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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.
Adonibezek: The Lost Believe in Justice
The beginning of Judges tells the story of the heathen king, Adonibezek. Joshua had died and now God spoke directly to the tribes of Judah and Simeon to go up and fight the Canaanites as a whole and among them the Perizzites, and to take their land. They attack the town of Bezek, which is apparently a little ways West of Bethlehem, if you can visualize that on a map. They killed ten thousand Canaanites in Bezek and captured Adonibezek, whose name means, lord of Bezek. They cut off his thumbs and big toes.
When I think of that, I sometimes think of Rocky Bleier, a running back for the championship Pittsburgh Steelers, during their four Super Bowl wins. He had fought in Vietnam and the shrapnel from a hand grenade had blown off part of his foot, yet he still played running back in the NFL. I think, how did he play running back without part of his foot? How could Adonibezek fight without two big toes? That was the point, of course. And without thumbs, he couldn’t hold on to a sword either.
Upon this occurrence, Judges 1:7 says:
And Adonibezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me.
No pun intended, but this stuck out to me in Bible reading, mainly the last part, his saying, “So God hath requited me.” Adonibezek believed in justice. Not karma. I’ve found this to be the case with the lost. They believe in justice, they just don’t like it when it applies to them. It’s very often in the back of someone’s head that there will be payback for the things that they have done.
I have a feature on a Bible program, when looking up the usage of the Hebrew word, either “search on this form” or “search on all forms of lemma.” A lemma is a form of a set of words, what you might call the root word. It looks up all the forms of a word. “This form” would be letter for letter that particular word, the same in every way. All forms of this lemma are found 236 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and this exact form only twice, the other translated “finished” in 1 Kings 9:25.
The Hebrew word for “requited” is shaw’lam (my transliteration), which in its root means to be complete or sound. It is the root idea of justice, the idea of something coming full circle, whatever you’ve done coming back on you, completing the circle. It means “perfect,” an end being met, or “full” or “finished.” Adonibezek’s cutting off the toes and thumbs of seventy other kings wasn’t the end of the story.
The law of lex talionis, the law of equal retribution, is an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth. This is equal justice. The expression lex talionis was written in 450 BC in Roman law known as the Twelve Tables and written: “If a man has broken the limb of another man, unless he makes his peace with him, there shall be like for like, talio esto.” The very beginning of the concept of lex talionis used the example of the breaking of a limb of another man, something close to what Adonibezek had been doing.
Adoni means “lord,” but Adonibezek knew that he wasn’t the highest law. There was a higher law than him, a lord that was higher than what he was. Adonai is one of the names of God in the Old Testament. Adonibezek fancied himself a regional or local lord and the God of Heaven was the Lord of all.
The laws of nature and nature’s God, the language of the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, include this law of equal retribution. I’ve found everybody believes in justice. They know what it means and they want it for themselves, but they don’t like it when it applies to themselves. In this case, Adonibezek knew he was getting it though.
Adonibezek says, “God hath requited me,” so the thought could be that he was acknowledging God. It’s unlikely. He uses Elohim, the Hebrew name for “God,” but also used by the heathen to refer to the god of their own imagination. He did believe in god at least. He at least believed in justice, and God Himself inspired this to be written. These words were recorded in scripture. God had requited Adonibezek, actual God.
Man has God’s law written in his heart as a default position by which he may judge truly. The world functions according to Divine standards. This is our Father’s world, no matter what happens, and that is a presupposition that is useful in the conviction of every unbeliever, Adonibezek being an example. His conscience admitted to him that this was justice from God for what he had done. The world operates according to the laws that God both set in motion and in which He directly intervenes.
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