August 16: "Thy love is better than wine."

The lectionary readings for this week include Ephesians 5: 15-20:

15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.

19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Whether or not drinking alcohol is morally aboveboard is a point of contention among American churches. When I was growing up in Western Kentucky, a woman in our community once asked my mother, who enjoys an occasional glass of red wine, how she could possibly consider herself a Christian and drink. When my mother pointed out that Jesus changed water to wine during the Cana wedding, suggesting that He harbored a favorable view toward it, the woman retorted that water was not safe to drink during the time in which Jesus lived. “Then why didn’t Jesus turn the water into clean water?” my mother asked.

However, Christians who aspire to not drink at all have more substantial reasons justifying using grape juice instead of wine at the Eucharist. For those attempting to read the Bible literally, Ephesans 5:18 is one of the major verses that justifies abstaining from alcohol: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” In this verse, Paul portrays getting drunk as an obstacle blocking spiritual guidance, in a straightforward, one could even say didactic, manner: getting drunk runs counter to “the Lord’s will.”

Other biblical passages in keeping with this gist include Proverbs 23:31-32: “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” Romans 13:13 parallels drunkenness and hurtful behavior: “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” In I Corinthians 5:11, Paul explicitly tells his follows not to associate with those who drink: “But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no one is to eat.”

Adding to the complexity of biblical passages on alcohol is the extent to which wine looms large in poetic metaphors. The opening of the Song of Songs, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine,” suggests, like the Cana miracle, that wine is a good thing.

One question that such passages raise is, to what extent might these strictures apply to our lives today? Should they be read literally? Are Paul’s commands not to drink, and not to associate with those who do, remnants of a bygone era in which the Early Church was competing with Greek temples for members? How might one read these passages metaphorically in a manner that resonates in a contemporary context?

One theme in Paul’s writing that Christians who do not drink sometimes use is the importance of not being a “stumbling block” for others. A quarterback of the University of Iowa’s football team, an evangelical Christian, once explained to me that he did not drink, not because he thought it intrinsically immoral, but because he knew that other male students looked up to him as a model: “I’m big enough to handle it. But someone who’s not might watch me and try to do what I do,” he said.

One distinction ministers and pastors may make concerning these passages is between social drinking and addiction. In spiritual autobiographies, it is not uncommon to see a motif of either the writer or someone the writer is close to moving more deeply into their faith at the same time that they get an addiction to drinking under control.

Beliefnet.com quotes Johnny Cash as saying on his alcoholism,

“There was nothing left of me. I had drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I felt there was no hope . . . My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I’d felt over the years, seemed finally complete. It wasn’t. I thought I’d left Him, but He hadn’t left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity, and sobriety. Then my mind started focusing on God.”

Also representative of this motif in personal testimony is Patricia Gaddis’ account of her father, who stopped drinking after being diagnosed with leukemia and being told that his treatment combined with alcohol would be less effective. Gaddis first describes growing up often having to flee her house as a child when her father drank. Then she explicitly links her father’s sobriety with a vector of spiritual transformation:

“Sobriety gave dad a new interest in our living conditions and he began making repairs to the house. He also began attending church, reading the Bible daily, and attempting to make amends to those he had hurt. In his own way, dad followed a spiritual recovery program, turning his problems over to God . . .”

Passages such as these reflect what seems to be a strong need for coherence: to present a life narrative with a recognizable arc.

In an interview about her project on Bill Wilson, credited with founding Alcoholics Anonymous, Susan Cheever (the daughter of writer John Cheever) discusses how Wilson helped create a cultural shift to viewing alcoholics as “bad” to viewing them as “sick.” She also delves into how Wilson applied strands of New England religious thinking, by transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson:

“Well 'God as we understand him.' That's Thoreau. That's Emerson. It seems to me that he took all these different strands--the religious, pure democracy, temperance, the transcendentalist-humanist strand, which was buttressed when he married a Swedenborgian--and wove them all into this astonishing program which has changed the way we think about addiction.”

On Wilson’s paradigm shift, Cheever continues,

“But he had learned that God was an extremely personal concept, and that you can never say to anyone, this is the kind of God you must have. Part of his genius was understanding that there are things no one person can prescribe for another if the person wants to help the other. This is where he really shifted the way we think. He understood that being drunk wasn't a lack of willpower or discipline. He understood that the way to treat addiction is to court a change of heart with the utmost gentleness. That is a really revolutionary idea.”

To conclude, an essay on Christian fiction by Lauren Winner indicates that even among American religious conservatives, attitudes towards drinking may be growing more varied. Describing how recent fiction geared toward a Christian audience includes characters who drink beer with meals and Irish coffee, Winner writes,

“American evangelicals' tendency toward teetotalism has translated into a marked absence of alcohol in fiction and narrative nonfiction for the Christian market. Until recently, if alcohol appeared at all, it was an immediate clue that the character with the drink was not to be trusted, and upon converting, even the most macho protagonists gave up alcohol. But increasingly in the evangelical subculture writ large, there is a greater diversity of opinion about drinking.”

To conclude, opinions on drinking within American Christian communities can be sharply divided. Many Christians self-identifying as progressives drink socially and would bristle at being told that they are doing anything wrong. However, in the spirit of reading the bible with another person’s perspective, it is worth keeping in mind that those struggling with addiction might have a different relationship with alcohol-related verses. Susan Cheever’s writing indicates that simple condemnation is an inadequate response to someone in one’s community struggling with addiction.

--Elizabeth Fels

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