Christianity Today's recent cover story on N.T. Wright at long last persuaded me to subscribe to a magazine I have long freeloaded from. Which is serendipitous, given that this month's cover story touches on a topic I have been thinking a lot about lately. Alcohol. I thought it would be nice to write about something fun and not at all controversial.
But seriously, what follows is in no way intended to be divisive. I can and do appreciate a variety of perspectives on this issue. However, D.L. Mayfield's cover article on the subject of alcohol consumption ought to be compulsory reading for evangelicals my age. Culture shifts within the church seem to primarily consist of pendulum swings--liberalism to legalism, gospel to law, etc.--and my generation has swung the earlier fundamentalist fear of alcohol completely the other direction. We are almost gleeful in our alcoholic consumption. Mayfield cites the example of evangelical moms talking about needing a glass of wine after a long day with the kids, a comment that regularly shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. Young evangelical men are seemingly expected to enjoy craft beer and bourbon in order to show their all-things-to-all-people bona fides.
As Mayfield points out, though, alcohol is not always morally neutral. Hardly ever, matter of fact. Many people have a disease related to alcohol, called alcoholism. You may have heard of it. One branch of my family has struggled with the disease for generations. Mayfield's contention, then, is that for those evangelicals who pontificate the glories of single malt or who talk about "mommy need[ing] her wine" the most readily available explanation is that they know no one, or think they know no one (or more likely never consider the issue), who struggles with alcoholism. This parochial view allows us to gloss over the dangers of alcohol in favor of a mild form of libertarianism.
Mayfield herself gave up alcohol when she and her family moved into an impoverished apartment complex to reach out to the residents. Alcohol was no longer a fun diversion, but a life-wrecker. It became difficult for her to walk into the neighborhood liquor store and witness the degradation of life surrounding it. And so she gave up drinking. She realized she was free in Christ, which included the freedom to abstain.
Mayfield's temperance emanates from a place of compassion. She is surrounded by the detritus of alcohol and cannot disentangle the substance from its effects in her neighborhood and upon the people she loves. Which is exactly where the impetus for the temperance movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began. Though the movement reached its culmination in the disastrous Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, the fact that it brought freedom to many from the bondage of alcohol should not be overlooked. The temperance crusaders by and large were not fun-hating puritanical prudes, but people whose husbands, brother, and fathers had been devastated by the drug of alcohol. It was rare in that day to have a drink after work to blow off some steam, more likely to blow an entire paycheck in a drunken frenzy. Notably, it was not only "fundamentalist" Christians who led the movement, but progressive believers as well. Alcohol was seen as a life-destroyer and a guarantor of systemic poverty, a role it still quite clearly plays in many communities.
I am not going to quit drinking after reading Mayfield's article. I find her perspective persuasive and I think alcohol is an important thing to think about. We must be careful to be intentional with a substance as powerful as alcohol. Too many of us seem to have thought very little on the topic, except to ignorantly denigrate the very real concerns of earlier generations.
In reading through the gospels in the One Year Bible, I have read repeatedly the passage in the Synoptics when Jesus shares the Passover supper with his disciples on the night of his betrayal. During that final meal he tells his friends: "I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." We are going to party with Jesus someday. And among everything else on that glorious day there will be wine. Wine that we can drink without shame or reproach or fear of captivity. And for those teetotaling believers who want to wait for that day, I say, God bless you. For those convicted differently, I say the same. To each other I say practice charity. To not let either the liberties we exercise or our the convictions we hold become stumbling blocks to one another. Remember, there are ditches on both sides of the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment