for us rather than on alcohol itself. We should be responsible and do things in moderation. I enjoy a drink, that means one, not one gallon or large measure but one regular beer. I keep my mind intact and also respectful of those who have a problem with alcohol. I myself need to keep my eyes focused or my mind will wander to pornographic levels. Each of us needs to recognize our weaknesses and be as proverbs in which the wise man sees evil and avoids it. Not the item like alcohol, money, sex but our intentions with it.

God Bless, S

Hello Kim and Becky,

I say no to any chemicals --beer, wine, cocaine, speed, mushroom... it goes on and on. I am for stopping the cycle of a curse passed down from generation to generation. ... I say why drink? It is destroying the temple we live in and it gets people in trouble eventually. I do not even agree with the non alcoholic beer out there. I think many churches are drinking and enabling the issue. It is hard to find a real Holy Ghost church. ...I truly do not get how people can ever get into the back-sliding thing...

I am one who can discern God's annointing on your voice and music on KNOF.

Love in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, M

May I offer some reflections by divines and intellects more profound than anything I myself can offer:

From the "Golden Mouthed" Church father, John Chrysostom (347-407):

For instance, I hear many say, when the excesses happen, "Would there were no wine." O folly! O madness! When other men sin, dost thou find fault with God's gifts? And what great madness is this? What? did the wine, O man, produce this evil? Not the wine, but the intemperance of such as take an evil delight in it. Say then, "Would there were no drunkenness, no luxury;" but if thou say, "Would there were no wine," thou wilt say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel, because of the murderers; no night, because of the thieves; no light, because of the informers; no women, because of the adulteries;" and in a word thou wilt destroy all.

from Joseph C. Aldrich's Life-Style Evangelism:

If John the Baptist's life style is the only pattern for the Christian today, surely Jesus would have "out-John-the-Baptized" John the Baptist. If John drank no wine, Jesus would have drunk no wine, no Pepsi, no Coke, no RC, no Tab, and very little water. If John ate no steaks from the altar, Jesus would have eaten no steaks, no locusts, no honey, no chicken, no eggs, no fruit. But that's not what happened. John came not eating and drinking; but Jesus came eating and drinking. While Jesus mixed it up with unsaved people, John withdrew and became a recluse in the desert. Here's the point: The church which polarizes around either life style to the exclusion of the other is unbalanced. Meat eaters and non-meat eaters must exist together in creative tension.

from Joy Davidman's classic study of the Ten Commandments, Smoke on the Mountain:

We of the churches often gather our robes away from contamination, and thank God that we are not as other men. We don't despise God's name; in fact, we call upon it constantly to justify ourselves... If we object to meat-eating, we declare that God is vegetarian; if we abhor war, we proclaim a pacifist Deity. He who turned water into wine to gladden a wedding it now accused by many of favoring that abominable fluid grape juice. There can hardly be a more evil way of taking God's name in vain than this way of presuming to speak in it. For here is spiritual pride, the ultimate sin, in action -- the sin of believing in one's own righteousness. The true prophet says humbly, "To me, a sinful man, God spoke." But the scribes and Pharisees declare, "When we speak, God agrees." They feel no need of a special revelation, for they are always, in their own view, infallible. It is this self-righteousness of the pious that most breeds atheism, by inspiring all decent, ordinary men with loathing of the enormous lie.

from Unpopular Opinions written by Dorothy Sayer (1893-1957), the brilliant writer and friend of C.S.Lewis:

Setting aside the scandal caused by His Messianic claims and His reputation as a political firebrand, only two accusations of personal depravity seem to have been brought against Jesus of Nazareth. First, that He was a Sabbath-breaker. Secondly, that He was "a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners" -- or (to draw aside the veil of Elizabethan English that makes it sound so much more respectable) that He ate too heartily, drank too freely, and kept very disreputable company, including grafters of the lowest type and ladies who were no better than they should be. For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian Churches have laboured, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the Communion-table, founded Total Abstinence Societies in the name of Him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatre-going. They have transferred the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and, feeling that the original commandment "Thou shalt not work" was rather half-hearted, have added to it the new commandment, "Thou shalt not play."

