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An Alcohol Story
A Man Questions Me about Alcohol
Restaurant Wants to Serve Alcohol
Our church meets in a small town right across the street from a new and popular Mexican restaurant. My wife and I moved to Southern Indiana on February 23, 2023 to evangelize a twenty five minute radius with 70,000 people. We want to build up a true church for its future perpetuation, starting with six attending members who are all fifty-nine and over. The Mexican restaurant opened in September, six months before we arrived.
On our first official time of door-to-door evangelism, my wife and I went together and knocked on the front door of someone right next to our meeting place. A man opened and after I introduced ourselves, before anything else he said to us, “So you are the church that won’t let the Mexican restaurant serve alcohol? Why are you keeping us from having a nice beer with our dinner?”
Indiana State Law
I told him that I didn’t know what he was talking about. Actually someone had mentioned alcohol and a restaurant to me, but I didn’t make the connection to this situation. I didn’t apologize to this neighbor for anything anyone did. Instead, I explained ours was a biblical position on alcohol. Shouldn’t churches follow the Bible in their belief and practice? Also, I knew it was Indiana law. The state of Indiana regulated this use of alcohol. If he wanted the law to change, he should take his complaint to his state legislator, not me. The regulation is the following (Ind. Code § 7.1-3-21-11):
[T]he commission may not issue a permit for a premises or approve a designated refreshment area if . . . the following appl[ies]: (1) A wall of a school or church is situated within two hundred (200) feet . . . . This section does not apply to the premises . . . if . . . the commission receives a written statement from the authorized representative of the church or school stating expressly that the church or school does not object to the issuance of the permit for the premises or approval of the designated refreshment area.
One godly member of the original six of the church earlier told the restaurant he would not write that letter. I would not write the letter either. He couldn’t. I couldn’t. Even if I believed in it, I wouldn’t do it and offend this member. Most of all, I wouldn’t write it because it would violate scripture. Our church would not do a thing that would disobey the Bible.
Habakkuk 2:15
I saw writing a letter giving permission to serve alcohol to violate Habakkuk 2:15:
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also.
God Himself is giving this “Woe.” God says, “Woe!” People in town might pressure me or us to capitulate, but I have a responsibility to God. When I weigh God versus alcohol drinkers or alcohol servers in town, I go with God. It’s one thing to break one of God’s laws. We all do. It’s totally another to support the breaking of the laws of God and encourage their transgression. That is not worshiping the Lord.
The Consequences of Alcohol Use
107,081 fentanyl deaths occurred in 2022 in the United States. Much of that moves across our porous Southern border. It is estimated that China produces 90% of that fentanyl in the United States. The fentanyl usage I’m describing is illegal. Let that sink into your head. As it does, consider the following about a legal substance in the United States: alcohol.
Alcohol is known to directly kill. Alcohol contributes to over three million deaths per year worldwide and over 140,000 a year in the United States. About forty percent of convicted murderers used alcohol before or during the crime. Alcohol related to about two-thirds of violent acts on current or former spouses or partners. In 2021,13,384 people died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic deaths. Offenders under the influence of alcohol commit 37% of sexual assaults and rapes. Four out of ten violent victimizations involve alcohol use.
Alcohol dependence very often leads to a devastating downward financial spiral. It causes eviction notices, delinquent bills, excessive court fees, diminished credit scores, and lost jobs. Many lose their family and custody of their children. Even if it doesn’t effect financial ruin, it very often brings financial strain and risk.
I’ve been to many social events that served alcohol. Alcohol caused bad behavior every time. Not once did it not make it a worse event. I found that drinkers expect teetotalers to tolerate their offensive actions. Most of the time, they don’t know how it makes them act. Drinking alcohol damages relationships. When I compare the harmful effects of illegal drugs and legal alcohol, I think hypocrisy and double standard.
Whose Fault?
Indiana state government passed the above law. This owner decided to open a restaurant less than 200 feet of our church building. To serve alcohol, the owner should follow the law of opening something further than 200 feet from where we meet. I’m not for more alcohol drinking and I’m not going to write a letter to encourage it. Our church did not invite the restaurant to open next to our building.
