The Wildy Accepted Christian Hypocrisy: Boozing
Man, this blog is a long time coming. Let's talk about alcohol, my Christian friends. (Friends not in a condescending tone but in a plea for you to remember our context of pals before I spill my heart).
What the heck are we doing!?!?
I'm a formulaic person. I love when A+B=C. It's predictable. It's tidy. It's always right. Unfortunately for me, God's standards for living out the Christian faith is not as black and white as I (and many many others) would like it to be. Life is sometimes grey. His teachings aren't always clear. Life gets messy. So when the Bible is very clear about specific things, what relief. Concrete answers. No having to sit and listen for right answers and hope we heard God correctly.
So when God is clear, and we still ignore it, what the heck are we doing!?
Be careful or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life. (Luke 21:34)
Do not get drunk on wine (Ephesians 5:18)
Similarly... Romans 13:13, Galatians 5:21, 1 Timothy 3:3, 1 Peter 4:3
We're cherry-picking.
Picking and choosing when we obey based on how we feel or what we want. That is Christian hypocrisy. A wild faith in an unseen holy God deserving our full love and pursuit - and yet willful disobedience when His instructions conflict with what I want. To be clear, I don't mind drinking. I'll pass on wine or beer but hand me a hard cider! The problem God addresses is when it's too much. Self control.
I admit, as I was writing this out, I couldn't help but think "Why, God? Why is getting drunk so bad? Why call it out clearly so many times?" I don't have the answer. I'm not God. But I have watched the effects of alcohol. I'm sure you have too. The person who loses control. Their relationships become damaged. They lose trust. They suffer financially, emotionally and physically. Maybe those are hints at the answer. We lose control, our ability to reason, and bad things can happen.
Maybe God knows best after all.
Maybe rules, like this one, are meant to spare us. But instead of trusting and obeying, we make excuses. We compartmentalize our faith and our decisions. We deserve to relax. We don't want to be a Debbie-downer. We want to have a good time. We're being safe. We don't drive. We're not harming anyone. We're only getting a little drunk... or only drunk once in a while. Still a big ol' problem:
God said not to.
That's not my beliefs or standards I'm projecting on others: it's God's. Unlike our other failures to live a consistent Christian life, the world's not shaming us for this one. People buy us another round for our birthday, take us out-on-the-town for our bachelor parties, and offer beer-after-beer at our backyard bbq's. It's not just unbelievers either. It's our fellow Christians. Getting drunk together without hesitation. What am I missing? I'm confused.
Your thoughts?
*To clarify, the struggle to obey is normal. Definitively one I identify with in many other ways. The problem is when we don't call them a problem. When we convince ourselves, or just plain ignore, that' it's wrong. That's what I think so many people do with getting drunk. That's the issue.