Study: Most churchgoers still abstain from alcohol

http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/alcohol-and-other-drugs

From the study I’ve done of this subject, it is problematic to equate the work “wine” in the Bible to an alcoholic drink. The Hebrew and Greek words often translated into English as “wine” in the Bible often has other original meanings other than an alcoholic beverage. So, to list a series of passages from the Bible using the word “wine” is not complete. We need more than that.

I also feel that to equate gluttony as equal with the abuse of alcohol to be silly at best and the epitome of being asinine at worst. It is a cheap argument and a cop-out of reality.

True, lack of proper diet and exercise is damaging and does cause societal problems.

But over-consumption of pizza & twinkies is not the cause of death, rape, sexual assault & abuse, family break-ups, & criminal activity the same way alcohol has and does. There is no such thing as “Mothers Against Over-Eating” because someone who just polished-off a foot-long sub has t-boned their daughter’s car at 60mph.

The Bible commends wine, not alcohol. John 2 says Jesus made wine; it does not say He made alcohol. Wine was used as a generic word in the Bible and in ancient times.

I agree with those here who ask, Why would a Christian want to drink alcohol? No good reason for a Christian to take a recreational mind-altering drug.

David R. Brumbelow

Martin, outside of “two wines” theory proponents, there are no scholars of the classics who will argue that large amounts of grape juice products were drunk out of season without being fermented. To get unfermented grape juice products out of season, you have to kill the yeast, and that requires pasteurization. That process was invented in 1865 and vaccuum evaporation a bit later made Thomas Welch (yes that Welch) famous. Yes, there are some reports of boiling must, but it’s not described in Scripture, was generally done in a lead pot, chimneys were invented around 1100 AD, and would have been done in the heat of late summer. Can you say deforestation, scurvy, lead poisoning, smoke inhalation, and heat stroke? It’s a tremendously bad idea.

Furthermore, the very word “yayin” has its roots in the word for to “effervesce”, which is a great description of carbon dioxide bubbles coming out of a fermenting mixture, and where the effects of “yayin” and even “tirosh” are mentioned, they generally refer to effects that range from mild intoxication to full out drunkenness. So for me, the “two wines” hypothesis is a nonstarter—you simply have to define a word too opportunistically (if it’s good, no alcohol, if it’s bad, alcohol, more or less), and that’s simply bad exegesis and hermeneutics.

You may also consider the comparison of drunkenness and gluttony as silly at best, but keep in mind that in several places, that is precisely what Scripture does. In the Torah, the disobedient son is a “glutton and a drunkard”. In Proverbs 23, gluttony and drunkenness are described and proscribed in the same passage. Jesus, who came eating and drinking, was described as a “glutton and a drunkard.” Paul rebukes the church for (1 Cor. 11:21) “love feasts” where some go hungry and others are drunken. And really, what is drunkenness besides gluttony for the foods called wine, beer, and hard liquor?

And yes, certainly the results of drunkenness end up in different places in the papers than do the results of gluttony, but let’s remember two things. First, nobody’s arguing for drunkenness, which dominates alcohol related deaths. Second, the gross death counts for gluttony and lack of exercise are indeed 7-8x larger, according to no less than the CDC. Pareto Principle, brother, especially given that if Christians are less likely to drink (probable) and far less likely to get drunk, the effects of gluttony are going to be even more disproportionately severe on us.

Finally, let’s get back to what drunkenness really is—gluttony for alcohol—and contemplate the fact that if we preach effectively against gluttony, we have in effect preached against drunkenness, too.

I think I have this figured out. If the Bible talks about wine positively it’s grape juice or some non-alcoholic equivalent. If the Bible talks about wine negatively then it’s alcohol. Right?

I have an idea. Let’s have everyone in these alcohol discussion use the same dictionary because it seems that each of us have their own.

I’m retiring to peanut gallery to watch this circus.

