The Bible and Alcohol
...Our attitude toward alcohol may well be conditioned by our culture more than we realize. Since the days of Prohibition, many believers have simply assumed that partaking of alcoholic beverages was sinful. What is interesting is that in many other countries God-fearing Christians see no problem with alcoholic beverages. (When I was on sabbatical in England, for example, I heard the pastor at an evangelical church use an illustration which involved alcohol in a positive light. He was speaking about our attitude toward little disasters - such as when one brings home the groceries and the one sack that had the Sherry in it falls to the ground and the Sherry bottle breaks! The very casualness of this illustration put in bold relief the difference in attitude between many American Christians and many European Christians regarding alcoholic beverages. If a pastor in the States were to use the same illustration, most churches would censure him for it if not outright sack him.)...
...One of the hallmarks of modern American Christianity is its preoccupation with a "formula faith." Tremendously popular are conferences that address conflicts between parents and youth and how to resolve them. One well-known such conference turns (occasionally) good advice into hundreds of rules that can suffocate one's walk with God. We are enamored of the "How to" books that work for others and perhaps may work for us. All too often, once a person has found a tailor-made Bible-reading schedule, or a tailor-made pattern of prayer or diet or method of raising children or love-making technique, he writes a book about it and proclaims its universal applicability and even its normativeness. The reason such sells? Because legalism is endemic to human nature. We can package such as "practical Christianity" or "a wise and godly lifestyle" or "principles to live by," but at bottom when such advice goes beyond the scriptures and turns into more than advice, it is legalism. Such a preoccupation with legalism is seen in church membership requirements, missionary and pastoral ordination bodies, and Bible college/seminary codes of conduct. Take a look at a catalog of almost any evangelical institute of higher learning. You will notice that all too often the code of conduct section will spend an inordinate amount of space making grey areas taboo while spending almost no space articulating what the Bible declares to be sinful behavior.
Church historian M. James Sawyer recently spoke at the western regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on Sola Scriptura in the Protestant tradition. In his lecture he noted the irony of the modern milieu:
Among contemporary denominations we find statements such as that of the [denomination's name withheld], who in their licensing and ordination questionnaire asks candidates if they agree that the Bible is the "only and infallible rule of faith and practice" for the believer. (The questionnaire on the very next line asks the candidate if he agrees to abstain from the use of alcohol in all forms.)
The point we are trying to make here is twofold: (1) Christians tend to compile rules and regulations that go beyond what is written; and (2) when such grey zones are considered evil, those who do not abide by such rules are often viewed as "the weaker brother." In reality, the weaker brother in scripture is the one who has too many scruples, not too few...