Our church didn’t write the law. Indiana did. If the law didn’t exist, the restaurant would serve alcohol. My conscience also registers all of what I wrote in the four paragraphs of the previous section. It would violate my conscience to write any such letter to the state for the service of alcohol.
I don’t think I’m better than other people because I don’t drink or serve alcohol. Neither do I believe that drinking alcohol in some unique way sends someone to Hell. Everyone sins. That doesn’t mean I should write a letter supporting the service of alcohol. I won’t do it.
Another Two Challenges
The Owner
The alcohol issue went off my radar again until a short while later a person showed up to our house, who was the owner of the Mexican restaurant. The owner asked if I would write the letter that would permit the restaurant to serve alcohol. I gave a brief scriptural presentation (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), including what I said above. Also, I encouraged the owner, saying that maybe the success of the restaurant came from not serving alcohol. Perhaps the restaurant could trust God in the matter.
The owner told me that customers asked for alcohol and put pressure to serve it. When these customers asked why not, the owner pointed to our church as to why the restaurant could not get the permit. That’s why I got that challenge on the very first door. The owner blamed it on our church. I told the owner, no, the state of Indiana made the law, not the church. I would not write the letter, because I couldn’t. The owner understood the reason. It was a very peaceful, agreeable conversation.
Another Customer
Zoom forward to last week. Again, I’m going door-to-door in evangelism. While talking to a man at the door, his wife interrupted him, saying she wanted to ask me some questions. She did. The last one she asked was why we stopped the Mexican restaurant from getting a permit. I explained to her what I wrote above. She appreciated the answer, understood it. I told her I did not see our position as harmful to our church or our evangelism.
Tongue-in-cheek the wife said she thought we might get more visitors to our service because of our position. She heard customers threaten in mass to “visit” our church service to pressure us to stop hindering the alcohol service of the restaurant. The restaurant encouraged this reaction by continuing to blame us for no alcohol on the menu. The wife wondered if some compromise could be made. The state requires a support or permission letter from me. My convictions and conscience won’t allow me to write one.
This alcohol situation turned into a light form of religious persecution, precipitated by a hypocritical secular culture. It now occurs in previously known as “the Bible belt.” If I wanted, I could push back against the false accusations of the restaurant. Honesty would require an explanation of a regulation passed by the state of Indiana, not our church. My wife and I go to the restaurant. It serves good food. We pay for our meals and tip the waiters. I still won’t write a letter giving permission to serve alcohol.
King Arthur and the Reality Of and Belief In the Supernatural: A Paradigm for Bifurcation of Truth
Part One
The Story of King Arthur
If you were like me, you heard the story of King Arthur and his Round Table as a child. The archaeologist Nowell Myers wrote: “No figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time.” I understand someone using his life to chase down this story. In the United States, journalists and historians both speak of the Kennedy era as Camelot. It insinuates a metaphor of utopianism.
When I read, heard, or saw the tale of King Arthur, I wondered if he was real. I wouldn’t have agreed the fanciful aspects of the Arthur story were true. Was he a true character though or just legend like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox? The extraordinary figures, like Merlin, and magical qualities did not extinguish the wonder, rather enhanced it.
How does someone leap from the imaginations of the supernatural and yet inquire of the historical? The two seem to contradict. Do they? Supernatural and historical?
I would speculate that the Arthur saga disappears without human vulnerability to paranormal intervention. Normal doesn’t explain a planet hanging in space with the beauty and complexity of earth. The imagination of the human mind takes a trajectory into the supernatural. Man knows God. This is his default position.
Carlisle Castle
My wife and I have lived for a few months in the Northern England city of Carlisle. Saturday we walked around and through Carlisle Castle. We left the castle to return on foot to our flat, a small studio apartment, but we stopped along the way into the lobby of Tullie House Museum.
