Deerhead
Senior Member
I cast no stone. If they want to have a drink then good. Enjoy! Enough said
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Pastors who have a drink
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SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
I'll say this as a recovering alcoholic, this is my opinion, and mine only. If you're drinking out of enjoyment, it's a sin. That means you are substituting alcohol (more precisely, the effect of alcohol) to satisfy a spiritual void, be it pain, fear, loneliness, selfishness, etc. Any time you substitute anything, not just alcohol, but sex, power, money, gambling, and the list goes on forever, to satisfy a spiritual void it's a sin. The reason there is a void in the first place is because our relationship with God is askew. To substitute anything else there simply doesn't work. It never will. It's like trying to force a square peg into a round hole and the more you try it, the worse the results become for you. Alcoholism is, at it's core, a spiritual condition, with physical, mental, psychological, and emotional signs and symptoms. All successful treatment has to eventually address this fact.
There are people who don't use alcohol as a palliative treatment for spiritual conditions, but they don't drink it for the enjoyment. They drink it just because it's there, but they could just as soon have water and not care one iota. IF Jesus drank alcoholic wine, I think it's safe to assume it wasn't to treat a spiritual shortcoming and therefore not a sin, hence not one reference to him nor any of the apostles ever being drunk. They didn't drink it for the effects, IF they drank it at all.
Now, to the real point. If I call myself a Christian, and know, AS WE ALL DO, that alcohol has disastrous effects on some people, can you look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a Christian and still partake in something that is deadly to your brother and sister? We are called to love everyone unconditionally and forgive unconditionally. I can't say I'm doing that if I'm drinking, for I have no idea who is an alcoholic, who is on their way to becoming one, and who one day may become one and who is gonna interpret my drinking to mean drinking is safe for them. For me to do anything that could cause another to stumble IS a sin, so the question as to whether it's a sin or not dissolves itself.
Now I know some are you are going to say, "You just said IF Jesus drank it, it wasn't a sin, but then said, if we do, it is. Yes I did, but it's not a double standard nor a paradox. Jesus was God incarnate, with all the attributes and powers that go with that. You and me aren't.
There are people who don't use alcohol as a palliative treatment for spiritual conditions, but they don't drink it for the enjoyment. They drink it just because it's there, but they could just as soon have water and not care one iota. IF Jesus drank alcoholic wine, I think it's safe to assume it wasn't to treat a spiritual shortcoming and therefore not a sin, hence not one reference to him nor any of the apostles ever being drunk. They didn't drink it for the effects, IF they drank it at all.
Now, to the real point. If I call myself a Christian, and know, AS WE ALL DO, that alcohol has disastrous effects on some people, can you look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a Christian and still partake in something that is deadly to your brother and sister? We are called to love everyone unconditionally and forgive unconditionally. I can't say I'm doing that if I'm drinking, for I have no idea who is an alcoholic, who is on their way to becoming one, and who one day may become one and who is gonna interpret my drinking to mean drinking is safe for them. For me to do anything that could cause another to stumble IS a sin, so the question as to whether it's a sin or not dissolves itself.
Now I know some are you are going to say, "You just said IF Jesus drank it, it wasn't a sin, but then said, if we do, it is. Yes I did, but it's not a double standard nor a paradox. Jesus was God incarnate, with all the attributes and powers that go with that. You and me aren't.
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LittleDrummerBoy
Senior Member
Is it a sin for a Christian to eat for enjoyment? Following your logic, it is. But your logic is a flawed twisting of Scripture.
For example, Scripture says, "Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward."
Why assume anything not spiritual done for enjoyment is sin? Guess what, I have intimate relations with my wife for enjoyment too. Is that a sin? No. As David wrote, "The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places." As long as a Christian's enjoyment is coming from inside the Biblical boundaries, it's not a sin. We can enjoy hunting, fishing, sex with our wives, and bacon cheeseburgers, and a glass of wine without it being a sin. Sure, any of the above things can be in excess, become an idol, and knock our lives out of whack. But the threshold to identify excess and idolatry is not simple enjoyment.
Oh! The bondage of legalism.
