Alcohol & the Church, a symptom of Worldly Wisdom vs Biblical study

Alcohol & the Church, a symptom of Worldly Wisdom vs Biblical study

Rethinking the World Biblically

Recently there was an article that seems to have brought about a stir in our small town. The issue at hand? Should a restaurant be allowed to serve alcohol in a “dry” county? Now to be honest, this is not my hometown and I’m not a southerner. In fact, it’s quite evident when I have conversations with people in the area that I’m not from around here. Yet, this doesn’t negate the issue that our small town is facing. My being from here only allows for me to input my two cents as an outsider. Although what I’m saying may sound like an opinion, this is not an opinion piece. I want to offer some insight from a source that most of us would probably agree governs the vast majority of our life. The Bible. Simply put, I want to offer an understanding on the nature of alcohol according to the Bible and let each of us check the way we understand this issue in accordance with what the Word of God says. With that in mind, I want to challenge you for just a moment to grab that old leather-bound work of beauty off of your shelf and scour through its pages in search of the issue of alcohol. For some of the more tech savvy, do a google search of the use of alcohol in the Bible. This next point may surprise you. Did you know that nowhere in the Bible does it say that alcohol is sinful? In fact, alcohol doesn’t have the ability to be sinful because it is an inanimate object. It doesn’t have the ability to break God’s moral Law nor does it have the ability to reason or rationalize. By now you’ve probably scoured through those life preserving pages looking to see if that last statement is right and you’ve found it to be true. So, let’s ask another question. Is there a passage of Scripture where the Word of God condemns the use or consumption of alcohol? No! In fact, many might be surprised to find that what God actually says about alcohol in its right context can be a good thing. Psalm 104:15 tells us that wine gladdens the heart of man. Paul tells the Elder Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach in 1 Timothy 5:23. Both of those passages are actually showing something quite opposite to what most of us would believe. We have somehow come to believe that the consumption or use of alcohol in any way is somehow sinning against God. But that is not what the Bible actually teaches. Instead what the Bible teaches is the right use of that which is created by God. Alcohol is like anything else given by God to mankind. In its right form and use, there is no sin. It is the misuse and abuse of that which has been given to mankind that makes something sinful. This is where sin actually comes into the picture. The abuse of through drunkenness or by breaking the law of the land is what makes the consumption of alcohol sinful. What the individual chooses to do with the alcohol is what would either make it sin or not sin.

I know that many will read this and believe it to be an endorsement for the consumption of alcohol. This is not the case! As a minister of the Gospel I cannot function as the Holy Spirit and tell people what they can and cannot do. Instead my calling is to dust off the generational gap that occurs from the time of Christ and our own and explain what it is that God has called us towards. It is our duty as Christians to seek out the pages of Scripture, and from only the Word of God, draw out a worldview in which we live our lives by. We are called to make Christ known and live this life with as much accuracy toward Scripture as is humanly possible. Because of this, we have to examine real world issues to see where it is that we should land. If our opinions ever do not line up with God’s Word, we are called to reshape how we see these issues and conform them to Scripture. We cannot conform Scripture to what we want it to say.

SDG – Pastor, student, Christian, friend Cory Matlock.