During the English Civil War, royalists occupied Carlisle Castle under the command of Sir Thomas Glemham. From October 1644 to June 1645, the Scots besieged the castle under Major General Sir David Leslie. The battles fought in the Civil War included Scottish Covenanters. Isaac Tully was in Carlisle the whole time and he wrote in his diary a journal of the siege now possessed by the British Museum in what are called the Harley Manuscripts. Isaac Tully’s family, who built the Tullie House in Carlisle, was a member of the merchant guild.
Carlisle Castle and Tullie House Museum dovetail at this siege during the English Civil War. Hundreds of years later my wife and I walked into both. As we passed through the lobby of Tullie House, we noticed an exhibition beginning there on February 4 on the The Legend of King Arthur. My mind raced back to my childhood.
Arthur at Tullie House
Apparently, one tale in the King Arthur story relates to Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, a Middle English rhyme written about 1400. Middle English is the very difficult English of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at a similar time. This early English poem features Sir Gawain, the apparent nephew of King Arthur and an English knight of the Round Table. This permits the city of Carlisle to claim King Arthur as its own and motivates it to feature an exhibition with his name.
The main museum leadership stood in the lobby last Saturday at about 4:30pm. I asked the two older men and woman whether Arthur originated in Carlisle. A conversation ensued for five to ten minutes. One of the men smiled and said several English towns or cities claim King Arthur. I asked, “Is he real?” All three laughed, while knowingly looking to each other. The other man said, “Come to the exhibition!” The woman answered, that was a difficult explanation.
Supernatural
I told the three museum employees that I thought it was interesting that some or many think about a historical derivation to the story and yet it includes the supernatural in it. All three of them just stood and stared in silence. No. Comment. What turned them from very talkative and engaged to frozen incapability to reply? I said the one word, “Supernatural.” They smiled in silence and I smiled back with a small laugh. I laughed because I knew why they said nothing in reply.
Continuing, I said something like the following: “The instinct for the supernatural in these stories complements the understanding of the supernatural in the world that they see. They know all this, as complex as it is, didn’t take place by accident. It is not a natural only world.” The three still just stood and smiled with no comment. It is a government funded museum and exhibit.
If the three museum workers showed agreement even by nodding “yes,” then as government employees, they use their positions to confirm the supernatural. Nothing supernatural can be a fact. I would enjoy even a minimal philosophical agreement that, even if not themselves, others enjoy the supernatural element of the King Arthur narrative, mirroring what they accept in the real world.
Two Other Examples of Shunning the Spiritual, Supernatural, Religious, or Biblical
York
This experience reminded me of a trip my wife and I took to York earlier, where we walked into a shop in the Shambles there. Something on a sign in the shop mentioned ghosts. The two young ladies said the shop was haunted and talked of a few experiences of validation. So I asked them, “So you believe in the supernatural?” I continued, “This is not just a physical world. There are spiritual beings. It is more than just a natural world.” I stood waiting for an answer, and they stood staring at me.
Castle Gift Shop
Before we walked home from the castle, passing through the lobby of the Tullie house, my wife and I stopped one more time into the castle shop. It is an English Heritage site and has a large assortment of items to purchase. In one of the two rooms, bottles of alcoholic beverage filled several shelves to buy. On a small table, three bottles sat and a young man said that today they offered some for a sample. Two were alcoholic. One was not.
My wife and I sampled the non-alcoholic beverage, a Ginger flavored one. Though non-alcoholic, it was intended, he informed us, to give the same kind of initial kick that alcohol gives. He said that the company started during the days of the temperance movement in England, which continued today selling these non-alcoholic type drinks. I mentioned to him that the United States had a period of prohibition of alcohol. He knew about it.
I began explaining to him why the prohibition movement started in the United States and referred him to the Ken Burns three part documentary on the Prohibition. He wrote it down. I told him that in part the prohibition occurred for biblical reasons. Before he answered me, he put his hand over the English Heritage Site logo on his shirt, warned us that this was not the opinion of his employers, and then he commented on the temperance movement in the United Kingdom. He felt the pressure to offer a disclaimer that was nothing more than a historical observation, because of its thread-like proximity to something scriptural.
