Alcoholism: Is It a Moral Issue or a Disease?

King Alcohol and Its Ministers

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

A Neutral Object Turned Moral by Human Use, Not an "Either/Or" but a “Both/And"

The Scriptures present us with a dynamic tension in which “Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1), but also, “Wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart” (Psalm 104:10), making a simple analysis more difficult than a simple judgment or moral or physical disease. American Evangelicals often mistake the neutrality of a physical object as the neutrality of moral action in the use of that object. Such a stance is poorly thought through and must be reevaluated. Pornography is most definitely a moral problem, violating the commandments against adultery and fornication, along with Christ’s commandments against looking at a woman to lust after her in one’s heart (Matthew 5:28), but the colors with which a pornographic image is painted or printed are neutral. Letters of the alphabet are often used in blasphemy and evil speech, and yet they are also used to spell out the Good News of the Gospel. The active ingredients of many psychotropic plants are highly damaging to mental function and to families of those addicted to them, but they can also be made into valuable medicines that help people in unique ways. Sexuality is a very difficult issue to address, since much immorality and negative life decisions are the result of misuse or mismanagement, and yet, sexuality is the dynamic engine of healthy family life and the absolutely necessary ingredient for the creation and maintenance of Christian families. 

Many technological developments contributed to the scourge of alcoholism within Western culture, the greatest being the availability of cheap hard liquor in the middle of the 17^th century, created by the abundant sugar plantations in the New World under English, Spanish and French colonizers. This market drove the distillation of spirits as a way to preserve and export cane sugar in the form of rum and brandy and demanded the human sacrifice of slaves on a massive scale. Since the Wesleyan Anglican and Methodist proscription of alcohol at the very beginning of the Second Great Awakening, and the proliferation of spiritual sects that prohibited alcoholic consumption during the era of Great Revivals and National Prohibition, the neutral nature of alcohol was contested, and, for good reason, the chemical itself was labeled a “moral evil.” We tend to forget the brutal relationship between liquor and slavery and its destruction of the poor in the 18^th-20^th centuries as the anesthetizing drug of choice. 

Holy Scripture on the Good and Bad of Wine

In scripture there are good and bad uses of wine. There are multiple references of wine as an offering to the Lord (Lev 23:13), a blessing, a healing balm, a sign of God’s favor, a part of the Hebrew diet, an expression of joy and a medicine (Psalm 104:15, Proverbs 31:6, Luke 10:34). No Passover would be complete in an Orthodox Jewish home without the shared cup of sweet wine, and no Holy Eucharist complete without that same wine in the Cup of the New Covenant of Christ’s Blood, transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit. There are many scriptures that describe wine and its abuse as a curse, the decision of fools, a disqualification for leadership, and the sign of a sluggard and glutton (Proverbs 20:1, 23:20, 29-35, I Corinthians 6:19-20, Galatians 5:21, I Timothy 3:8). Obviously, if there is such a wide range of ideas associated with wine, there are also biblical commandments for its proper use. Such is absolutely the case and we have many exhortations not to desire it, along with fine “dainties” (Proverbs 23:3), and that wine should be avoided outside of a very limited context. This is a neutral biblical philosophy of alcohol, but a biblical description of alcoholism is completely negative. 

The Lord’s Supper of Wine and Bread

The Lord’s Supper presents Christians with the finished work of the Cross and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and is the ultimate good that we can experience in this life, and up until the invention of Welch’s Grape Juice in the late 1800’s, the Church had always celebrated the Lord’s Supper with wine, as Christ himself did. Apostolic Churches have all used wine and see in it an important area of restraint and balance, and the ancient canons of the Church describe wine and oil as an expression of gladness during the celebration of feasts in honor of Christ and His saints. The early Lutheran, Calvinist and Baptist confessions all make mention of wine as a requirement for the memorial. Christ’s first miracle in Canaan was also the creation of wine from water and the blessing of a marriage feast (John 2:1-12), which, despite protest and explanation of “new wine”, was certainly alcoholic, simply because science shows that the fermentation process starts immediately after the expression of grape juice and that the lack of refrigeration in the ancient world made it impossible to have completely non-alcoholic juice used in any social context. Thus, a blanket statement against wine is an unwise generality. What is needed is a biblical teaching that makes a clear distinction between the good, created resource and its abuse, which is use outside of the boundary of God’s will for our lives.

All Things in Accordance to God’s Will

Therefore, our views must always be mediated by the facts of God’s creation, His moral law, and our obligation to the world to live in it in accordance with God’s purposes. Thought of in this way, almost all things (including alcohol) are good, but all things must be managed in a spirit of humility, love and submission, appropriately, under right spiritual authority, for the glory of God and the edification of those around us (Romans 14:1-12 and I Corinthians 6:12). 

