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This image: From IMSI's MasterClips/MasterPhotos 202,000 © 1997 Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506 , USA THE
BIBLE ON ALCOHOL
IMPACT
Those who linger late over wine, and who keep trying mixed wines. Do not look at it when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind utter perverse things… (The Bible, Proverbs 23:29-35) Robinson &
Lawler
(1977)
wrote, "For
about 9 million Americans chronic alcoholism severely affects health,
job
security, and family life."
Pulse magazine (August 16, 1985) reported that, worldwide, alcohol abuse cost $100 billion per year, about 1/10 the cost of the arms race! In America 10,000,000 problem drinkers cost the economy $19 billion in lost production plus $14 billion in other costs. The 20th
century
produced
about 300,000,000
problem drinkers and alcoholics worldwide.
IRONIC
Society long associated excessive drinking with manliness: Hard drinking
was
endemic in
eighteenth-century
society… Manliness required you to be a three-bottle a day man. Drink
was
built into the fabric of social life; it played a part in nearly every
public and private ceremony, commercial bargain and craft ritual.
(Berridge
2004)
[In the
1980s]
it was
nothing for friends
to boast of their drunken exploits. (Hodge 2004)
The macho image
of
heavy
drinking took a
dive when Luks & Barbato (1989) showed it can lead to impotence,
reduced
testosterone, and female characteristics such as breast growth:
They [Luks
&
Barbato] say
it is
ironic that in many cultures it is considered manly to drink, and that
the first drinks in adolescence are viewed as one of the "rites of
passage"
to manhood, whereas in fact, heavy drinking can lead to feminisation.
(Sunday
Mail December 17, 1989, p. 31)
PROBLEMS
OF
EXCESS
Kessel and Walton (1965) cited a study comparing families with alcoholic fathers with non-alcoholic families. Divorce or separation was 28% vs 4%. Children who teachers considered "problem children" were 48% vs 10%. Also, in 44%
of
fatal road
accidents
during Britain's 1964 Christmas period at least one person concerned
had
consumed alcohol. (pp 66-67) The suicide rate for male alcoholics
admitted
to a London psychiatric hospital was 86 times as high as the rate in
the
general London population. (p. 164)
In 1974 Time magazine cited studies showing that
• Regular heavy drinking weakens appetite leading to malnutrition. It's also linked to heart and brain damage. • Excessive alcohol reduces the production and activity of white blood cells, hence lowers resistance to harmful bacteria. • 10% of alcoholics develop a cirrhosis-damaged liver, which cannot produce bile (necessary to digest fats).
• 20% of hospital admissions; • 73% of violent crime; • 40% of adult drownings; • 45% of poisonings; • 66% of household and industrial accidents; • 40% of divorces; • 20% of baby bashing. (Hicks 1979)
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness faith-fulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:19-23) Hodge (2004)
reported: "Binge
drinking is
one of our most intractable and expensive health issues, costing $7.6
billion
a year in lost production, absenteeism, injuries, death and disease."
Pengelley (2007) reported: "231,705 children, aged 12 or less (13.2 per cent), live with an adult binge drinker. 40,272 (2.3 per cent) live with a daily cannabis user." The Advertiser reported: "…breast cancer is about 50 p.c. more likely to develop in women consuming three to nine alcoholic drinks a week than in those who drink little or none." (November 10, 1987, p.33) In Russia
drinking
"alcohol
not meant
for consumption such as eau de colognes and antiseptics" caused 43% of
male deaths in the 25-54 age-range. (The Weekend Australian June 16-17,
2007, p. 16)
THE BIBLE
The intention behind biblical
counsel is
longer life, better health, sound mind, and peaceful relationships:
"For they [God's
words of
wisdom] are
life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh." (Proverbs
4:22)
Drunkenness
promotes
the
opposite to "life"
and "healing".
The Bible does not directly discuss other drugs, but the same principles would apply. If it damages relationships, ruins health or promotes crime then its use should be stopped. Kelton (1998) reported: "Of a sample group of drug users surveyed for the study, half admitted committing a crime within the past four weeks." Tobacco has
over
4,000
chemicals, many
dangerous. Smokers age faster and have higher rates of cancer, heart
disease
and stroke.