Bifurcation of Truth
What I am illustrating is the real-life bifurcation of truth in the world. People segregate the spiritual from the physical. They divide the natural from the supernatural. They treat the Bible and anything religious as distant from facts and even history. Few to none will make mention of it.
I would expect little different in the United States to what I’m describing in England. A vast majority of people relegate the truth, if it is in the Bible or if it is moral or even religious, to a different category of information. They would not call it knowledge. They see it as a matter of faith, which is relativistic, individual, private, and subjective.
Employees in public institutions in a widespread manner, almost exclusively, will not talk about anything even related to the supernatural in a public setting. I will often mention the Bible. I did not even do that in this instance. That alone brought total silence.
Post Enlightenment Dualism
Previous to the Enlightenment, no divide existed between the natural and the spiritual, a rebellious invention of human derivation. Both proceeded from a single mind, consolidated in a unified whole. Man reflected the image of God, which also fulfilled his purpose. This is also the truth about man. He is not the product of an accident of nature.
Modern science arose from believers in God, who saw His invisible hand in all matter and space. The arrangement of the parts with mathematical precision turned to a conception of a machine with its varied innerworkings, contraptions, and mechanisms. The body functioned according to scientific laws with the mind regarded as operating as an independent entity. The concession to man as mere device gave way to everything no longer the design of a Creator.
The recalculation of man as outgrowth of natural causes did not occur solely by rationalistic determinations. Man wants what he wants. To get it, he eliminates God, a final judge, to stop him from getting what he wants or judging him for wanting it. What I describe, however, is the means by which people discarded God for their own lust. His inclusion in a conversation interrupts their self-approval and personal autonomy and violates their conscience. As a feature of their fallenness, they avoid that conversation with its awkwardness, painfulness, anxiety, or anger.
If “Drinking Any Amount of Alcohol Causes Damage to the Brain,” Is It Permissible for True Believers to Drink Alcohol?
It doesn’t make sense for anyone to drink something that causes damage to the brain. A new study says that drinking any amount of alcohol, even one drink, causes damage to the brain. Both CNN and Fox News reported this. It was an Oxford University study using 25,378 participants. Knowing what alcohol is and how it affects the body, this news doesn’t surprise me. It deprives brain cells of oxygen and they die. This is something people already knew, but it is has been released now as a scientific study.
I already believe the Bible, especially in Proverbs 23, teaches against alcohol consumption or what has been called the teetotalling position, the prohibition of alcohol. I wrote a five part series on it (first, second, third, fourth, and fifth). I show that prohibition of alcohol is a historic and biblical position. This recent study adds another layer, because the Bible would argue that it is wrong to destroy your body and especially your brain or your mind. Indeed, “the mind is a terrible thing to waste.” It would seem that you could not love God with your mind by damaging your mind. Those two thoughts are in contradiction to one another.
An online Christian forum linked to this above article and I was interested in how pro-alcohol professing Christians would deal with it. It seems insurmountable. Proverbs 23 says alcohol is destructive so that someone would be better never even to look at it. This is God’s will. So what were the arguments against the article?
One, the study wasn’t “peer reviewed” yet. The study had been done and yielded it’s results, but apparently peers had not yet offered their review before the study showed up in public. There is a dedication to alcohol among some professing Christians that becomes desperation when they might be required to stop drinking. What hypothetical scientific peers might say is that there is a safe or acceptable level of brain tissue loss. Imagine that conversation.
“This s going to destroy some of your brain tissue if you drink it.” “How much will I lose with one drink? Two?” “Oh, only that amount? Well, that’s a safe and acceptable loss of brains that I will never get back again, so give me that drink.”
