Let’s Think About Alcohol
Christians in the Reformed tradition have tended to have a culture of liberty around these substances, emphasizing how they are gifts from God that should be received with thanksgiving, rather than condemned because of legalism. How should we, as Christians, think about alcohol?
It has been joked that the name of our denomination, the PCA, stands for pipes, cigars, and alcohol. The reason for this is Christians in the Reformed tradition have tended to have a culture of liberty around these substances, emphasizing how they are gifts from God that should be received with thanksgiving, rather than condemned because of legalism. Many people who have come to our church from other church traditions have noted this about our community. Our gatherings often include the presence of drink—beer, wine, whiskey, and so on.
But my sense over the past few years is that this emphasis has lessened a bit, likely for a variety of reasons. Personally, as I have aged as a pastor and have seen how alcohol has adversely affected people’s lives and marriages, I’m more reluctant about having the church encourage people to drink. My discipleship groups, up until the last couple years, included snacks and beers in the late afternoon. While I still think a pub is great for talking about life and the things of God, I’m also appreciating that beer is not necessary. Maybe it is the people God has brought to our church who tend to drink less, or perhaps it is a cultural shift—but I sense more moderation, and it is likely for the good.
How should we, as Christians, think about alcohol? The Bible sees it as both a blessing and a danger. I had a friend in seminary who, researching for a term paper, found that 60% of the Bible’s verses about alcohol were positive, while 40% were negative. I can’t confirm those percentages, but my hunch is that somewhere around half and half is about right.
The importance of gospel reflection in a place like this is to understand how alcohol is being used in your life. Are there emotional, relational, or spiritual issues that need to be addressed?
In this article I’d like to do my best to examine and shape our church’s culture around alcohol. While there are both blessings and warnings, I’ve decided to start with the warnings.
Wine is a Mocker, Strong Drink A Brawler
My normal instincts are to start an article like this by saying that alcohol, and its attendant pleasures, were made by God and so are good, to be received with thanksgiving. That is certainly a fair place to start. But it strikes me that the first mention of wine in the Bible is actually negative; Noah gets drunk after going forth from the ark, resulting in an indecency with his son Ham that would have generational ramifications (Gen. 9:18-28). Drunkenness brings a curse. The lesson of Noah’s story seems consistent with the Apostle Paul’s command: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). If the Bible starts with a warning, it is fitting that our consideration of alcohol would follow suit.
The main command and warning of the Bible concerning alcohol is don’t get drunk. Of course, it could be debated: “What constitutes drunkenness?” Is being a little tipsy what we would call drunkenness? Is any level of psychological alteration sinful? I find that hard to argue since Psalm 104 says God has given “wine to gladden the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15). Aquinas, too, said that wine could be lawfully drunk to the point of cheerfulness (Summa Part II-II, Q141.A6). I’ll talk more about that in the next portion of this article. But the New Testament has warnings about being overly restrictive. Consider these two verses from the Apostle Paul:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—’Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Col. 2:20-23)
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim. 4:1-5)
The message is similar in both of these passages: legalism is the teaching of demons, and calling God’s good gifts sinful will do nothing to mortify our flesh.
That said, if we say sinful intoxication only looks like falling over yourself, puking your brains out, and passing out on the couch, we are not heeding other words from Scripture. We are told repeatedly to be sober-minded (1 Peter 2:13, 4:7, 5:8; 1 Thess. 5:6, 8; 2 Tim. 4:5). Sobriety enables us to discern right and wrong, good and evil. This is why the priests in the Old Testament were not allowed to drink while ministering in the tabernacle—so they could distinguish holy from common (Lev. 10:9). Similarly, Proverbs says kings should lay off the booze when they are working so that they administer justice properly.
The importance of gospel reflection in a place like this is to understand how alcohol is being used in your life. Are there emotional, relational, or spiritual issues that need to be addressed?
Certainly if you find yourself being more argumentative, aggressive, or belligerent, you have entered sinful levels of intoxication. “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise” (Prov. 20:1). If your speech is slurred, you are not thinking or speaking clearly; you are no longer sober-minded. Christians should be people of dignity at all times.
Furthermore, the renaissance of craft cocktails and the popularity of bourbon have made strong drink much more common in Christian homes. My guess is that culturally, the spirits pendulum has swung back and forth throughout history. Liberty leads to debauchery, which leads to prohibition, which leads to moderation, which leads to liberty again. I’d guess that we are culturally reentering an era of debauchery. We need to have guards up about that. I’ve known people with alcoholic tendencies who have just said, “I can’t have hard liquor, full stop.” Personally, even though I’ve not been drunk since high school, there have been evenings that left me sluggish the next morning and thinking “that was probably too much,” and they always involved whisky. It is easy to pour a couple fingers of bourbon, even late into an evening, and think, “I can handle this,” when in fact you can’t. Even though whisky is prominent in Presbyterian culture, I’ve begun intentionally moderating it more in my own life and home.
