The Evils Of Alcohol

From the flustering Prohibition - the only Constitutional amendment ever to be repealed - to the everyday complexities of liquor laws, American society has argued and agonized over alcohol for several centuries. The issue has often served as a sort of therapeutic punching bag for the ills of society, as it tends to naturally elicit an emotional response.

Christianity is, as usual, caught in the middle of the argument: affirming God's creation as good while at the same time denouncing man's abuse as evil. (Contrary to popular belief, the Truth often sits on the fence - which is harder than it looks. It is a most uncomfortable position to maintain, mostly due to the narrow center of balance, but also because of the disconcerting predicament of being stoned from both sides.)

I am indebted to a rather thorough article from Wikipedia on Christianity and Alcohol for the three main categories of Christian "Alcohology": moderationism, abstentionism, and prohibitionism. Moderationism remains on the fence; abstentionism and prohibitionism have fallen off. The latter two are reasonable enough, but there is one more authority we must reckon with, for we have yet to ask what God thinks.

To us fussy conservatives, the Bible is alarmingly casual about alcohol. We may quote the warnings readily enough, but tend to skip over the prescriptions, or the injunctions to just have a good old time.

Truth be told, the Bible is overwhelmingly positive about wine, as it is about most other good things. It is merely another wholesome ingredient - like sunshine, or song - in the joyful, healthy, God-centered life. (As Chesterton writes in Heretics: "'Wine,' says the Scripture, 'maketh glad the heart of man,' but only of the man who has a heart. The thing called high spirits is possible only to the spiritual.")

Abstinence may certainly be a virtue, only in the sense that fasting is a virtue. Few people advocate fasting as a way of life - or perhaps the doctrine has been a victim of natural selection.

A friend recently shared with me an article exploring the proper observance of Communion in connection with the issue of alcohol. While I am not at all convinced that observing the sacrament with grape juice is "sinful practice," I found the article enlightening and the argument for wine unexpectedly persuasive. It's worth considering.

A day will come when all our silly scruples will fall from our eyes like scales. When we will make the earth tremble with our dances and the hills echo with our shouts. When creation will be restored to a glory more dazzling than her first, and the Kingdom will begin with a banquet that never ends.

Shall we drink to it?



"Don't teach me about moderation and liberty / I prefer a shot of grape juice..." - Derek Webb


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Thinking About Writer's Block

Um....

Ack!

grrr....

Uh, no!

Hmmm.

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Waiting for the Wheat

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;

And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.

For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. - Mark 4:26-29

Too many of us treat the Kingdom as a commodity; something to be measured and manufactured. This mechanistic mindset seems to be a reflection of the industrialized thinking of the age, which has largely lost touch with soil and sawdust: those elemental substances that speak silently of darker, deeper things.

As the passage above intimates, in gentle rebuke, the Kingdom of God is not moving down some spiritual assembly-line. It is rooted firmly in the dirt - like the righteous man of Psalm 1 - like a tree. (See the immediately following parallel parable in Mark.)

A tree may very well be the ultimate expression of dynamic permanence. It is alive, yes; it is changing, yes; but mostly it is there.

You can not make a tree, or for that matter anything else that is organic and alive, out of parts; it must be nurtured and grown, and even then the process proceeds only as fast as the rain, sun and soil allow. So with the Kingdom of God. Quiet, hidden, unhurried, God's servants go about their daily business with a serene confidence in the gradual fulfillment of His work.

And it is work. The scriptural challenge is to embrace the waiting and the inevitability as truths, while simultaneously avoiding laziness and lethargy. Just because the harvest comes in its own good time does not mean there is nothing to do - on the contrary. I know of few labors more demanding than farming or orcharding; there is little luxury and much responsibility.

This whole perspective is diametrically opposed to the core ideology behind Reconstructionism and Dominion theology. These would-be redeemers of society, like modern-day zealots, seek to impose the Kingdom from the top down. The end is noble, but the means are sadly misguided. It has proved quite difficult to grow trees by hanging leaves in the air.

Rich Mullins understood: "New Jerusalem won't be as easy to build as I hoped it would be / As I hoped it would be easy to build / New Jerusalem won't be so easy to build / there's many bellies to fill and many hearts to free / Gotta set them free" The point is that the whole thing is more about freeing hearts and filling bellies than convincing minds and winning elections.

The church could use a few less politicians and a few more Johnny Mustardseed's.


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Just a Doorkeeper

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. - Psalms 84:10

A Grief Observed

As I continue exploring the incredible literary legacy of C. S. Lewis, my journey has brought me to his signature journal of bereavement, A Grief Observed. This diminutive little volume was written upon the death of Lewis's wife, Joy Davidman Gresham, and is anything but a coolly calculated analysis. Every page is seared with hot tears.

To begin to grasp the character of the book, consider this anecdotal backdrop: "A Grief Observed describes [Lewis's] experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that Lewis originally released it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. However, so many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief that he made his authorship public." Certainly a rather peculiar situation to find oneself in: being urged to purchase your own possessions.

It is impossible to witness grief of this intensity without inquiring into the intense nature of the love that preceded it. Jack's marriage to Joy, after the latter had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, was a poignant blend of the erotic and the esoteric. Their mutual grasp on the nature of life and love made for an extraordinary relationship, as together their minds and hearts danced into and beyond the depths of human experience. And then it was over.

The only book I have read of a similar nature and caliber is A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. (Incidentally, in mute testimony to the man's inescapable influence in Christian literature, C. S. Lewis plays a prominent role in this story, as friend and counselor to the Vanaukens.) It is with several caveats that I recommend the book, which is to be taken, like most things, with a grain of salt.

Both books are brutally honest and full of that righteous recklessness that marks the heart that burns for heaven. Somehow, in the midst of it all, Lewis and Vanauken managed to capture their anguish with astounding coherency. Making the real readable is never an easy thing to do.

There is something stern and gloomy about reading these searching, retrospective thoughts while still an idealistic, forward-looking young man. But our lives are choked with both laughter and lamentation, and weeping remains the watchword of the wise.

Yes, joy often comes in the morning, and mercifully so; but the night returns, and death remains as sure as December. So we work and wait for that cloudless day when we will awake in the ultimate morning and rejoice in the redemption of the riddle.

After all, it's the hungry who find their way home.


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