Offer stands when you are in this neck o' the woods. GREAT steakhouse down the road from (best steak fries around) and they have good Texas Shiner on tap, I'll set you up cat!

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~etexas~

FWIW, I agree with fingolfin. The comparison with food and gluttony suffers from the fallacy of composition. Food is generic whilst wine is specific. To make the comparison work you should match food with drink or wine with junk food.

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Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."

Indeed -- and I have thought a bit about the use and abuse of alcohol. The Scriptures condemn drunkenness which indicates there is a risk in drinking.

One in four people will be affected by someone else’s use of a substance that produces unexpected “kicks.” For the person who picks a harmless drink, relying on their freedom to do so, somebody else usually picks up your tab – there is no absolute prohibition, but there is a risk, and those who are over thirty have lived to see many who have wrecked so much by exercising their rights.

I know I am on the losing side of this debate –

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bwsmith
wife, mother and grandmother!
Severna Park Evangelical Pres. Church (PCA)

Having seen the way in which wine is often described in the scriptures, it would be difficult for me to match it with junk food.

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Davidius
Husband of Emilia
Member: First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham (RPCNA) - Durham, NC
Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, German Literature and Classics

This may explain the old adage about Baptists being Methodists with shoes, and Presbyterians being Baptists who can read. To round out the adage, Lutherans might qualify as Presbyterians who drink to excess, and Episcopalians as Lutherans who know when to say when. - D.G. Hart

Because I have seen too many lives wrecked -- and these folks have been well-educated, and often with positions of leadership, some in the church.

Unless you're condemning anyone who drinks any amount of alcohol, there's no debate to be lost or won. It sounds like you're just expressing the need for caution and the reasoning behind your choice to abstain. There is nothing wrong with that.

Sad, but true. And this is where some Baptists fail. No alcohol but fill the plate. Not a pretty sight.

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Ivan Schoen, Pastor
Maranatha Baptist Church
Poplar Grove, Illinois USA
http://maranatha-sbc.org/
"When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death." Dr. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

My Grandfather created 3 companies from the ground up (one was a publicly traded company), yet for his brilliance the bottle took him, he did not live to see my second Birthday.........the Doctors had warned him he would die.....

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't drink.

You may need to find another comparison then. My point was only to show that you cannot argue wine -> drunkenness, and food -> gluttony, as if they were on a par. One you cannot do without but is necessary to sustain life whilst the other is an option. Also, one should be careful to provide the complete biblical picture of alcoholic beverages and not merely focus on parts which legitimate the use of the fruit of the vine within certain contexts. Blessings!

Anyone who picks up a drink runs the risk of being ensnared – That is not a condemnation; that's a warning – one that many who dot the “I’ ” and cross the “t” in sound doctrine ignore. Maybe this can be classified as sour grapes Never seen anybody with a couple of drinks in them who was as clever as they thought they were – or as restrained and careful in their speech or conduct.

What would make me feel better is if many in leadership would the epidemic that addictions are in the church . . .

And most will not listen until they've ridden the elevator all the way down. Yet, with so many examples, we think that it can't/won't happen to us. . .

Amen, I was a JERK after drink 2! People it took my wife telling me she would leave if I would not cut out the drinking!

So this causes you to oppose all consumption of alcohol?

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
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I agree, Rev. Winzer. And I suppose my posting on this subject could appear imbalanced, but I'm usually reacting rather than promoting when it comes to the polemics of this subject.

But this 'risk' of being ensnared can (and should be) applied to a plethora of things. Which is exactly why it would be wise for Christians to remember that sin shall not be our master. However, the answer is not an unbiblical imposition of abstinence upon the consciences of all believers without exception. Also, just because it has been your experience that you've "Never seen anybody wih a couple of drinks...as clever as they thought they were...or restrained in careful in their speech or conduct" doesn't make it a measure of what is truth. Truth validates experience, not vice versa. If a Christian is acting unbecomingly or ungodly in any manner because of the effects of alcohol then he ought to be confronted by other believers and admonished to abstain, if/since he cannot control himself. That is, indeed, obviously not an area of liberty for him. But such does not apply to all Christians without exception, nor can the case of tee-totalling be biblically substantiated.

I likes my coffee! Paul's "Grandfather" in a Hard Days Night...........What a clean old man! Seriously, I believe in Christian liberty on this matter (I drink nothing stronger than coffee 'cause I'm a lush) I think there is nothing wrong with someone in the Church having a couple of cold ones.......if they can handle it! It is just that I have seen too much abuse of this liberty.

Thanks. I'll probably have sweet tea.

That's what I have............thogh when I feel real hard core.......they make their own lemonade!

The point, Rev. Winzer, is that they are twin sins. Even if wine is more specific than food, whenever one is condemned in the Scripture, the other is alongside of it. Scripture doesn't seem to have a problem comparing the two.

Whether or not food is essential to life is not in dispute and I have not compared the two in that fashion. The essential nature of food over alcohol doesn't let the glutton "off the hook" to claim that "...at least I'm not a drunkard..." - his sin is just as wicked. In fact, gluttony rates far eclipse alcholism if you look at body composition.

Why isn't there indignation? I'm not asking you but it is a rhetorical question. Why are we not angry at leaders about ignoring the epidemic of gluttony in the Church? It's really easy to find the fat people after all - over half of all Americans are overweight, while about 40% are classified as obese.

Finally, while drunkeness is condemned by the Word, abstinence is not then commended as the solution.

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan

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One wonders why God was not so wise as to prohibit its consumption. You speak of alchohol as some sort of force that compels men to sin in over-indulgence. Touch not, taste not is, in fact, the solution contra Paul.

Do you really think that the Pharisees thought they were doing a bad thing by adding to God's Law? In fact, if you read why they did it, they thought they were helping the people of God. You may not like the comparison but what you're describing above is called "fencing the Law". The Law lacks specificity to protect people as I think they ought, thus here is the new command so you don't even have to get close to that which might have made you stumble. Worried about Sabbath-breaking? Prescribe a distance that a man can travel legally because it's not spelled out in the Law and, don't you know, people will sin and go way past a Sabbath's day journey if we don't tell them.

Of course, it's not in the journey that God's Law has been broken to begin with. It starts in the heart and no amount of mollycoddling and fencing of the Law is going to solve that problem.