Israel
BANNED
What if we were to discover "pleasure" is itself a spiritual matter, to which we have been made free to know...intimately! The miraculous work of the God of all gods who to us is able to keep the joy in enjoyment, has pleasures beyond all our yet knowing.
It is only the dour god, who hates that any man might find pleasure in being (for he himself does not...only envying, strife, fury) that has sought by perversion to infuse even the simplest of things (yes, that man might even come to hate his own breathing to a perversion of, and to, his perverse dealing with the self...i.e. suicide) with taint of sin.
What a man might lay aside by desire to know this God...is given of liberty, and even pleasure in the laying aside, to that man. He is pleased in having liberty to forgo even legitimate things if he finds it beneficial to his knowing of this God.
Cautions? Surely...but these are given to spare men of grief, not seek to add to a sin burden. I laughingly fear the next OP...
"Is it really "good" for a man to not touch a woman?"...and if it is good...is it not then evil to be found otherwise?
How much we may infer in presumption...and there be exposed as presumptuous...is even to our own reproof and therefore, benefit.
What the Lord says...does not call for nor include our own assumptions of what he is not saying.
But...who doesn't get it? Who has not made to themselves, by wrong inference, a dread burden of life? Till reproved?
Will any deny it?
Step forward any who have not known the rebuke and chastening...we will receive you, and preach the gospel to you. Not for the sake of our imposing rebuke or chastening...to an end we already know is not in our hands to ensure...but to your establishment as sons.
There is something so ultimately unfair in this following command that its dread burden cannot be relieved nor have our perception of it as evil crushed...except by the Lord's hand.
Here we learn to love the "unfair"...when we are won away from all of our own presumptuous sense of justice, our own sense of what is "fair". Mercy and grace...are just not...fair. How much they exceed fairness is ours to explore...but, if one only wants what pleases their own sense of fairness of what is right, and just...you have already de facto set a limit. That limit...will not serve you well.
"Love one another as I have loved you..."
You know who you are. Because you sense the eternal weight and substance of that. Something...real. Are you dying to know how much he does? Dying to know...how much he has..loved you?
And those of you who are, pray for me.
It is only the dour god, who hates that any man might find pleasure in being (for he himself does not...only envying, strife, fury) that has sought by perversion to infuse even the simplest of things (yes, that man might even come to hate his own breathing to a perversion of, and to, his perverse dealing with the self...i.e. suicide) with taint of sin.
What a man might lay aside by desire to know this God...is given of liberty, and even pleasure in the laying aside, to that man. He is pleased in having liberty to forgo even legitimate things if he finds it beneficial to his knowing of this God.
Cautions? Surely...but these are given to spare men of grief, not seek to add to a sin burden. I laughingly fear the next OP...
"Is it really "good" for a man to not touch a woman?"...and if it is good...is it not then evil to be found otherwise?
How much we may infer in presumption...and there be exposed as presumptuous...is even to our own reproof and therefore, benefit.
What the Lord says...does not call for nor include our own assumptions of what he is not saying.
But...who doesn't get it? Who has not made to themselves, by wrong inference, a dread burden of life? Till reproved?
Will any deny it?
Step forward any who have not known the rebuke and chastening...we will receive you, and preach the gospel to you. Not for the sake of our imposing rebuke or chastening...to an end we already know is not in our hands to ensure...but to your establishment as sons.
There is something so ultimately unfair in this following command that its dread burden cannot be relieved nor have our perception of it as evil crushed...except by the Lord's hand.
Here we learn to love the "unfair"...when we are won away from all of our own presumptuous sense of justice, our own sense of what is "fair". Mercy and grace...are just not...fair. How much they exceed fairness is ours to explore...but, if one only wants what pleases their own sense of fairness of what is right, and just...you have already de facto set a limit. That limit...will not serve you well.
"Love one another as I have loved you..."
You know who you are. Because you sense the eternal weight and substance of that. Something...real. Are you dying to know how much he does? Dying to know...how much he has..loved you?
And those of you who are, pray for me.
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SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
The PRIMARY purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger. Enjoyment is a secondary gift from God. If you eat for the primary purpose of enjoyment, as with alcohol, then you are eating for the the wrong reason, it’s effects, ......it is filling a spiritual void and therefore a sin. IMHO.
