Those who support drinking alcohol, including professing Christians, might point out apparent benefits of moderate drinking, both compared either to drunkenness or teetotaling. Recent “studies” have debunked some of those in a significant way. It should make sense to someone.
The simple answer is alcohol gets into the blood stream, goes to the brain, and it kills brain cells. Aaah, but that isn’t exactly what happens. No. It’s more technical. Alcohol damages some of your neurons, which send electrical and chemical messages within the brain and between it and other parts of the body. There, that’s all. To get even more technical, alcohol inhibits the communication between dendrites, or branching connections at the ends of neurons that send and receive information between neurons, in the cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in motor coordination. This means that alcohol, like most know already, is mind-altering.
If you were to try to justify doing what I wrote about in the second paragraph, a good way to do it is to say that a lot of people destroy or harm or hurt their bodies in a lot of different ways, including the brain, so to be consistent, it is permissible to do it with alcohol too. I’m not going to go further with it, but scientific studies have been done recently that show that even moderate drinking of alcohol damages the brain, results in obesity, and affects your immune system in a bad way. The latter isn’t good news for future possible coronavirus exposure.
What I have for you below is a bit of a one stop shop with recent articles and studies for the affects of moderate drinking of alcohol for those who believe moderate drinking is acceptable and even helpful. Of course, I believe the Bible prohibits the drinking of any alcohol. No one has to do it. No one should do it.
European Association for the Study of Obesity
5 Scary Ways Alcohol Damages the Brain
Moderate alcohol use is associated with decreased brain volume in early middle age in both sexes
Moderate Drinking May Shrink Your Brain by a Percent. Is It Worth It?
I appreciated your blog. I published a book last year that takes the same position: "Two Wines: a proper understanding of "wine" in the Bible", available from Walmart and Amazon.
God speaks much about the fruit of the vine in the Bible. He promised it to Israel's patriarchs when speaking of the promised land. The Jewish men who searched the land of Caanan brought back large bunches of grapes to show the people, as they reported on the land. God mentions it many times in the Old Testament as a staple of their diet, along with corn and oil. The English word that translates the 5 Hebrew words that refer to this fruit of the vine is "wine", a word that was generic when the Old Testament was translated into English. This means that it applied to either fresh grape juice or grape juice that was turned alcoholic by adding yeast. The fact of its generic meaning is true and vital to the proper understanding of God's teaching about grape juice and alcoholic wine. Thus, in the Bible we have revealed two wines: unfermented grape juice and alcoholic wine.
In the present time in Christian America, the truth that "wine" is generic in the Bible is little taught, largely unknown, and greatly contested. "Wine" is generally understood as an alcoholic beverage. Instead of accepting the "two-wine" understanding, writers deny the historic truth about unfermented grape juice in Bible times and use the Bible to permit and encourage drinking alcohol moderately.
We will carefully examine the facts about "wine" in the Bible in the light of God's Word and we will document the danger of consumption of alcohol today. We will also tell a little-known story about Godly men who fought to show the truth of "two-wines" over 100 years ago so that they could convince Christians of the necessity of abstinence.
Thanks Brother, I agree and thank you.