Of course, drunkenness often sneaks up on us. A couple strong cocktails early in the evening can catch up with you very quickly. Liquor makes us say and do things we regret. The answer is not necessarily prohibition, but certainly self-control and clear boundaries. We must have maturity, restraint, and the ability to say no to our flesh.
We should remember the power of alcohol every time we drink it, being careful to drink in moderation and avoid drunkenness
What if alcohol has proven a problem for you? What should you do? My recommendation is to meet with a pastor to make a plan for repentance. What would that look like? It is best when repentance plans include three elements: gospel, community, and behaviors. That means consistent attendance at worship, pastoral (and maybe professional) counseling, being in a small group, and spiritual disciplines, including fasting. Likely a season of repentance should begin with a fast from alcohol, maybe 3, 6, or 12 months. After that, I find that people with addictive tendencies need clear rules around the substances, such as, “I only drink on the weekend, and never more than two drinks in a day.” Clarity is important.
The importance of gospel reflection in a place like this is to understand how alcohol is being used in your life. Are there emotional, relational, or spiritual issues that need to be addressed? Johan Harri has noted that addiction is an emotional issue, not a substance one, and we’d go farther to say it is a spiritual issue as well. There is nothing inherently sinful in the substance of alcohol—it is a matter of our spiritual and emotional life which must be addressed with the resources of the gospel. You could talk about this more with a pastoral counselor.
Alcohol is powerful; it must be enjoyed with discipline and obedience to God.
But that does not negate the blessing it is from the Lord. Let us now turn from the warnings to the blessings.
Wine Makes Glad the Heart of Man
The strongest argument in favor of wine being a regular part of Christian culture is that Jesus drank it. He drank it enough to be criticized for it: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke 7:34).
In fact, we see Jesus present at banquets of prominent Jewish leaders, gatherings known as an ancient symposium (e.g. Luke 7:36-50; 11:37ff; 14:1ff). These were feasts of eating and drinking where the guests would engage in an intellectual debate about some philosophical matter. We should resurrect the ancient symposium! Long evenings around a table, slowly sipping wine and discussing the great matters of God, life and death, politics and family, culture and the kingdom. Let’s only have more of it.
Jesus’ first miracle, revealing his glory at the wedding of Cana, was to make 150 gallons of wine. Such abundance of wine was prophesied to accompany the age of the Messiah in Amos 9, when the “mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills flow with it” (Amos 9:13). Such texts confirm my preference stated above, for wine over cocktails. I’m not saying cocktails are sinful (I enjoy them), but the dominant theme in the Scriptures is wine.
That preference is shared by Robert Farrar Capon, author of the great theological and literary cookbook The Supper of the Lamb. He has a splendid chapter on the supremacy of wine, with “its sovereign power to turn evenings into occasions,” a key component of what he calls the “long session”—a long evening of rich conversation and fellowship around a table. He saw the dinner table as a preview of the consummation of all things. Jesus tells us he will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until he drinks it anew with us in his Father’s kingdom (Matt. 26:29). As Capon puts it,
The longest Session of all is no discontinuation of these sessions here, but a lifting of them all by priestly love. It is a place for men, not ghosts—for the risen gorgeousness of the New Earth and for the glorious earthiness of the True Jerusalem. Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthood, He makes all things new. Our Last Home will be home indeed. (The Supper of the Lamb, p. 180-81)
These long dinner sessions with wine were a significant part of Jesus' life and ministry. I would love for our church to be full of them as well—small signs of the coming kingdom: wine, gently bringing us, as Aquinas said, to the point of cheerfulness, so that we can delight in the wonderful thoughts our Lord provides in the rich conversation with friends, Christian and non. Such long sessions are precisely what I imagine Solomon envisioned in his repeated conclusion in Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Eccl. 2:24-25). There is no true cheerfulness apart from the Lord.
So, what should our culture around alcohol be? Caution, sobriety, and thanksgiving. That is, we should remember the power of alcohol every time we drink it, being careful to drink in moderation and avoid drunkenness. We should not overly celebrate or draw attention to alcohol. We should be comfortable rebuking each other and cutting each other off when we’re nearing drunkenness. We should slowly nurse our drinks over an evening, resisting the temptation to plow through them.
But we should also embrace the gifts God gives us. The Lord has put the cup of wine at the center of our communion with him, and so let it spill over into the communion we have together in our homes. Always with dignity, always sober-minded, but also with thanksgiving and joy, as the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).
