August 13, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is excerpted from our new book What Is the Emerging Church? This is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.

____________________

Having read about 80 books by emergent church writers over the last several months, I have been impressed with the fact that they love to drink.

The book Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives, for example, contains probably a dozen references to the joys of drinking. The contributors are Karen Ward, Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, and Doug Pagitt. They meet in bars and taverns for theological discussions. They exchange beer-making techniques.

Some members of Spirit Garage meet in an Irish bar in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday for a weekly Theology Pub, a mix of biblical discussion and beer (“Hip New Churches Pray to a Different Drummer,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 2004).

Mars Hill Church in Seattle sets up a “champagne bar” at their New Year’s Eve parties and attendees are reminded to bring their IDs so they can enjoy the bubbly. Mars Hill also has “beer-brewing lessons” for men.

Riverview Community Church in Holt, Michigan, has a RiverBrew night featuring homebrewed beer and religious discussion. Ministry leader Brett Maxwell says: “It’s intimidating for someone to walk into a church having never been there. But if a friend invites them to go hang out, have a brew or two, and hang out with some of the guys from church, that’s a much less intimidating environment” (“Holt Ministry Celebrates Its Love of God and Beer,” Lansing State Journal, Feb. 29, 2008). When asked what Jesus would drink, Maxwell replies, “I believe he would sit down with people in the bar, and he would drink what they were drinking, and he would be happy to do that.”

The Journey in St. Louis, Missouri, hosts a “Theology at the Bottleworks” where participants “grab a beer and discuss political or spiritual topics, such as the role of women in society, the legal system, or animal rights” (“Brewing Battle Missouri Baptists frown on beer as evangelistic hook,” Christianity Today, June 29, 2007).

Jim West has written “Drinking with Calvin and Luther” to promote the idea that alcoholic beverages are a gift from God, something not only to be allowed but celebrated. He says, “They reveled in it as a gift of God.”

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

It is true that some of the Protestant Reformers drank alcoholic beverages, but they are not our authority. They also “baptized” babies and drowned Baptists!

It is true that there are instances in the Old Testament in which God allowed His people Israel to drink alcoholic wine, but there are many things in the O.T. that we do not practice today.

I believe that Christians today should not drink alcoholic beverages for the following three reasons, among others, and I am convinced that these are universally applicable:

1. THE BIBLE WARNS THAT WINE AND STRONG DRINK IS A MOCKER AND DECEIVES MEN. “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1).

To say that alcoholic beverages can be consumed in moderation sounds reasonable, but very few drunks have ever set out to become a drunk. It is an irrefutable fact that a man that does not drink at all will never get drunk and will never become a drunkard.

All of the emerging church drinkers admit that the Bible forbids drunkenness, but all of their talk about the delights of drinking and beer making, of “a Guinness” and “a round of imperial pints,” makes me wonder if they don’t sometimes get a bit tipsy at their drinking confabs, not to say drunk! How inebriated does one have to be to be drunk? Do emerging churches ever need to appoint “designated drivers”?

I doubt Noah planned to get drunk and to cause so much trouble for his grandson, trouble that has abiding consequences to this day -- but wine is a mocker. My maternal grandfather drank before he got saved and when my godly grandmother married him she made him promise that he would never touch a drop of liquor, and that is a promise which he made. But one day he and another carpenter were working on a house and the other carpenter talked my grandfather into having just a sip “to cool the tongue.” They both got roaring drunk and ended up in jail, and my granddad was a deacon in a Baptist church! He was deeply repentant and was restored and never drank another drop as far as anyone knows, but it was a powerful reminder to him that wine is a mocker.

Alcohol has the ability to deceive and corrupt. One can never know if he will control it or it will control him. The instruction in the book of Proverbs 20:1 tells me that the wise man leaves it entirely alone.

The following is a wise statement from John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, 1891:

“From observation, at an early age I became convinced that mere Temperance Societies were a failure, and that Total Abstinence, by the grace of God, was the only sure preventive as well as remedy. What was temperance in one man was drunkenness in another; and all the drunkards came, not from those who practised total abstinence, but from those who practised or tried to practise temperance. I had seen temperance men drinking wine in the presence of others who drank to excess, and never could see how they felt themselves clear of blame; and I had known Ministers and others, once strong temperance advocates, fall through this so-called moderation, and become drunkards. Therefore it has all my life appeared to me beyond dispute, in reference to intoxicants of every kind, that the only rational temperance is Total Abstinence from them as beverages, and the use of them exclusively as drugs, and then only with extreme caution, as they are deceptive and deleterious poisons of the most debasing and demoralizing kind.”