So, more study needs to be done to find out what acceptable brain tissue loss is. I know that when we cut our fingernails, they grow back. When we destroy brain cells, do we get those back? In the end, it is the pleasurable feeling of destroying brain cells with alcohol versus the loss of that pleasure. What should a Christian do? I think we all know that a Christian disobeys God by destroying brain cells or brain tissue. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and destroying brain tissue with alcohol moves to an unacceptable level of harm to the temple of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
The other argument was a related argument to the first one, that is, drinking is a calculated risk like “climbing a mountain, exploring a cave, snow or water skiing, scuba diving, buying bitcoin, investing in a stock, driving a motorcycle, seeing how fast your car can go (100 mph plus), ice skating, or driving on a frozen lake.” He included drinking alcohol as parallel to everything else in that list.
Scripture teaches that believers should not tempt God by taking risks, the example of Satan in Matthew 4, tempting Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. This is not of faith. It’s true that anyone could die doing almost anything, that breathing causes cancer and someone crossing the road could get hit by a car. Alcohol does damage brain tissue. That’s not a calculation according to this study. It’s 100 out of 100. You are destroying your brain. None of the examples of activities in the previous paragraph guarantee destruction. There is an argument for calculating risk, I agree, taking the safer route if possible, but alcohol isn’t safe, so this argument doesn’t work.
There is more to an argument against alcohol. When you drink it, you’re hurting yourself, you’re also disobeying God, and you’re causing others to stumble. None of those are permissible in scripture.
How Is Alcohol Related to Worship?
Maybe the question of the title got your attention. It sounds like that’s what I was trying to do, but I wasn’t. Instead I jumped into the car and turned it to the 24/7 radio station of the biggest Calvary Chapel in our area of Oregon. The son, who is now the senior pastor, was preaching on worship, a subject that is near and dear to me, as you readers know. In the midst of his talk, he had his crowd turn to Ephesians 5:18-19, which read:
18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
He didn’t break down verse 18 very far, but he related being “sloshed,” a word he used twice to refer to being drunk. He said that alcohol itself was fine, just not being drunk. To start, that belies the grammar of the verse. Look at it. Speaking of the “wine,” Paul said, “wherein is excess.” In other words, in the wine is excess, which is riotousness. The “wine” itself isn’t innocent. This is also how the Bible reads about alcohol or “wine” that can get someone drunk. It must be alcoholic, so in it is excess or riotousness, which are both sinful.
The Calvary Chapel senior pastor then said that there is a kind of singing when someone is sloshed. He compared to drunken revelry, and he said that was a contrast here. One can imagine the pub where a group of men are staggering home off pitch and slurring a popular song, what today is called a drinking song. I know this happens, but is this what Ephesians 5:18 is talking about? No. It really misses the point.
Being drunk is contrasted with being filled with the Spirit. There are at least two points that Paul is making with this contrast and it does relate to worship. One, drunkenness puts alcohol in control of someone. He’s controlled by the alcohol. The Greek words for “filled with” mean “be controlled by.” The believer is commanded to be controlled by the Holy Spirit and not alcohol. The alcohol is related to worship, but someone is never to be controlled by anyone or anything but the Holy Spirit. That means in every area of life, which the next twenty something verses reveal.
The control of alcohol brings excess and riotousness. The control of the Holy Spirit results in something else, what follows in the proceeding verses. Alcohol really does control. Someone can understand that. With that understanding, come to the Holy Spirit and imagine His controlling instead. Alcohol almost totally takes over with limited human control. Holy Spirit control is almost total control with a background of human control. A person is still doing something, but he’s controlled by Someone else as a whole, the Holy Spirit.
The second point of Paul is to relate to the false worship of Ephesus at the temple of Diana that the audience of the church at Ephesus would know. In the base of the pillars were ornately carved grapes. Drunkenness was part of the worship. It would bring a state of ecstasy, which was confused with a kind of divine control. This out of body type of experience of drunkenness gives the impression that someone is out of control, which he is, but that he is under the control of divine power. He isn’t. It’s the alcohol. Paul contrasts the false worship of Ephesus with the true worship of the true God. It isn’t ecstatic, which unfortunately and ironically is the worship of these Calvary Chapels.