Alcohol as a Cultural Gauge of Shared Virtue

A nuanced view of alcohol comes with a danger, since it allows for the use of wine in limited medical or social settings. However, once the decision to drink has been made, the process of knowing where to stop becomes a delegated, communal task, since the incentive to stop drinking decreases with the intake of alcohol and judgment can be impaired within just a small amount of alcoholic consumption. Therefore, the decision to drink is a tricky one and cannot be left up to “individual choice.” Abuse often comes as a result of social setting and of not having clearly defined rules beforehand, or within the context of private drinking, where one cannot regulate their own intake. This is where the text of “Working with Children of Alcoholics” shows the effect of culture on the use of alcohol (page 27). 

Cultural Control Vs. Personal Conviction

Cultures that allow for stringent control of alcohol, such as the Jews, Wesleyans, or the monastic religious orders of the Ancient Church, have checks and balances placed within the culture that allows for the moderate use of alcohol, but a strong moral judgment against drunkenness. By eliminating these checks and balances by overly reactionary and un-biblical church teachings, which has stressed the importance of the individual and his or her convictions up and against the teachings of the church and the experience of culture, each individual must chose where to stop on their own, and this is impossible. By stressing the agency of the individual, contemporary Protestants have made social regulation impossible. If there is not a joint sense of what is appropriate, or if the rules are left to the individuals to decide, by the time someone’s judgment is inhibited, they cannot make the decision to stop drinking. Therefore, a society’s morality can easily be gauged by their approach to social drinking. If there are no rules of moderation or abstinence, it is very unlikely that the culture has been civilized by the Gospel and its message of mortification of the flesh and self-control as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, which teaches against being filled with wine, and instead instructs believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Colossians 3:5, Romans 8:13, and Galatians 5:22-23). It is absolutely essential for those who lack a culture where behavior is strictly controlled by group rituals and mutual-enforcement of Christian values to avoid alcohol completely.

A Moral Evil Becoming a Physical Sickness

With the biblical commandments to avoid alcoholic abuse and addiction, and with the cultural precedents for a positive, virtuous limitation of alcohol contrasted with the negative, ugly, and life-destroying effects of individualized consumption, the process of becoming an alcoholic appears to be founded in moral decision and the virtue and vices of surrounding relationships. These moral decisions, once regularized, create a cycle of dopamine and serotonin that produce organic dependence and addiction. This organic dependency is a physical symptom of these decisions and manifest as malfunctions of the bodily system – a physical sickness. This physical sickness requires physical medicine to deal with it properly, but these healing therapies are useless if the underlying moral problems are not dealt with and resolved. 

Repentance and Life Change as the Answer to Alcoholism

As with all moral problems, thought processes and habits much changed, based on the individuals experience with the truth, resulting in repentance, change, social reorientation and the moral and physical transformation. Theologically, this is called “sanctification” and is a long and purposeful experience, based upon the unmerited grace given to us by God in Christ, accessed through initial faith and the “renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2), which is empowered by the continuous life in Christ that God makes available in those works that He has called us to do. This moral and physical reform, based upon these experiences, becomes the baseline of the Christian experience. The Apostle Paul clearly states this when he lists those who “will not enter the kingdom of heaven”, mentioning drunkenness in the same breath as homosexuality and adultery, going on to say “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) This is a powerful commentary on the transformative work of the Holy Spirit manifested in the lives of believers, who, while not perfect, are transformed and made righteous by the grace of God. It is this simple truth of Christian sanctification upon which the “Twelve Step” movement was based, which is still the best known and most successful psychological treatment for alcoholism practiced in both secular and religious circles, and continues to be one of the only treatments to transform the lives of spiritually defeated, chemically addicted and physically sick individuals. Humans, created as we are for the realization of God’s power, our need for others, and the inability to live morally as an isolated individual, must contextualize all things within this framework in order to have meaning and mental health. Therefore, the moral problem of alcoholism, when contextualized with a right view of self within a religious community, start to find their effectual cure – life in God and the love of a community doing authentic life together. 

Bibliography:

1. Robinson, Bryan E. and Rhoden, J. Lyn, Working with Children of Alcoholics: The Practitioner’s Handbook. London, England: Sage Publication, 1998

2. The Holy Bible, King James Version

3. Brund, Frank J., Psychology: A Self-Teaching Guide. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2002

4. Wilson, William G., Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Chicago, Illinois: MacMillan and Sons Publishing House, 1939