by Pine_Tree » September 16th, 2005, 5:25 pm
My answer to this sort of thing has always consisted of 3 basic points. I don't have any of the texts in front of me, so I can't list chapter and verse (sorrysorrysorry), but you'll get the point.
1. In the most basic terms, the consumption of alcohol in the Bible is an ordinary, every-day thing that everybody did. This includes Jesus even to the aforementioned point of producing wine for the wedding. Biblical instructions against drunkenness may not be reasonably extrapolated to include ordinary wine-drinking.
2. Jesus teaches that one is made clean or unclean not by what goes into one's stomach, but rather by what comes out of one's heart.
3. (Reductionism argument) Remember Lewis's note early in Mere Christianity about goodness where he writes something like "A cow can be neither very good nor very bad, a dog both better and worse, a boy still better or worse, a man..., a genius..." Well, alcohol has absolutely zero capacity for independent action, and therefore has absolutely no moral qualities whatsoever.
Sometimes this question comes because people have been specifically taught (lack of Biblical support notwithstanding) that certain things are "Christian" and others are not.
But sometimes I think it comes from the error described in the Preface to Mere Christianity, where one is using "Christian" as a personal synonym for "good", "nice", "clean", "decent", "fresh-smelling", or whatever.
Pine