Alcohol content in modern wines, beers, and distilled liquors (which did not exist in Ancient Times) are substantially higher in their alcohol content than their comparable products in ancient times. Volume consumed today is also larger. The potential for abuse is thus increased in a modern age as well as potential disaster. Many of my relatives have died prematurely directly from Alcohol abuse, including my father, most of my uncles, and many of my cousins. I have performed their funerals. I recommend Dr. Randy Jaeggli’s book Christians and Alcohol: A Scriptural Case For Abstinence (Revised Edition). He makes the best case for abstinence regarding the Christian in a modern age. Randy has his Ph.D. in OT Interpretation and another degree in chemical engineering.

Regarding the FBFI comment, in my 35 years of being a member, I have only known of one member who imbibed. Unfortunately, that was Pastor Rod Bell who was saved as a young man who admittedly had been addicted to moonshine prior to his conversion. For most of his life he abstained until for medical reasons his doctor prescribed a daily glass of wine. Eventually he became addicted and was discovered by a police officer asleep in his car parked beside the road. He was intoxicated, arrested, and publicly disgraced. It was a tragic ending of what had been a good ministry. I was with Dr. Mark Minnick when we got the news, and I remember how Mark deeply grieved over this (Rod Bell had been the founding pastor of Mt. Calvary). These are very serious matters and should not be treated flippantly.

When you have 4 Lutherans …

Wait for it! https://youtu.be/vUgzIhok6AU

• You have a 5th AND
• A six pack of beer!

OK, we have a number of people who obviously used alcohol irresponsibly—I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that since his father and uncles both became alcoholics, that heavy drinking was a consistent feature of their lives—at least when they were young. In other words, like the vast majority of alcoholics, they acquired the addiction (physical reliance on a substance) through persistent over-use.

Now let’s ask a question; why is it that we assume that the misadventures and misfortunes of those who abuse alcohol preclude the rest of us from enjoying God’s good gift of wine? Do we apply the same logic when someone abuses food, automobiles, work, or sex? Of course not. We show them how to use it responsibly—or at least we should.

There are great reasons not to drink; don’t like the taste, past history with problem drinking or alcoholism, don’t want to pay for it, and don’t want to bother are all great reasons. The fact that other people have abused it and suffered the consequences is not, however, one of them.

The ideal (per Mike & David) vs the reality:

• The ideal (per Mike & David): NO CHRISTIAN should imbibe
• My ideal is that if Christians imbibe, they do so responsibility [not offending and not to the forbidden threshold of drunkenness].
• From an earlier post on another thread - my best case for total abstinence here
• The reality is that some Christians imbibe (perhaps even in Mike’s and Dave’s churches!)
  • Some will drink responsibility​​​​​​​
  • Some will not
• I chose to minister in the messy reality!
• How one fundamentalist pastor has addressed this - “in this room there are Bible believing, God fearing brothers & sisters who believe alcohol is a gift from God requiring moderation and other Bible believing, God fearing brothers and sisters who sincerely believe that it is a sin for Christians to drink alcohol in any form other than medicinally.” [Link] [from this thread]

I was surprised recently to hear about some friends that believed that it was not a sin to get drunk as long it was not a lifestyle of drunkenness. I would like to ask them if they felt the same way about stealing, lying, or adultery.

My brother recently joined the volunteer fire department and he is one of only 2 members that do not drink. The other man does not drink because his son was in an accident where someone got killed. His son was not above the legal limit but had had a drink and always wondered if it would have been different if he had not drank (perhaps it would not have, but this man doesn’t ever want to have to wonder if something happened in his life so he doesn’t drink). My brother does not drink because our dad hung out in the bars and he grew up watching dad and his friends being rude to their wives as they had more and more to drink throughout the night (we were often in the bar with dad). My brother does not want to end up mistreating his wife or others as he drinks (neither of us knows how much it would take for that to happen). I abstain, not because I believe it is always a sin to drink alcohol, but because I was around it so much that I saw first hand its effects.