Spineyman
Senior Member
Ecclesiastes 9:7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works:
Ecclesiastes 2:24
Nothing is better for man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God.
Ecclesiastes 8:15
So I commended the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry. For this joy will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:24
Nothing is better for man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God.
Ecclesiastes 8:15
So I commended the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry. For this joy will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun.
SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
I’ve made a career
I’ve made a career of seeking pleasure even to the point of believing delusions, believing my drinking wasn’t a sin. It very nearly destroyed me. It, as with every other sin, starts with believing a lie.......that ....... is not a sin. Once you believe that the insanity is entered into, for the very definition of insanity is believing something not true. Christ said “I am The Way, THE TRUTH, ....., hence the embodiment and origin of all truth. To convince oneself into believing ANY lie is a sin and any sin is capable of your total destruction, spiritual, physical, mental, psychological, and emotional. It’s really that simple.
What all my mistakes have taught me is pleasure is fleeting at best. PEACE, more specific, GOD’S PEACE resting upon me gives me a joy, a peace, and a pleasure as I’ve never dreamed existed. It’s not fleeting as long as I seek and do his will, not mine.
I’ve made a career of seeking pleasure even to the point of believing delusions, believing my drinking wasn’t a sin. It very nearly destroyed me. It, as with every other sin, starts with believing a lie.......that ....... is not a sin. Once you believe that the insanity is entered into, for the very definition of insanity is believing something not true. Christ said “I am The Way, THE TRUTH, ....., hence the embodiment and origin of all truth. To convince oneself into believing ANY lie is a sin and any sin is capable of your total destruction, spiritual, physical, mental, psychological, and emotional. It’s really that simple.
What all my mistakes have taught me is pleasure is fleeting at best. PEACE, more specific, GOD’S PEACE resting upon me gives me a joy, a peace, and a pleasure as I’ve never dreamed existed. It’s not fleeting as long as I seek and do his will, not mine.
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Israel
BANNED
LittleDrummerBoy
Senior Member
Looking around most Baptist churches I've visited in N GA suggests there are lots of Baptists eating much more food than required for basic nutritional needs. Recent statistics show that obesity is a causal factor in 4 times the number of US deaths as alcohol.
But the bigger flaw in your logic is apparent when one considers marital intimacy (sex). Your logic is identical to the Catholic notion that since the purpose of sex is procreation that marital intimacy for the sole purpose of enjoyment is sinful. Surely, you are not foolish enough to suggest that marital intimacy is sinful if not for the primary purpose of procreation, are you?
God is not so rigid, and God does not mind his people enjoying the things he gave us for enjoyment within proper boundaries: sex, food and drink, work, art, music, humor, etc.
GeorgiaBob
Senior Member
Up until just a couple of hundred years ago, ethyl alcohol (from fermentation or distillation) was the primary means to make water safe to drink. Everyone, from the aged to the toddler, drank their water mixed with wine. It was correctly considered necessary to avoid dying. Nothing in the modern world matches the historic requirement to mix wine or spirits with the water you drink. Don't lose track of that imperative when discussing the bible and alcohol.
Yes, throughout recorded history, people have enjoyed the taste and the effects of alcoholic beverages in addition to the need. Throughout history people have attempted to balance the need, the joy, and the risk. The Bible celebrates wine and warns against excess. For some today, when alternatives to wine makes water and other beverages safe to drink, any alcohol is excess.
Something in our genetics makes some people "predisposed" to abuse alcohol. For others, connections between alcohol and lifestyle make drinking anything with alcohol in it dangerous. For those people enjoy your clean healthy lifestyle, avoid alcohol and enjoy life! I would suggest that what is right and just for you may not be the same for others. Please, do not judge others based on your needs.
Yes, throughout recorded history, people have enjoyed the taste and the effects of alcoholic beverages in addition to the need. Throughout history people have attempted to balance the need, the joy, and the risk. The Bible celebrates wine and warns against excess. For some today, when alternatives to wine makes water and other beverages safe to drink, any alcohol is excess.
