Rethinking Alcohol and Christian Living: A Deeper Look at the Glass Half Full

Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Faith, Alcohol, and One Church's Historical Stance

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-clear-glass-mug-with-brown-liquid-4694569/

As I sit to type out some thoughts about alcohol and Christian living, I can almost hear the groaning. “Seriously, Jeff? We’re going to talk about this again?” I fear I risk alienating 75% of my readers who have no interest in a few thousand words on the topic. But here I go…

Before I do, let me set aside my can of ROY Light (a fine product of the Burnish Brewery, a company local to Salisbury, MD, and one of only two light beers I’ll let past my lips) and talk about some scientific facts when it comes to alcohol.

For starters, alcohol kills.

I’m not talking about alcoholism (which most certainly kills and has significantly altered the lives of people I love). I’m not talking about drunk driving (which has killed people I love). I’m not talking about binge drinking or alcohol poisoning (also a deadly problem).

Simply put, alcohol - the chemical also known as ethanol - kills. It is toxic to life. You know this.

We’re still battling COVID with alcohol. As a preventative measure, we rub it on our hands to kill the virus before it makes its way to our mouth. We’ve been instructed to wash our mouth out with alcohol-based mouthwash to kill any of the virus which may have found its way there.

We knew the antiseptic benefits (killing the baddy germs) of alcohol before COVID-19 was a thing. The reason my mother used to pour rubbing alcohol on my cut and scrapes was not to torture me. It was to kill bacteria on the skin near the cut or scrape which could otherwise lead to infection. When I was a little boy, my mother used one of those old-school glass thermometers to take my temperature when I was sick. After she was done, she’d wash it off and then place it in its little storage container which was filled with rubbing alcohol to keep it free of germs, i.e. bacteria.

There is alcohol in my favorite mouthwash, Listerine. The alcohol in Listerine is there to kill certain microbial, bacteria and even fungi so their excretions don’t destroy our tooth enamel.

However, I don’t drink the Listerine. I don’t know anybody who consumes rubbing alcohol. (Though some who struggle with alcoholism have done so. This is one example I can think of. There are others, I’m sure.)

Alcohol is quite effective at killing microscopic life.

Even if our bodies were free of the trillions of bacteria that live within us, we would still be made up of microscopic life. Our bodies are composed of cells, and as such, alcohol is not good for the human body.

We have an organ specifically designed to filter toxins out of our system – our liver. Too much alcohol can overwork the liver and cause serious, fatal problems.

“But wait!” You say. “There are studies that show alcohol can have benefits! Red wine, for instance!”

The studies which you may have heard about have some inconsistencies. The positive effects of red wine are due to some of the naturally occurring compounds of the grape used to make it and can also be found in non-fermented grape juice.

No alcohol needed.

If somebody is going to make the case that alcohol consumption is beneficial to the human body, they’re going to need a better reason than, “Someone once said red wine is good for the heart.” So far, I haven’t found one.

Besides, that’s not why I drink it. I drink it because I enjoy the taste and from time to time the added effect the alcohol can have on me.

You might have heard people say beer tastes like pee. I can’t get past the part where they know what pee tastes like.

Anyways, I think they’re referring to Bud Light.

I don’t drink that junk.

I have on rare occasions had a drink of white wine to settle my stomach or gastro-intestinal discomfort. I don’t know why this works, but it seems to.

But I digress. This conversation usually does. Particularly if we bring religion into the conversation.

It does seem a bit like beating a dead horse at this point, doesn’t it?

Even so, it’s not my horse. That is, in certain circles the dead horse is still attached to the carriage being dragged along as if it’ll once again spring to meaningful life and move the carriage and its rider forward. Instead, it just lays there; a dead thoroughbred decomposing and causing somewhat of an unpleasant odor to anyone who cares to come close to the carriage at all.

Me?

I stare at it and wonder why anyone tried to hook up a thoroughbred to a carriage in the first place. It’s not even the right horse to pull the cart.

The church denomination I grew up in was born as the temperance movement was picking up steam. It wasn’t long before temperance became intolerance/prohibition. You can see evidence of this in the first manual for the Church of the Nazarene. Consider their words in the picture below:

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The above was written in 1908. I’m sure church leadership was smack dab in the middle of the temperance movement, celebrating as prohibition became the law of the land in 1920. It would remain in place for thirteen years.

Thirteen.

Years.

Thirteen years during which it was illegal to produce, import, transport or consume alcohol.

In the context of world history, this is a short period of time. But from a lived perspective, it was not. 13 years is a good chunk of one’s life. My still-living, less than 100-years-old grandfather was born during this time, so it wasn’t all that long ago either.

More than a decade of no legal beer, wine, spirits…whatever… in this country. I have a hard time imagining what society would be like today without the presence of legal alcohol. It kind of blows my mind that they ever actually tried it.

But try it they did.

The law failed in spectacular fashion. Enforcing the law became somewhat of a joke. Bootleggers developed specialized cars to outrun law enforcement vehicles and in doing so laid the foundation for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). Organized crime made a fortune on providing people with illicit opportunities to imbibe. Alcohol use wasn’t curtailed, and we might consider the situation in the country to have worsened, not improved. Congress finally saw the light and ended prohibition with a constitutional amendment in 1933.

But not my church. It persisted for years. Even today, the current manual refers to alcoholic beverage as evil¹.

I am loath to use the familiar retort of “Jesus drank” in response to the church’s stance against alcohol. On the surface the response is pithy, curt and devoid of depth. It smacks of an easy way to rationalize an evangelical college student’s desire to “party with the rest of them.”

