How to Drink Alcohol As A Christian

I'm here leaving aside the debate on whether this is possible, which even the fundamentalists are conceding in theory though they make sure to throw up enough practical obstacles to allow them to keep their precious prohibition.

Rather I'm discussing for those of us who already know that no thing is evil, and all are lawful, how it might practically be done.

First of all, in order to do anything at all as a Christian, one must develop Christian virtues. Every action in life requires a certain set of virtues, in various proportions.

Drinking requires the following: sobriety, moderation, self-denial, and charity.

The virtue of sobriety demands an awareness of one's surroundings and the meaning of one's choices, as well as a steady determination to follow one's chosen path without being tossed by giddy impulses. It is a sense of restraint and inhibition that protects a person from unconsidered actions.

The virtue of moderation is one that is common to almost all models of virtue. It forbids greed, gluttony (which the scriptures often list as a companion sin to drunkenness) and other excesses of the flesh. As a positive virtue it is related to sobriety and is a feeling for decency in one's pleasures and an instinct that to seek more than one needs leads to a clogging of the spiritual aspects of one's being.

Self-denial is a virtue that requires sobriety and moderation. Self-harm is going too far. For instance the early church had to forbid self-made eunechs from becomming clergy because there was way of thinking in which young men were so zealous to prove that they were morally spotless that they would mutilate themselves to remove any possibility of suspicioun. Our age is probably more self-indulgent than not; but certain personalities, usually those attracted to Bill Gothard and his ilk, find their temptations in a pseudo-religious urge to throw away vast amounts of good things unnecessarily. I believe the ability to deny oneself is more important than the excessive practice of it, though practice can help bestow ability. Self-denial must be a means to an end because enjoyment is itself a virtue when what one enjoys is good, and when one enjoys it within the hierarchie of goods.

And finally, charity. Love is the foundational virtue, the seed of which gives rise to all the others. Likewise it is the peak of virtue, the one at which a good man arrives, mature, when he has aquired all the others. Learning it is a life-long practice and it would appear in the list of virtues needed for any action in Christian life. Charity in the common speech is a sub-virtue to love; it is particularly the love that moves one to make room for one's fellow man. This will be the particularly Christian aspect of how to drink. Any decent person knows that the first two or three virtues are necessary; love is the especially Christian slant on this question.

And now to the particulars. Hopefully it will be obvious how these virtues might play out in the following guidlines. These are not rules but they are my opinions and I think they are good ones.

1. Drink with purpose. That is, don't get in the habit of walking in the door and grabbing a beer can on the way to the bathroom or sofa. Alcohol is good, but like all good things it has a purpose. Traditionally the purpose of alcohol is to cheer the heart; to assist in celebrations; to ease pain and discomfort; and for ceremonial uses. If you find yourself drinking too much it may be that you are drinking in an unconsidered (not sober) way. Josh and I try to save drinking for occasions. If we can't say what the occasion is it's not one. Dates are our main use but we can think of other possible uses.

2. Don't drink early in the day. It's just decent and has always been thought so to make sure that one's main responsibilities are past before one starts to drink. Even where there's no possibility of becoming intoxicated, drinking alcohol is a setting-aside of that sharp shade of awareness that any serious person knows they need during the day. This is a rule our culture understands.

3. Dilute. Much has been made of the fact that wine in the Bible times was greatly diluted. However well-mannered society of our own times also pays attention to how much alcohol is being consumed in ratio to consumption of food and water. If Josh and I share a cup of wine at a dinner date (probably 10% alcohol) we often drink about four times as much water as wine, in addition to the food. This, along with our other rules, prevents any noticeable intoxication. Another good choice is coolers. The last cooler I had was 3.4% alcohol. I still drank water with it.

4. Drink slowly. That half-cup of wine at dinner I mentioned earlier would still intoxicate if downed in a gulp. Wine is meant to savor. A tiny sip at a time is exhilarating just in terms of the taste. Coat your tongue; breathe in a little to get a fuller sense of the taste before swallowing. And thank God for this unique concoction. Then take some water and some food and talk a little before the next sip. This kind of moderation actually enhances the enjoyment because it makes what you are enjoying more rare.

5. Don't drink or talk about drinking in front of someone who could be troubled in their faith by seeing you do it. And here we have to make an excursion into the land of conscience-bending.

This is the nation of Prohibition; it hasn't even been a century yet. There is a lot of hyped-up stigma attached to drinking. This was created by social activists who thought they could prevent drunkenness and domestic abuse by making it unthinkable to drink at all. So you are going to run across two kinds of people who are offended in two different ways by your drinking.

The first crowd wears their offense as a badge in order to badger you into following their conscience rather than your own. This is not the weaker brother. They are strong. In what I don't know, but they are definately strong. They will do the same thing if they see your kid in a pair of socks with Disney's Mickey Mouse on it.

Then there are the people who actually have weak, that is, undecided, consciences. They would feel guilty about drinking, making it sin for themselves, but they might do it anyway if you encouraged it. Or maybe they are sober people who have decided not to drink because they feel it would become their weakness if they ever started. This is a description of one of my relations and I never try to win him over to my position. Better that he enjoys his virgin marys and his gatorade and his water and his grape juice and remains untroubled in his conscience than that I should excercise my liberty in his face.

To sum up there are very good reasons to drink and very good reasons not to drink. The only people we have no tolerance for are those who impose themselves and their progressivist rules on us. As G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown likes to insist, that's a Muslim rule, not a Christian one!

In the meantime, the excercise of these virtues in all the delights of the palate as well as other physical pleasure can make better people of us.

Does anyone else have good guidelines for drinking?