I watched a biography account of Anthony Hopkins on television the other day, (played Hannibal in the Silence of the Lambs and sequel). It turns out that he was a severe alcoholic and at one point after a drinking binge woke up in Arizona, hundreds of miles from his home in Southern California, without any recollection of how he got there. That event convinced him to seek help at AA and he has been sober ever since.
Blackouts are scary. I’ve encountered more than a few; sometimes waking up in a filthy drunk tank with blood all over me, a splitting headache, various wounds, and skinned up knuckles, and absolutely no recollection of what I’d done. Once I woke up in a closet of someone’s home and I had a pair of panties on my head. No one was there, and to this day I have no idea how I got there, or what might have transpired there the previous night. It took me two days to find my car which was finally located about thirty miles away in a parking lot next to a bar.
Weird things happen when people have hangovers. A friend was trying to sleep and a rooster kept crowing out in his chicken pen adjacent to his house. He got angry took his shotgun outside and shot the rooster. As he walked back through his house one of his buddies on the couch sleepily looked up at him and said, “Thank you!” and passed back out.
Recently I went out to eat with some folks and they consumed an inordinate amount of alcohol at dinner and then we went back to a home where they resumed drinking with vigor. The more they drank the louder they became. I watched in amazement as they consumed huge amounts of alcohol and these professional dignified people began acting like silly school kids. The next morning they looked like death warmed over and were embarrassed to no end by their behavior.
I sometimes lament the fact that I cannot indulge in the revelry of drinking. I’m an alcoholic and there can be no such thing as social drinking for me. Every alcoholic would like to be one, but it is the impossible dream and we might as well accept that those days are gone and it is not to be.
I’ve had DUI’s, car wrecks, vicious fights, epic hangovers, ended up in jail, and lost friends and acquaintances because I could not control my drinking. I’ve had friends and acquaintances that become heavily intoxicated and died in car and motorcycle crashes. It is a “sobering” thing to look at someone’s colorless face lying in a casket.
The Bible warns that we should do everything in moderation. It is not a sin to drink alcohol; it is a sin to drink to excess. Jesus performed His first miracle changing water to wine at a wedding celebration. Die hard fundamental religious law folks deny that Jesus turned it into wine and insist it was grape juice, but calmer spirits know that it was indeed wine. If you research the root word used for wine it is exactly the same word used to describe the wine that Noah drank when he got drunk in Genesis 9:21, “One day he drank some wine he had made, and he became drunk and lay naked inside his tent”.
I have no doubt the overwhelming majority of the folks at the wedding where Jesus turned the water to wine were just celebrating and having a grand time at a joyous wedding and were not getting drunk, but odds are that one or two idiots like me were out of control. Did you ever think that at that same wedding celebration, there were people in attendance that were also enjoying the feast and eating sensibly, but undoubtedly there were people there who were overeating and committing the sin of gluttony? What if Jesus had performed His first miracle by adding a few dozen racks of lamb? Would these same folks say it really wasn’t lamb, but a meat substitute? Eating lamb is not the sin, but gorging on it is . . . Drinking alcohol is not a sin – Drinking too much of it is the sin . . .
If the religiosity crowd wants to say that all who attended that wedding including Jesus Christ were drinking grape juice it’s fine with me. Personally I don’t think that is the case. Don’t bother writing me about this, you won’t convince me otherwise, and I won’t convince you. Thus it’s a moot point.
I don’t drink and have lived the horror of it. I don’t advise anyone to drink, because a percentage of those who do, will drink too much and act silly, or stupid and do things that they would never do otherwise, get a splitting headache, spend an inordinate amount of time sitting on the toilet with loose bowels, and also feel like crap; worse they might even end up to be alcoholics like me with many regrets, or dead in a car crash, or in prison for killing someone else while intoxicated, (I’ve visited more than a few of them in prison ministry).
In other words there is very little upside; however if you can have a wine with a delicious meal and enjoy the company that surrounds you, or you can have a drink or two and dance the night away at wedding celebration then go for it.
The Bible teaches that we do everything in moderation. We cannot be like the Taliban and ban everything in life. We cannot ban computers because some folks watch pornography on them; we cannot ban food because some folks eat too much; and we cannot ban alcohol because some of us drink too much; we cannot ban cars or motorcycles because some folks drive them like madmen.
People must be accountable for their actions.
Phil. 4:5
Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.