And realizing that this is already far too long to continue, I'll close with Augustine's (354-430) piercing statement: Is it any merit to abstain from wine if one is intoxicated with anger?

B.D. -St. Paul

    There's a story in the Midrash, which is a non-canonical collection of ancient Jewish writings, that I think is interesting called "Building a hedge around the Law". It's been years since I'm read this in the Midrash, so forgive me if I don't get the details absolutely right, but I think I can at least accurately convey the gist of it...
    ...As we all know, when the serpent approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, he said to her "Yea, hath God said 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' " To that, Eve responded "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." Now according to the Midrash, there was an inaccuracy in Eve's answer. True, God did say not to eat of the tree, but He did not say that they couldn't touch it. Why did Eve think that they couldn't touch it? Well, again according to the speculations of the Midrash, she could only have gotten that incorrect information from Adam. The command was never actually given to Eve directly, it was given to Adam before Eve had yet been created. Therefore, it must have been communicated to Eve by Adam some time later. At that time, Adam, with the intent of making absolutely sure that Eve didn't disobey the command, decided to add another layer of insulation between Eve and the forbidden fruit - a "hedge around the Law" if you will - just to put a little more distance between her and the temptation to indulge in the fruit. His reasoning was that by adding an axtra layer of "law" to the command, he was actually doing both God and man a favor. He thought it was just a little too risky to let Eve touch the fruit. That's a little too close for comfort (a common alcohol related statement springs to mind here, one frequently made by people who don't drink. You often hear them say "I never touch the stuff". To which, I might add, many preachers would say, "and you shouldn't". Modern day hedge builders.) Adam's intentions were noble, but they yielded disastrous results.
    When Eve told the serpent that she was not allowed to even touch the fruit, the serpent saw his opportunity. He told Eve to go ahead and touch the fruit, and reassured her that nothing bad would happen. After she refused, he basically said to her "Tell you what, I'll touch it myself and prove it to you". So he touched the fruit, and much to Eve's amazement, nothing happened. This completely threw her for a loop. She became confused and began to wonder if God had misled her. So she decided to try it herself. She reached out and touched the fruit on the tree, and nothing happened! She didn't die! Then the serpent said to her "You touched the fruit and you didn't die, even though God said you would. I'll bet if you ate the fruit, you wouldn't die then either." That made sense to her, so she ate and, well, you know the rest.
... The point of this story is clear. It's not wise to mess with God's words. It's as bad to add to the words written in the book as to take away from them. Many well meaning preachers and christians in general have tried to build hedges around God's word in the mistaken belief that it can't hurt, and can only help. Like I said though, it's a mistaken belief. It's easy for well meaning christians to build hedges, believing that it will help protect them (or thier flocks) from themselves. In my opinion, the problem here is not really one of legalism vs. liberty, it's a problem of faith. People who build hedges, and people who preach hedges, are people who have more faith in their own sinfulness than in the power of the indwelling Christ. The problem is fear - not the fear of God as they would like to believe, but fear of their own sinful tendencies. We christians need to cultivate faith in the power of the indwelling Spirit, and stop focusing so much of our attention on our own sinfulness. "Greater is He that is within us than he that is in the world." Now of course, I'm not saying that we need to gloss over our own sins or justify them or anything like that. I'm not advocating licence. What I am saying is that the focus of our energies should always be on the living Christ within us, and His power working in us through faith. If our minds are fixated on our own weaknesses, we will be weak indeed. building external restraints - like hedges - to keep us from our own sinfulness, is sure evidence of spiritual immaturity. On the other hand, if our minds are focused on the things of the Spirit within, though we ourselves will still be weak, we will yet be strong, because the power of Christ will be living and operating in and through our lives. We don't have to fear sin anymore.
...We all know how much time both Jesus and Paul spent rebuking the Jewish religious leaders for thier myriads of man-made additions to the Law, as well as to thier misunderstanding of the Law itself. History proves that in the case of the Jewish people, especially in New Testament times, building hedges around the Law, in the end, shuts people out from the very thing that they erected those hedges in order to have - the presence of God. Building hedges not only fences us into that area that we think is safe, it also fences God out. We don't see that though while we're building those hedges. We think we're doing the right thing. But in the end, the plan always backfires, because it is a plan that is born of fear, rather than faith.
    The application to the issue of christians and alcohol here is obvious, but keep in mind that it is not limited to that. It applies accross the board. Don't fall into that very easy trap. He whom God has set free is free indeed.