I must travel decades back into my childhood to recall what was probably the best response to “Jesus drank.” In the mid-late 1980s my father was pastoring a Nazarene church in Malden, Massachusetts. There was a man named John in that congregation who was a recovering alcoholic. John, who was maintaining a life of sobriety, tells a story about when somebody offered him a drink at a social gathering of some sort. He refused. Knowing John was a Christian, the friend pressed him. “Hey, man! Jesus drank!”

“Yes,” John replied. “But Jesus wasn’t an alcoholic.” His response ended the conversation that day.

Dad loved to tell that story. Clearly, so do I. It’s the most honest, and perhaps the strongest response from a logical perspective.

As I grew into my 20’s and began to question church leadership on the subject, I was presented with a different perspective, one which was being presented to me and others as historical fact. The story went something like this:

In the earliest days of our church, as the 19^th century turned to the 20^th, we were working in some of the hardest parts of America. We were ministering to the poorest of the poor; sometimes they were the homeless on skid row. Alcoholism was ravaging these people. So, to stand in solidarity with them, our church forbearers saw fit to create church expectations that its members would abstain from the use of alcohol.

You know, that sounds ok to me. It’s very important for people who want to bring healing to those struggling with … whatever … to stand in solidarity with them. Alcoholics shouldn’t drink alcohol. Let’s not drink alcohol around them, or at all.

I understand the sentiment. I even believe in it. But that’s not what the special advices you read in the above picture said. What they said (in 1908) was this [my paraphrase and italics added for emphasis]:

·      The Holy Scriptures … condemn the use, as a beverage, of intoxicating drinks.

·      The manufacture and sale … is warfare against humanity.

·      Total abstinence is the rule for Christians.

·      It cannot be licensed without sin.

What it says in the 2017-2021 manual is this:

·      Alcoholic beverage is evil².

Pithy as it is, Jesus drank began to niggle at me. Because, well…he did. How do we reconcile a stance of alcoholic beverage is evil with the fact that Jesus consumed it? Did Jesus consume an evil?

I’ve come across those who would offer an equally pithy response about this question. “Well, you know, the alcoholic content of wine in Jesus’s day was different than it is today.”

This, my friends, is hogwash and nonsense. Even if it were true, drunk is drunk, right? Jesus himself implied (Matthew 11:19) that his adversaries had called him a drunkard. I’ve been tempted to use this as evidence that Jesus was often drunk. But they also accused Jesus of being a Samaritan or demon possessed (John 8:48), which is factually inaccurate. So, it’s logical to understand this accusation as the result of the company Jesus kept rather than Jesus being drunk.

When I was in my late 20’s I had a conversation with my pastor about this topic. He agreed with me that drinking wasn’t a sin. But he quickly added that getting drunk is a sin. I didn’t challenge him on it but there was something gnawing at me. There was evidence in scripture that getting drunk isn’t a sin.

It’s common knowledge to people in the church that Jesus’s first miracle was to turn water into wine. (Would the authors of the 1908 manual considered this warfare against humanity?) Nobody has ever raised much fuss over this, even in the presence of a clear inconsistency. I guess I could understand a stance of “Jesus drank, but we don’t” given our human experience of how alcohol is part of destroying lives.

Subscribers to this blog will remember a piece I wrote in which I discussed whether Jesus was perfect or not. In preparing for that article, I learned there are some who consider Jesus to have been sinless but not perfect. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to consider. Regardless of the perspective one aligns with, I think all might be in agreement that Jesus wouldn’t have acted in a way that supported and enabled sin.

That was, like, the opposite of his modus operandi.

Further, the writer of the account of Jesus’s first miracle wanted the reader to understand Jesus didn’t just make wine, he made really good wine. Those who drank it stated they were surprised how good it was because the good wine was usually provided to people before they were drunk because they wouldn’t care what the wine tasted like after they were intoxicated.

You see what I’m getting at here?

Jesus provided the wedding guests with more wine after they were already drunk. If getting drunk is a sin, why would Jesus act in a way that would prolong the intoxication? I mean, I’m no expert, but people don’t get less drunk by drinking more intoxicating drink.

In short: Jesus, the sinless one, made more alcohol for people to drink when they were already drunk.

Perhaps the question of alcohol production, importation, transportation or consumption of alcohol isn’t the right horse to tie up to the carriage.

Maybe I’m just showing the effects of growing up in a church obsessed with sin management, but I fear my faith community’s constant desire for moral correctness and the fear of making mistakes has resulted in a people who are just trying not to make God angry. As our church forbearers witnessed the unmistakable damaging effects alcohol can have on a person and society, they mistakenly labeled alcohol as the problem.

They saw alcoholism, irresponsible drinking habits and the social environment in which alcohol was consumed which led to damaging effects and said, “Hey, let’s just ban alcohol. It’s clearly evil and a sin.”

I think we’ve made this mistake a lot. We come to a universal conclusion about a particular action being a sin, try to make rules to end the action. Rather than allow for nuance and meaningful conversation about what works for humanity and what doesn’t, we just try to nip all problems in the bud with one snip of the theological pruners.

I’ve just spent over 2000 words on this “dead-horse” topic because I just needed to get it out of my system. It bothered me. I think it’s unfair to oversimplify a problem.

It’s just one more way well-intentioned people missed the mark, and perhaps did more damage than they’d intended.

I would be remiss if I stopped here without mentioning the fact that my recent experience with pastors and local church leadership is that they share in my frustration. There are many who are working diligently to address the problem of addiction. (Actually, diligently doesn’t do justice to the life-giving, sacrificial work they’re doing.) They do much more than write a keyboard-warrior blog article. As they do they attack the problems that lead to addiction which, if you ask me, is a better horse to tie to the carriage.

Cheers, friends.

1. https://2017.manual.nazarene.org/paragraph/p931/

2. While the 2017 - 2021 manual does use this word, I must note it is surrounded by commentary which is more thoughtful about the effects of rampant alcohol use than those in 1908.