Brown (1994) reported: "Tobacco kills one smoker in two." The Advertiser reported: "Every day, 50 Australians die from smoking-related illnesses." (November 19, 2005, p. 18) GENETICS
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness faith-fulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:19-23) The Bible,
however, states:
If heavy drinking
or
abstaining
is a matter
of "wisdom" – an attribute that can be learned – then it's also a
matter
of choice. A
representative
from the
[British] Council
of Alcohol said in a 1974 radio interview:
I'd like to get
rid
of one of
the fallacies
of alcoholism. A majority of the work in the past on alcohol by
psychiatrists
and psychologists indicated that maybe the alcoholic had some gross
personality
disorder, neurosis or psychosis as the basis of his alcoholism. Our
work
leads us to believe, and the work of others incidentally, that in fact
the reverse is true, that the alcoholic personality manifesting
psychosis
and neurosis is in fact caused as a result of the alcoholism. The
results
that we can achieve in reformatory work show that two thirds of those
who
suffer from alcoholism can recover.
<>Harvard
psychiatrist
Dr George
Vaillant
authored The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns, and
Paths
to Recovery – discussed in Time magazine by Jane O'Rielly
(1983).
This landmark study started in 1940 and followed the lives of 200 Harvard graduates and 400 working class men. By observing the stages by which 26 graduates and 110 blue-collar workers became alcoholics the study investigated how this happened. Vaillant
concluded, "There is
a genetic
contribution, the rest of it is due to maladaptive life-style…"
<>Therefore, going down that path and becoming an alcoholic is a succession of decisions. However, recovery is possible:
CRIME AND
ACCIDENTS
In Western legal systems criminals intoxicated while committing crimes often got lighter sentences or even no sentence. For example, a drunk driver of an unregistered car hit a cyclist, and kept driving with the victim wedged under the car. The killer's defence was that he was too drunk to remember. The manslaughter charge was downgraded in a plea bargain to causing death by dangerous driving. It's common
knowledge that
alcohol promotes
poor judgment, weakens inhibitions and slows reflexes. Therefore the
decision
to enter such a state is the drunk's responsibility and should not be
an
excuse for crime. Permitting intoxication as an excuse "justifies" the
drunk, is inconsistent with equality before the law, and increases the
number of victims.
The Bible teaches
Some politicians now agree:
He added: "South Australians don't think it's acceptable for someone to be able to say they shouldn't be held responsible for the crimes they committed because they got themselves drunk or took drugs." (Haran 2002) WINE AND
HEALTH
Many things bad for health in quantity are good in moderation:
Wine gladdens life. (Ecclesiastes 10:19) No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. (I Timothy 5:23) Jesus' first "sign" was to convert water in six stone jars to wine. (John 2) By the 1970s
science
established that
wine (particularly red) kills many harmful bacteria and some viruses.
The
Good Samaritan of Jesus' parable therefore took the medically correct
action
toward a man who was mugged and "half dead". He: "bound up his wounds,
pouring on oil and wine…" (Luke 10:34)
Johnson (1991)
writes:
Wine is also good
for
the heart.
A 1974
study of 464 patients by Dr A. L. Klatsby of Guys Hospital in London
found
a correlation between alcohol consumption and fewer heart attacks. MacMillan
(1979)
reported:
"The principal finding is a strong and specific relationship between greater alcohol consumption and a decrease in deaths from ischemic (blocked artery) heart disease," said Dr A. S. St Leger, who led the study… Beer and hard liquor do not have the same protective effects as wine, Dr Leger said. Maury (1977)
listed
dozens of
ailments alleviated
by various wines.
