Published by Wine bibbers, whiskey swillers, beer drinkers, pot smokers and the other junkies are predictable. They justify their own habit as the least harmful and will twist facts to prove it. After all, everyone else’s narcotic is worse than the one I take. With minds warped by these substances they don’t think clearly.
A writer to our local newspaper recently suggested we ask our doctors if pot was less harmful than alcohol. I’m sure I can find a couple pot-smoking doctors who will in fact agree. I’ve also heard one local doctor state that we don’t have an alcohol problem in this area. I wonder when he had his last drink.
An editorial writer, a Minister, wrote that giving communion wine to minors violates the law and likens it to Indian ritual peyote use. In the ecumenical spirit he tried to justify the peyote use by equating it to a practice that the organized church has participated in for years that has questionable scriptural basis. Even so, he ignored obvious differences. The Indians get stoned on an illegal drug but communion wine is a legal substance consumed in small quantities. And alcoholic wine use is in communion not universal.
Progressive Christian churches do not use alcohol for communion or social affairs. In fact most discourage or prohibit its use by members. One of the reasons for doing this is love. Many of the evangelical and charismatic churches have more than a few members who are recovering from substance abuse, many of them recovering from past alcohol problems. Alcohol would harm these. Many of these are originally from churches permitting alcohol socially and in communion.
I personally do not use alcohol. I never have. At one time my reason was that my parents told me to not use it. Actually that should have been good enough. My parents were Godly people who cared about me. Then I went through a phase that my reason was that I didn’t need it. But my reason today is different. To keep Christ’s directive of love I abstain to protect a brother. I abstain to show others there is a better way. It is not that I am better. I am not. It is that they can be free.
Many of us have seen the devastation of alcohol abuse. We choose to fully support the law of the land intended to protect our more vulnerable citizens, our youth. Less of these would turn to substance abuse if not exposed to alcohol.
The writer didn’t use the usual argument: “Wine is fine because Jesus made it at a wedding.” Jesus did, but the Bible commands moderation and suggests abstinence. Our pressure cooker society has proven alcohol isn’t easy to handle in moderation, thus we abstain. Maybe in the lower pressure society of 30AD Jerusalem it was fine. But I am not sure of that. After all, they had many concerns there. They had Roman soldiers in the city. Religious leaders could condemn you to death for hearsay with little legal recourse. Disease was rampant. A minor injury today could bring death. Are you sure our society has more pressure?
The writer ignores the constitution. It prohibits a state religion and discrimination against worshipers because of their religious choice. But under the constitution no right to any particular religious practice is guaranteed. Those who give alcohol to minors in the name of religion should be punished along with the peyote users. Or better, the church needs to slaughter its sacred cows and get away from this practice that violates the law of love.
Let’s see the alcohol business as it is, a trade in disease, death and destruction of lives. It is an evil to be uprooted and destroyed as we would a weed in a garden. Let’s see the church’s attitude toward alcohol for what it is, something that needs to be changed.
