I always feel a little strange on Memorial Day weekend. You see, when I was as sophomore in high school, my parents went away for Memorial day and left me at home alone. Big mistake! I threw the party to end all parties. There were people there I’d never seen before, a band, people drinking beer in every room of our house. Half way through the weekend, our house was a disaster. What I didn’t count on was my parents coming home a day early.
It seemed like ever since then, I had a tendency to get in trouble on Memorial Day weekend. But then that was back when I was involved in drug and alcohol abuse.
I was twelve years old when I took my first drink. My mom and adopted father were hosting a Christmas party for several of their friends. They had an open bar, and the more the booze flowed, the less people noticed that I was helping myself to the orange juice and vodka drinks they called screwdrivers. I don’t remember exactly how many screwdrivers I drank, but I do remember spending the night throwing up in the bathroom. I also remember feeling absolutely awful the next day. In fact, I couldn’t drink orange juice without feeling like I was going to throw up for months after that.
Any normal person would’ve learned from that experience, but for me that night was just beginning. However, I wasn’t a normal person. Within a week I was regularly sneaking into my parents’ liquor cabinet. I didn’t care what I drank--bourbon, vodka, brandy--it didn’t matter. The drink was just the delivery system; what I was really interested in was the effect. Alcohol provided a numbness from the pain and confusion I was going through as a twelve year old.
And I didn’t stop with drinking. Soon I was experimenting with drugs as well, and by the time I was 13 years old I was a daily drug abuser. I tried everything I could get my hands on: marijuana, pills, meth, angel dust, LSD. The only thing I never tried was heroin. I figured if I avoided heroin, I wasn’t a drug addict.
For six years I drank and abused drugs on a regular basis. In fact, I can’t remember one sober day from the time I was twelve until the time I quit when I was 18 years old. My grades went from being A’s and B’s to F’s. My last year of junior high school I was suspended three times for getting into trouble. In fact, I failed all but one of my classes my last semester, but the school graduated me anyway, just to move me on to the high school.
That summer between junior high and high school I moved here to Upland. I didn’t get into as much trouble here in Upland, but it’s not because I didn’t deserve it. I continued to abuse drugs and alcohol on a daily basis, as I coasted through high school in a continual mental haze.
It was only through my involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous when I was 18 years old that I was able to finally break free from my addiction. It’s easy to imagine my drug and alcohol problem wasn’t really that bad; after all, I only used drugs and drank for six years. Yet during those six years my life spun out of control, I was unable to sustain healthy relationships, and I consistently turned to drugs and alcohol to numb my pain and cope with life. I was young, but I truly was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
Alcohol abuse and drug abuse are a major problem in our culture. An article in Wednesday’s Inland Valley Daily Bulletin revealed that the year 2001 saw a dramatic increase in binge drinking among Americans (May 22, 2002). Every twenty minutes in our country, one person is killed in an alcohol related automobile crash. I’m sure that number goes up during holiday weekends like this one. According to National Geographic, alcohol abuse costs American society $136 billion and 65,000 lives each year.
And for all our efforts to fight a war on drugs, drug abuse continues to climb as well. Last year approximately 14 million Americans abused an illegal drug. And that doesn’t count people who abuse prescription drugs given to them by their doctor.
Today we’re going to talk about Wising Up About Alcohol. We’ve been in a series through the Old Testament book of Proverbs called Wise Up About Life. In this series we’ve been looking at different topics and how to live with the grain of God’s wisdom in each of these topics. Today we’re going to look at how to wise up about alcohol, and what we say will also apply to drugs as well. Today we’re going to discover three actions we need to take to wise up about alcohol.
1. The Consequences of Intoxication (Proverbs 23:29-30)
Let’s look at vv. 29-30 together. In these two verses we find the first action: We wise up about alcohol when we understand the consequences of intoxication.
We find six different consequences listed in v. 29, each consequence in the form of a rhetorical question.
One consequence is despair, and we find that in the question, "Who has woe?" The Hebrew word translated "woe" here is an expression of despair, a feeling of hopelessness and impending doom. Woe is that overwhelming feeling that there’s no way out, that life is crushing you and grinding you to bits, and that there’s nothing you can do about it. Woe is the suicide note of a troubled sixteen year old girl, it’s the despair of a middle aged man who gives up on life. In fact, it’s no coincidence that 40% of all suicide attempts each year in our nation are alcohol related. Despair is a natural consequence of drug and alcohol intoxication.
Another consequence from this verse is sorrow. The Hebrew word for "sorrow" in this second question is literally, "ouch." It’s an exclamation of pain. Sorrow is anguish and distress, a life filled with inner pain.