GM, Duluth, MN

Having fully recovered (I'm sorry that I have such difficulty with the 12-step groups' contention that I must continue "recovering" for life -- I'm afraid that such a stance does not allow room for God's grace, or His complete healing) from a fairly severe alcohol use/abuse problem, I no longer will touch pure alcohol. I have occasionally partaken of a N/A beer, because one just tastes so good after mowing the lawn but it's just no longer for me.

I would also opine that the figure I see stated of 1 in 10 drinking to excess seems wildly optomisitc -- after seeing how alcohol is revered in the upper Midwest, and, having contact with quite a few college-aged people, I'd have to guess that 1 in 10 people do NOT have *some* issue with alcohol, be it their issue, or that of someone close to them.

Still, I feel that moderation would be the order of the day, and seems to be the line best supported by scripture, so, at least in my heart, I'd have to back the moderation vote. In reality, I'll conclude, alcohol, at least as it is marketed, consumed and abused today, is frequently a home and family wrecker. In anything but moderation, I think you'd agree that it's likely to do more harm than good.

Vote: Moderation, BK

...I'm all for moderation - give me liberty. I not only believe it is theologically acceptable, it is my personal conviction and I thoroughly enjoy it. Thanks for setting me straight on being able to have enough to make my heart glad. I sure could use a glad heart sometimes!! Don't worry, I won't abuse my liberty.

God bless you, LM,

...alcohol is a lot like sex. In and of itself, I don't think that it is bad, but it has been abused and perverted and twisted over the many years. Then I found that you said something very similar about both sex and other things. Our society is so warped that if you think of drinking or wine you think of getting drunk and the negative things that are associated with it. The same goes for sex. You don't think about the beauty of it, in marriage, the majority of people think of sex as it is most prevalent in the world today: out of wedlock, in pornography, in relation to diseases, and so on.

Because of the negativity that is conjured up when talking or thinking about drinking we, as Christians, who have been sanctified, should refrain from such activities and "Abstain from all appearences of evil." Bottom line is, if it causes a brother or sister in the faith, or anyone for that matter, to fall or be pushed away we should definately not take that drink. ALTHOUGH, if true discernment is used and there is no one that will be "hurt" by your drinking I think it may be okay. I know that this is a thin line and there are not many situation that no one will be hindered, but that is why we need such discernment and why we must be extremely careful of whatever it is we do.

A final thought: Sin always keeps you longer than you want to stay and costs you more than you want to pay, so if you are being disobedient (sinning) by drinking, you should be [repared to pay for this costly mistake.

The Verdict: Abstinence, PL

Greetings in the Name above all!

Until several years ago I was encouraged to believe that all alcohol was to be refused - on 'biblical grounds'. It was only when I travelled to other parts of the world that I began to realise how important wine is for health and wellbeing. I am now a police counsellor (English as you might guess from the spelling of counsellor!!) and can testify to the benefits of ONE or TWO glasses of red wine per day. It counteracts the effects of stress and adrenal 'overdose' and has many positive results in cleansing the blood.

At 60 yrs I recently had an activity test of the blood and my doctor made the laboratory re-check the results before informing me - "You have perfect blood!" He attributed this IN PART to moderate use of red wine. I regret that I spent so much time preaching against alcohol and so little promoting the value of 'a little wine for the stomach's sake'. The medical side of things that I am NOT SURE about is the long term effects of wine upon the mind. Am busy researching this through various medical sources.

Moderation.

God bless you IN ABUNDANCE!

Yours in HIM, DL

I feel it is between the individual and God. I really don't have any qualms about a glass of champagne on my wedding anniversary or a glass of wine to celebrate a special event with close friends. On the other hand I would not want anyone to stumble, so my husband and I abstain. Perhaps if we lived in a foreign country it would be different. Also because alcoholism has affected a few of my great-grandparents I feel I should abstain. It is demonic and can create a curse over your family if it gets to the addicition point. We have broken those curses, but we need to stay pure before God.

In Christ's Service, JRF