Something in our genetics makes some people "predisposed" to abuse alcohol. For others, connections between alcohol and lifestyle make drinking anything with alcohol in it dangerous. For those people enjoy your clean healthy lifestyle, avoid alcohol and enjoy life! I would suggest that what is right and just for you may not be the same for others. Please, do not judge others based on your needs.
Spineyman
Senior Member
Yes it is called sin, and the sin nature that dwells in us. But making it though shalt not is not the answer either. Then it becomes law to you and the Law saves no one. Alcohol is not the problem, it is our deceitful and desperately wicked heart that is the problem, and it must be dealt with and sin overcome! Thou shalt not does not deal with the sin nature, it holds you in bondage to that law!
Inuits, Eskimos, and some of the Native American tribes just can`t handle alcohol. They completely lose control of everything when they get a taste of it. And they get addicted almost from the first swallow.
GeorgiaBob
Senior Member
Spineyman and Nicodemus. We are on the same page here. About four decades ago genetic researchers discovered a link between a certain DNA site and extreme alcoholism. Their studies over the last 40 years establish that, for some people (like most, but not all, Inuits), the first drink of alcohol is one too many. That connection was part of what God's people two or three thousand years ago called "original sin" or the "sins of the father."
Just because we now know the mechanism for one source of the sin of alcoholism, doesn't make it less a sin. Nor does it, in any way, invalidate the descriptions in the Bible. We have to remember that the Greek word for we translate as "sin" (as that word was used in the eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago) actually means "to miss the mark," as in an archer in a competition failing to hit a bullseye. To sin is to be less than perfect. Sinners are people who do not always get perfect scores in life. God does not require that we use the exact same words to describe our view of His creation, or walk the exact same path, only that we share in His joy and try to help each other find the way to His salvation.
I don't know about you guys, but I qualify as a sinner many times over. Even though I am not an alcoholic, I find other ways to fall short of the Glory of God.
Just because we now know the mechanism for one source of the sin of alcoholism, doesn't make it less a sin. Nor does it, in any way, invalidate the descriptions in the Bible. We have to remember that the Greek word for we translate as "sin" (as that word was used in the eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago) actually means "to miss the mark," as in an archer in a competition failing to hit a bullseye. To sin is to be less than perfect. Sinners are people who do not always get perfect scores in life. God does not require that we use the exact same words to describe our view of His creation, or walk the exact same path, only that we share in His joy and try to help each other find the way to His salvation.
I don't know about you guys, but I qualify as a sinner many times over. Even though I am not an alcoholic, I find other ways to fall short of the Glory of God.
From growing up around a bunch of Cherokee people and dating a couple Cherokee girls and hanging out on the rez a lot back in my younger days, I'd say that is a racial stereotype that is mostly true. You do not want to be around a bunch of Indians drinking, no matter how good of folks they are are how good of friends they are to you.
SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
Son. You can't see the trees for the forrest.
SemperFiDawg
Political Forum Arbiter of Truth (And Lies Too)
Had an uncle that was married to a Cherokee woman. She got to drinking. He came in and said he was going fishing with his dad. As he drove off she emptied a 22 revolver in his truck door....all 8-9 shots. He said he sure was glad to hear that pistol click on an empty chamber and she held a pretty good pattern on the door for a drunk woman shooting at a moving truck. He didn't keep her long.
A purely rhetorical question:
Is the believers thankfulness for the "enjoyment" provided by God's gifts grounded in personal happiness, or is that thankfulness grounded in the enhancement it contributes to God's work in and through the believer.
>>edit<<
If the latter, would not that same "joy" and thankfulness also apply to the travails which share the same source and effect?
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Israel
BANNED
A man would have to be moved to "disbelief for joy" to appreciate the finding of such. Where even joy...cannot remain too long hidden!
Man...how God loves Adam. Talk about a dry spell!
Man...how God loves Adam. Talk about a dry spell!
LittleDrummerBoy
Senior Member
I can see the pharisees bound up in legalism and trying to make others sons of **** with their silly rules from twisting Scripture.
I don’t drink for health reasons. But, I don’t think it’s a sin to drink.
But for those who think it’s a sin it should be the same offense whether it’s the average Joe or the Pope or anyone.
But for those who think it’s a sin it should be the same offense whether it’s the average Joe or the Pope or anyone.