The question, "Who has strife?" focuses on the consequence of broken relationships. Strife is a general word that refers to arguments with other people. Again, it’s no coincidence that 80% of all domestic abuse in our nation is alcohol related. Strife also includes bar fights and brawls after sporting events. It includes hurtful words hastily spoken, angry actions, and so forth.
The question about having complaints points to problems as a consequence of intoxication. A complaint is a description of a problem or difficulty in one’s life. In other words, intoxication with alcohol will cause a person to have lots of problems and difficulties that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Whether it’s a suspended driver’s license because of a DUI or an unwanted pregnancy, whether it’s a ruined relationship or a lost job.
The needless bruises focuses on bodily injury as a consequence of intoxication. Drugs and alcohol affect a person’s coordination and equilibrium. But as your equilibrium and your coordination decline the more you drink, your judgment also declines. So you tend to do more dangerous things, yet physically you’re least prepared to survive those dangerous things. Whether it’s driving a car while intoxicated or jumping off a rock into a lake, intoxicated people take needless risks that often harm themselves. Again, it’s not a coincidence that 60% of all emergency room admissions are alcohol related.
Finally the bloodshot eyes refers to dulled senses. A person’s ability to think and see, to hear and decide is dulled and sedated when they’re drunk or wasted on drugs.
Now all of these questions describe the person who lingers over wine. The Hebrew word for "linger" in v. 30 describes a person who remains somewhere longer than they should. In other words, Proverbs is not saying people should never drink alcohol. Proverbs is concerned with people who drink too much, who linger over alcohol more than normal people.
The Bible assumes that in most cases people will drink some alcohol. In fact, virtually everyone drank alcohol for their daily fluid intake in the ancient world. This week I read a fascinating article from Scientific American about the history of alcohol use in the ancient world ("Alcohol in the Western World" SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN June 1998). The article was by Dr. Bert Valee, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Dr. Valee, people have been using alcohol for thousands and thousands of years. Three thousand years before the birth of Jesus the Egyptians and Babylonians were manufacturing beer made from barely and wheat. The Greek physician Hippocrates used wine for medicinal purposes to treat a variety of chronic illnesses. In general, the more wealthy people drank wine, while the less wealthy people drank beer, because it was easier to make. I guess some things never change.
According to Dr. Valee, the use of water for drinking was not widespread in the ancient world because most water supplies were contaminated, especially around towns and villages. Instead people drank beer and wine, sometimes perhaps using diluting the wine with water. According to Dr. Valee, "Throughout Western history the normal state of mind may have been one of mild inebriation."
Alcohol use changed radically in 700 AD when Arab chemists discovered out how to distill alcohol. This led to the ability to produce highly potent concentrations of alcohol. The wine and beer manufactured before the invention of distilling was relatively mild in its alcohol content. So a person had to really drink a lot to get intoxicated. But with the discovery of distilling, much more potent forms of alcohol could be manufactured.
As this technology spread throughout Europe, alcohol abuse became more and more widespread. Even in the 1800s, Benjamin Rush--a signer of our Declaration of Independence--worried about the increasing frequency of alcoholism early America. If he only knew.
The Bible was written at a time when almost everyone drank alcohol to some degree or another. But the Bible was written before people discovered distilling, so most alcoholic drinks had a low level of alcohol in them. So the Bible doesn’t forbid drinking alcohol. What the Bible warns about is getting drunk, being intoxicated by drinking large quantities of beer or wine. This text from Proverbs encourages us to understand the consequences of intoxication with alcohol.
2. The Promises Associated With Drinking (Proverbs 23:31-32)
Now imagine watching a TV commercial trying to sell you a new product. The announcer tells you that using this product will eventually produce despair and sorrow in your life. The more you use this product, the more isolated you’ll become from people. Using this product will cause all kinds of new problems in your life, including bodily injury and dulled senses. Because it’s Memorial Day weekend, you can buy this product at half price. Would you spend your money to buy that product? Of course not. But that’s now how alcohol is sold is it?
Look at vv. 31-32. Here we find our second action: We wise up about alcohol when we distrust the promises associated with it.
Even back when Proverbs was written, people who produced wine tried to make it look cool and refreshing. There was a whole lifestyle associated with beer and wine, a lifestyle that was carefully cultivated by those whose livelihood depended on people buying beer and wine. According to this text, the wine looks refreshing, sparkling in the cup and going down smoothly. But the appearance you see at first is quite different than the viper’s bite it delivers once it’s in your system. It’s like a harmless looking snake that suddenly hisses and strikes you with its venomous fangs.
