Don't Come Home from Drinking with Jesus on Your Mind, or Jesus Didn't Die So You Could Make a Real Ass of Yourself

I use "ass" in the King James meaning of the word.

Okay, what's stuck in the preacher's craw this morning? The basic comfort that many people in evangelical churches have with excessive consumption of alcohol. Unlike previous generations of PCA ministers, I am not a teetotaler, nor do I believe the Bible demands such of us. One look in my refrigerator would be sufficient to establish this point.

Yet, I find it a sad thing when someone questions whether Christians should consume alcohol, he is immediately met with the objection of freedom in Christ --the liberty we are given from man-made regulations in pursuit of a holy life. Yet, I wonder if some of this protesting is actually against what Paul's intention --professing to be mature in Christ, and is actually infantile Christian behavior, if it is Christian at all. IT is using liberty as an occasion for the flesh.

The truth is this: if you are drinking to the point where you ought not be driving, you are drunk in the Biblical sense of the word. Drunkenness is sin. Don't do it.

Now here me: addiction falls into a different class. People become dependent upon things --sin takes deep and thorny roots. A person struggling to overcome addiction will find nothing but help, support, and counsel for me --Paul's call for gentle restoration.

But, there are a whole host of social drinkers out there --for whom a party just isn't a party unless alcohol is served. Christians who are comfortable consuming multiple alcoholic beverages, treading as close to the line of drunkenness as they dare go, and probably kidding themselves that they have not stumbled over it.

Why not try this: if you like an occasional beer and wine, enjoy one. One? Yes, one. If that's a problem for you, then you have a problem. Do not tell me you can consume five drinks and still honor Christ. Do not tell me you can empty a bottle of wine and still maintain your faculties. Protest your liberty before Jesus, not me.

Or, maybe it's just Monday.