Consider, too, the following testimony that a reader sent to me on this subject:

“Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have firsthand knowledge of what drinking just one drink can do to a family. My dad at age 15 was put on a horse behind a neighbor man, rode into the nearby town and took his first drink. From that day forth he was hooked and became an almost lifelong alcoholic. The suffering that our family went/is going through is unspeakable. Dad accepted Christ at age 62, and became a teetotaler. He could not stand for his alcoholic friends to stop by and offer him a drink as they always had in the past. Because of his alcoholism and verbal abuse of my little sister, she will never recover. It has affected our family in a terribly adverse way all of the years. My sincere recommendation is NEVER TOUCH IT, for you know not what the first drink of it will do. It is sort of like the first temptation to take the first bite out of the apple in the garden. Millions of homes are broken and destroyed, souls in hell, and in torment here on earth, as a result of alcohol.”

Can the emergents guarantee that they and their drinking buddies will never get even a little drunk? Can they guarantee that they will not tempt someone to become an alcoholic? No, they cannot, because “wine is a mocker.”

2. THE BIBLE INSTRUCTS THE BELIEVER NOT TO GIVE OFFENSE IN ANYTHING. “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be save” (1 Cor. 10:32-33).

I personally quit smoking a few months after I was saved and it was not because I thought it was wrong at that time or because I was concerned about my health; it was because I knew that it could offend others. I wanted my testimony to be pure of offence so that God would use me and I would have eternal fruit for my service for the Lord. I didn’t want to be witnessing to someone and have them possibly ignore me or be distracted because they saw a pack of cigarettes in my pocket.

If that is true for smoking, and it is, then it is even truer for drinking alcoholic beverages. It is a fact that many unbelievers think that a believer should not drink. They have higher standards for Christians than some Christians have for themselves. Consider Utah, where even unregenerate Mormons believe it is wrong to drink alcoholic beverages! How would Mormons look upon non-Mormon Christians who drink?

Even the possibility that someone would be offended because of my drinking should be sufficient for the believer to put it out of his life, and that possibility is very great in modern society. Paul was willing to stop eating meat entirely in this present world if he thought someone would be offended and his testimony hurt (1 Cor. 8:13), and eating meat is a perfectly legitimate activity. How much more should a believer be willing to give up alcoholic beverages, which are highly questionable at best and have the potential in themselves to cause harm (which meat does not)!

3. THE BIBLE COMMANDS THE BELIEVER TO ABSTAIN FROM ALL APPEARANCE OF EVIL (1 Thess. 5:22).

That is a far reaching exhortation. Alcoholic beverages are a great evil and curse in modern society. Consider the automobile wrecks, the disease, the adulteries, the lewdness, the divorces, the neglected children, the abused wives, the waste of money, the gambling, the blasphemy, the pure foolishness. Look at the beer and liquor ads, how they always flaunt sensuality and irresponsibility. In January 2005 the Royal College of Physicians in England warned that Britain is suffering from an epidemic of alcohol-related problems that is fuelling violence and illness throughout the country (The Telegraph, Jan. 3, 2005). The same epidemic is raging throughout the world.

If anything has the appearance of evil today, it is alcoholic beverages, and the Bible does not merely suggest that we abstain from all appearance of evil; it commands us to do so!

It is also important to understand that there is a dramatic difference between the alcoholic content of wine today and that of Bible times. The following quotes by Norman Geisler and Robert Stein are from Focus in Missions, September 1986:

“Many wine-drinking Christians today mistakenly assume that what the New Testament meant by wine is identical to wine used today. This, however, is false. In fact, today’s wine is by biblical definition strong drink, and hence is forbidden in the Bible. ... Even ancient pagans did not drink what some Christians drink today” (Geisler).

“To consume the amount of alcohol that is in two martinis today, by drinking wine containing three parts water to one part wine (the biblical ratio) a person would have to drink over twenty-two glasses” (Stein).

As for the idea that Jesus made and drank alcoholic wine, I would point the reader to the following article by the late Bruce Lackey --

http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/didjesus.htm.

____________________

The previous is excerpted from our new book What Is the Emerging Church? This is available from Way of Life Literature. If it is not yet available through the online catalog, it can be ordered by phone or e-mail with a credit card.