Some things never change. Our culture today tries to sell us alcohol by creating a fantasy around drinking. Think about the slogans of beer commercials. Budweiser’s current slogan: "True." Miller Genuine Draft’s current slogan: "Pure." Or the current slogan for Coors: "The official sponsor of guy’s night out."
What are beer commercials really selling us? They’re certainly not about intoxication, but there selling a fantasy. After all, the alcohol industry is a $65 billion a year industry. They spend over $2 billion on TV advertising alone, always providing us with the most creative, clever ads on TV. According to Dr. Jean Killbourne, an international lecturer on alcohol advertising, alcohol ads link drinking with happiness, wealth, prestige, sophistication, success, maturity, athletic ability, virility, creativity and sexual satisfaction. The irony is that these are the very things that chronic alcohol abuse destroys.
Yet millions of Americans believe the commercials.
We live with the grain of God’s wisdom when we distrust the promises associated with drinking alcohol.
3. Alcohol’s Addictive Power (Proverbs 23:33-35)
Let’s look at the last three verses, vv. 33-35. More consequences are described in vivid detail for us. A person intoxicated by drugs or alcohol will see strange things. Hallucinations aren’t unusual among drug abusers and long term alcoholics. In fact, some drugs actually specialize in producing hallucinations.
The second half of v. 33 is interesting. In the Hebrew it literally reads, "Your mind will tell you opposite things." This refers to thoughts that are contrary to what you know to be true and right. Your mind will whisper ideas into your mind that are totally out of character with what you believe and what you believe is right.
This explains why a person who’s totally against drunk driving suddenly grabs his keys to go for a ride after a few beers. Why? His mind is telling him things contrary to what he really believes.
Bible scholars debate the exact meaning of v. 34, where it says this person will be like a person sleeping on the high seas. I suspect it refers to the spins associated with drinking too much. When you’re really drunk, every time you close your eyes you feel like you’re spinning around. That’s what leads an intoxicated person to throw up, that sense of spinning.
The intoxicated person also doesn’t feel plan.
But the kicker of course is the very last phrase: "When will I wake up so I can find another drink? "Now why would this person want another drink after such an awful experience? The simple answer is that drinking alcohol is addictive, and the person who drinks too much gradually becomes captive to the power of addiction.
Here we find our final action. We wise up about alcohol when we acknowledge its addictive power.
Alcohol is addictive both physically and psychologically. In fact, I suspect I had an inclination to drug and alcohol addiction long before I drank that first drink or abused my first drug. After all, substance abuse runs in my family. My biological father had a drug and alcohol problem. His father had a drinking problem. My mom also had her own battles with drug and alcohol abuse. Some of my earliest memories as a child are being in a room watching a bunch of adults smoke pot. It wasn’t a matter of if I was going to follow suit, it was simply a matter of when. I don’t know whether it was in my DNA or simply growing up in that environment, but I was an alcoholic and an addict simply waiting for my first drink and my first high.
When you’re addicted to something, just trying harder to stop doesn’t help. Willpower alone is helpless against the power of an addiction. Whenever we as Christians see alcohol abuse as no more than a moral problem we fail to acknowledge the power of addiction. It takes more than moral effort or willpower to conquer an addiction. It takes a spiritual transformation.
Really this is why Alcoholics Anonymous came into existence. In the early twentieth century, most Christian churches viewed alcohol as no more than a moral problem, and that people who were addicted to alcohol were viewed as weak willed. Because of this, the Christian churches back then didn’t have a very good track record of helping alcohol addicted people find freedom. Alcohol Anonymous came into existence when two alcoholics--Bill W. and Dr. Bob--found that the best person to help an alcoholic was another alcoholic.
Historically, AA’s roots are solidly Christian and biblical. Listen to this quote from Dr. Bob in 1948:
"In the early days…we had no twelve Steps…But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book…It wasn’t until 1938 that the teachings and efforts and studies that had been going on were crystallized in the form of the Twelve Steps. I didn’t write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing to do with the writing of them…We already had the basic ideas…as a result of our study of the Good Book".
Dr. Bob then points to Jesus Christ’s sermon on the mount, the love chapter of 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and the New Testament book of James as the primary influences on their principles. The Christian Pastor Samuel Schoemaker was also actively involved in helping the early founders of AA build on a solid biblical foundation, as well as a Christian group called the Oxford Movement.
Now don’t get me wrong: Alcoholics Anonymous is not a Christian organization; it never has been. My point is that it has Christian roots. The reason AA has worked so well when nothing else worked is due to the fact that it was rooted in the wisdom of God. These principles continue to help people today, even though they don’t know that the principles they’re applying in the Twelve Steps come from the Bible.