The rock music of the the CCM that even originated with the first Jesus’ movement of the first Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California gave the impression of something spiritual occurring. It wasn’t. It was entirely fleshly, ecstatic, like the drunkenness of the worship of Diana. Fleshly music brings a kind of ecstasy like that produced by alcohol that gives a counterfeit, false experience of spirituality. It might be “a spirit,” but it isn’t the Holy Spirit. It isn’t Holy and it isn’t Spiritual. Spiritual worship does not arise from the flesh, from alcohol, or from rhythm. These churches manipulate their listeners, giving them the wrong understanding of true spirituality. It is a form of idolatry.
There is actually no contrast in the worship of the Calvary Chapels with the world’s temples. They incorporate the ecstatic experience of the world into their so-called “worship.” In so doing, their people develop a false imagination of God. Their worship gives them a false god that does not have the same nature as the One and True God.
The local Calvary Chapel pastor compared drunken singing to the singing of Ephesians 5:19. First, he approved of alcohol as long as someone isn’t “sloshed.” He was saying this in a mocking tone, like he was embarrassed to be preaching about something bad related to alcohol. He was approving of alcohol as long as it didn’t result in drunkenness. In many people’s minds, being “sloshed” is a further level of drunkenness than the mere term drunken or legal drunkenness. This is missing the teaching of the verse and is dangerous to his audience.
The worship of Ephesians 5:19 proceeds from the control of the Holy Spirit. This is not carnal or emotional. It might result in emotions, but it is not emotional. Colossians 3:16 is a parallel passage and it compares Spirit filling to being controlled by the Words of Christ. If someone is controlled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the first way that will manifest itself is in true worship.
The participles of Ephesians 5:19 relate to being controlled by the Holy Spirit. You can or will know if someone is saved and then filled with the Spirit, based upon your worship. Worship comes first in this list of manifestations. False worship is controlled by something other than the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t have to be alcohol. It could also be fleshly music that brings a closely related ecstasy to that occurring in the false worship in Ephesus.
Leviticus 10:8-11 and Its Conformity to the Two Wine View
It’s obvious in scripture that some wine is permissible to drink and other is not. This relates to alcohol. Scripture prohibits alcohol (Proverbs 23:29-35). However, all wine and strong drink is prohibited to the priesthood in the performance of their duties. I’m reading through the Bible twice this year and moving through it the first time, I arrived at Leviticus 10:8-11 earlier this week:
8 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, 9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: 10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; 11 And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.
It was so important for Aaron and his sons not to be under the influence of alcohol that they were to take extra precautions by refraining from any wine or strong drink. What does drinking any alcohol do? If they were to be drinking alcohol of any amount, it would threaten their ability to do their job as a priest.
The drinking of alcohol could result in the execution of the priest by God like Nadab and Abihu were killed by God earlier in the chapter. God commands Aaron and his sons not to drink wine or strong drink, so that they would not be punished with death by God Himself. Leon Hyatt writes in his commentary on Leviticus:
Obeying this command would assure that they would not die for performing their duties incorrectly, but that assurance definitely implies that they would die if they disobeyed the command. The same stern penalty would result from disobedience to this command as from any other deviation from the instructions of Jehovah to the priests.
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!
Nothing has more power to blur the sharpness of moral and religious insight than even a small amount of alcohol. God must be worshipped with clear brain and naturally beating heart. Not the fumes of wine, in which there lurks almost necessarily the tendency to ‘excess,’ but the being ‘filled with the Spirit’ supplies the only legitimate stimulus to devotion. Besides the personal reason for abstinence, there was another,-namely, that only so could the priests teach the people ‘the statutes’ of Jehovah. Lips stained from the wine-cup would not be fit to speak holy words. Words spoken by such would carry no power. God’s servants can never impress on the sluggish conscience of society their solemn messages from God, unless they are conspicuously free from self-indulgence, and show by their example the gulf, wide as between heaven and hell, which parts cleanness from uncleanness. Our lives must witness to the eternal distinction between good and evil, if we are to draw men to ‘abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.’
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