I remember sitting around a campfire as a teenager when another teen started to give me a hard time for not drinking. A friend of mine who was about 18 at the time and weighed about 300 lbs walked up to the other kid and told him to knock it off. That big friend was already an alcoholic and told the other kid to knock it off because he understood what alcohol can do to a person. Just recently I heard that now almost 30 years later that friend is still struggling with drugs and alcohol. Please pray for him. My cousin has reached out to him and even took him to church, but he keeps falling back to his addiction.

Do You Really Know the Health Effects of Alcohol?

Because an accurate understanding of Biblical teaching on alcohol precludes the prohibitionist posture, I must yield to the authority of Scripture and refuse to adopt a prohibitionist position. However, there is nothing in Scripture that requires that I partake, and much to require that I warn others about the dangers of alcohol. Wine is clearly a mocker, and far too many are deceived by it, including a fair share of Bible believing Christians who have been encouraged by a lopsided view of Christian liberty. It’s cool, but it’s not very wise.

What I may do is choose to abstain. That’s my personal decision, and the one I believe is the wisest choice, given what we know about the effects and dangers of alcohol. The above article is one of many citing similar studies. It seems that medical science has gone from saying moderate use is good, even beneficial, to moderate use is risky, and the previously touted benefits are questionable.

Therefore, I continue to abstain, even though I know that Scripture doesn’t require it. And I occasionally declare my personal decision and some of the reasons for it. I offer my personal advice to others to make the same decision. But, I cannot go any further. I must not distort Scripture to try to make it say what it does not say. To do so is to dishonor God’s Word and compromise my integrity as an expositor.

GN, I’m with you until you mention the claim that it’s “wisest” to abstain as a general principle. For many it is; they have personal troubles that they ought not ignore with the substance. But that said, if “the Son of man came eating and drinking”, and if indeed His first miracle was creating wine, and if indeed the Scripture talks about blessings of full wine-vats, I think we need to balance the warning about the dangers of excessive alcohol/wine with Biblical teaching about the blessings of wine in moderation.

Really the same teaching we’d have about food or any other good gift God’s given us, no? Or, put more bluntly, if “wisdom” compels us to do something different from what Christ is recorded as having done, maybe we need to work on our analysis a bit.

I hear you, Bert, but I still think its wisest to abstain. But not to worry, I’m not going to trample upon your Christian liberty to partake moderately. I’ve just seen too many people who started out as moderate drinkers and ended up with serious alcohol problems. That never happens to abstainers. I think its wisest in our current American cultural setting, but I would take a different direction if I were a missionary in, say, Italy. There, to refuse a glass of wine in someone’s home is often considered insulting, especially if they made it themselves, which is often the case. In that situation, I would graciously partake to avoid creating a barrier for the gospel.

But here, I see no advantage to partaking, and many reasons to abstain. I think Christ’s cultural setting was more like Italy’s, and explains his partaking. It was expected in the culture of that day, and refusing created an unnecessary gospel barrier.

GN, first of all, you’re conditioning your “wisest to abstain” argument on culture—in other words, you’re not doing a general principle.

Even so, your argument requires that the ancients really didn’t know about the issues of problem drinking. However, Paul and Christ would certainly have known about Alexander the Great drinking himself to death, both would have pointed out Proverbs 23:35 as an example of what we’d call alcoholism today, and Greek literature records both a permissive attitude towards drinking and the likelihood of death by overindulging in stronger vintages from “areas with good yeast”, more or less.

And in light of that, Paul more or less encourages the Gentiles to adopt the Jewish attitude towards wine. That’s huge, and we see modern parallels in the drunkenness/alcoholism rates depending on how liquor is produced and consumed. We see it in the U.S., where wine-growing California’s rate of DUI deaths is lower than every one of the Bible/bourbon Belt states save Virginia.

Wiser to do something else because you’ve heard people claim they were “moderate” drinkers? Nope, Paul had heard it all before, and he probably knew what counselors know here as well; the first signs of problem drinking are hiding one’s drinking and lying about it. That’s why a “Hebrew” attitude that Paul promotes is so important. It gets it out into the open.