Now a big issue of tension between the Twelve Step movement and Bible believing Christians has been over alcohol abuse and drug abuse are a disease. Clearly the Bible teaches that abuse of alcohol and drugs is sinful. Drug and alcohol abuse is a moral issue. Yet the Twelve Step Movement uses the language of disease to describe alcoholism and drug abuse.
I’ve discovered that if we focus only on the moral dimension of alcohol abuse, we tend to reduce recovery to simply trying harder, ignoring the power of alcohol and drug addiction. But if we focus just on alcohol and drug abuse only as a disease, we tend to excuse people from their behavior when they’re intoxicated. After all, if I have a disease, then it’s not my fault that I got drunk, drove my car, and crashed into someone else. It’s not my fault if I steal money from my parents to feed my addiction. I’m just sick.
But the issue isn’t as simple as either a sin or a sickness. The reality is that alcohol and drug abuse are both, both sinful acts of rebellion toward God and a disease. You see, the Bible often pictures sin as a disease in our life. The Bible diagnoses the human heart this way: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). The heart is diseased by sin. When Jesus Christ was criticized for hanging out with sinful people, he said, "It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but it’s the sick" (Mark 2:17). Clearly, to be sick is to be a sinner, while to be healthy is to be righteous. Often freedom from sin is described as a healing from a disease. Psalm 41:4 says, "Heal me Lord, for I have sinned against you."
So it’s not either/or; it’s both/and. Alcohol abuse and drug abuse is both a sin and a disease. But it’s disease like in the sense that it has definite symptoms, it has an onset, and it has a preferred treatment. It’s disease-like in the sense that there’s a physical dimension to addiction. But it’s not merely a physical disease, because the solution to addiction isn’t a prescription or a therapy session, but a spiritual transformation. True recovery comes from being changed by God, which makes alcohol abuse and drug abuse a spiritual problem in addition to a physical and psychological problem.
Because of this, it’s not enough to simply condemn drug abuse and alcohol abuse as immoral. We need to acknowledge the addictive power of alcohol and drugs. This means if you’ve ever had a problem with abusing alcohol, you’re probably never going to be able to control it and drink socially. Once you cross that line, you’ll find it virtually impossible to ever go back.
This is why I totally abstain from alcohol. You see it’s not because I’m a pastor. We don’t require our pastors to totally abstain from alcohol. I abstain because what AA says is true about me: One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.
We also acknowledge the addictive power of alcohol by being sensitive to those around us. Now it doesn’t bother me when people drink socially around me anymore, but it used to. And I always appreciated people who cared enough about me to refrain from drinking when they were around me. That’s simply being a loving person.
We’re wise when we don’t underestimate the addictive power of alcohol.
Conclusion
The author of Proverbs doesn’t tell us to never drink. Instead Proverbs tells us to wise up about alcohol. We do that by understanding the consequences of intoxication, by distrusting the promises associated with drinking, and finally but acknowledging the addictive power of alcohol. What we learn here in Proverbs applies just as much to drug use as it does to alcohol use.
Yet as we close our time together we need to pan back the camera a bit, because Proverbs doesn’t give us the last word about drinking alcohol. Proverbs simply shows us the dangerous path of the alcoholic and warns us to avoid walking down that path at all costs. But what if you’ve already started down that path? What if you’re already experiencing the consequences of alcohol abuse in your life? What if you’ve bought the promises of alcohol abuse hook, line and sinker? What if you’re captive to an addictive habit that you can’t seem to shake free from?
The rest of the Bible assures us that the power of God is sufficient to deliver us from our addictions. You see, AA had it right; recovery from addiction doesn’t come from trying harder or will power. Genuine recover comes from a spiritual transformation. And through Jesus Christ, God can transform the most hopeless addict or alcoholic, and bring that person into freedom. I’ve seen the good news of Jesus Christ do it again and again, in people I’d never guess would be able to find recovery. In fact, that’s what people thought about me.
But a life of recovery is also hard work, because it doesn’t come from just going to church or praying a prayer. A life of recovery comes from becoming a different kind of person, a spiritual person, a follower of Jesus Christ. A life of recovery often means living with the desire to drink or use drugs to escape, even after years of sobriety. I haven’t drank any alcohol or used any illegal drugs in almost 20 years, and I still get the urge. I still have dreams about using and drinking. When life is hard and I feel stressed out, I still feel the lure of alcohol and drugs, even after so many years of sobriety. This side of eternity, I don’t ever expect that desire to go away. It’s like a scar I’ll carry around.
But a life of recovery is possible. The New Testament church was filled with former drunks and druggies, former adulterers and thieves, former con men and liars, former gossips and haters, former racists and religious hypocrites, who had all be transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ.