The Sunday Mail reported that wine "may help prevent the deterioration of reasoning and other cognitive skills as one grows older." (August 8, 1993, p. 17) Watts (1999) says: "After decades of controversy, it looks as if a little booze really is good for us." Although drunkenness weakens male sexual performance, regular moderate drinking "cut the risk of impotence…erectile dysfunction, by a statistically significant 15 per cent." (The Weekend Australian, July 7-8, 2007, p. 3) Recent research concludes that two standard drinks of alcohol (15-29g) per day is associated with lower risk of heart attack than heavy drinking or no drinking. (Archives of Internal Medicine 2006, 166:2145-2150) However, if
drinking wine is
for any
reason a bad example – e.g. if a reformed alcoholic is present – then
that
is again reason to abstain:
Pregnant women
who
drink wine
may harm their
unborn child. (Gorman 2006) Cresswell (2007) reports that a pregnant
woman
ingesting five or more standard drinks in one sitting could give the
fetus: "…fetal alcohol syndrome, which results in abnormal facial
features, growth
deficiencies and central nervous system problems such as difficulties
with
learning, memory, attention span, communication, vision and hearing."
TEMPERANCE
In 1784
American
physician
Benjamin Rush
warned that drinking liquor risked one's physical and moral health.
C.W.
Hufeland in Berlin and T. Trotter in Britain made similar claims.
As a result American Presbyterians passed resolutions against "intemperance" in 1811-1812. In 1836 the American Temperance Society endorsed complete abstinence from non-medicinal alcohol and convinced legislators in some states to ban liquor. "Temperance"
became a social
and political
movement in Britain about 1850-1900. It moved from advocating
moderation
to prohibition and was backed by Christian denominations that oppose
all
consumption of alcohol. The USA
enforced Prohibition in the 1920s.
Prohibition
failed because it transferred production and distribution of alcohol to
criminals.
CONCLUSIONS
Do not get drunk with wine… (Ephesians 5:18) Drunkards
hurt
themselves
and their
families and wrongly so.
The cultural promotion of heavy drinking as "macho" contradicted science which revealed heavy drinking as dangerous. Legislators who assumed drunkenness is genetic and passed laws that exonerated people who committed crime under intoxication, acted contrary to science and were "an abomination to the LORD". Temperance organizations that opposed all alcoholic drinks were against the Bible too, because in moderation "Wine gladdens life." The
middle ground,
as in The
Bible, was
correct all along.
REFERENCES:
Bagnall, D. The Bulletin, September 9, 2003, pp 20-26. Behr, E. 1997 Prohibition, BBC. Berridge, V. 2004 History Today, Volume 54 (5) May, pp 18-20. Borsay, P. BBC History, July 2005, pp 44-48. Brown, P. 1994 New Scientist, October 15, p. 4. Cresswell, A. The Weekend Australian, January 27-28, 2007, p.10. Gorman, C. 2006 Time, June 5, 2006, p. 63. Haran, P. 2002 Sunday Mail, January 6, p. 2. Heinz, A. Scientific American Mind, April/May, 2006, pp 56-61. Hicks, R. The Weekend Australian, May 26-27, 1979, p. 13. Hodge, A. The Australian, December 9, 2004, p. 14. Johnson, H. 1991 The Story of Wine, Mandarin. Kessel, N. and Walton, H. 1965 Alcoholism, Penguin. Luks, A. and Barbato, J 1989 You Are What You Drink, Random House Macmillan, S. Sunday Mail, September 2, 1979. Maury, E. A. 1977 Wine Is The Best Medicine, Sheed, Andrews & McMeel. O'Rielly, J. Time, April 25, 1983, pp 48-49. Pengelley, J. The Advertiser, May 21, 2007, p. 9. Robinson, C. H. & Lawler, M. R. 1977 Normal and Therapeutic Nutrition, 15th edition, Macmillan, p. 520. Watts, G. New
Scientist,
November
27, 1999, pp 84-88.
My article about "The Bible On Alcohol" included a quote that said: "Hard drinking was endemic in eighteenth-century society… Manliness required you to be a three-bottle a day man. Drink was built into the fabric of social life…"
Supporting
this is
the
following quote
from a book about the life of William Booth, founder of the Salvation
Army:
But seventy
years before
Alcoholics Anonymous,
Booth saw alcoholism for the sickness that it was. From these pubs he
now
began to recruit his first shock-troops – men who had known the craving
for liquor from infancy.
The
Bible examined for accuracy and relevance in the
third millennium, on this
website:
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