I know — I should keep my mouth shut sometimes, because holding strong opinions about controversial issues has caused me more problems, and lost me more friends, than I can list here. Having said that, here I go…
I love the social conscience and social consciousness of my younger friends in ministry. They promote the purchase of fair-trade products, decrying the exploitation of workers in producing countries, and they call for willingness of consumers to pay higher prices for goods to enable higher social and environmental standards. (Wonderful!)
They fight for an end to sex trafficking and the enslavement of young girls (and boys) who are used and discarded, and well they should.
They rail against the injustices and inequities of society — poverty, AIDS, racism… but seem blind to the societal evils that result from alcohol. There, I said it. Let the rationalizations begin. Tell me all the reasons why “drinking won’t send you to hell.” I agree. The old joke is, “Jesus turned the water into wine and conservative evangelicals have been trying to turn it into grape juice ever since.” I know Christians — real, born-again, blood-bought followers of Jesus — who drink, and I am not judging their salvation or walk with the Lord. I do, however, wish they would take the blinders off and at least honestly speak out about the total devastation, the havoc that results from societies’ love affair with alcohol.
It seems that in a pendulum-swing reaction against the often legalistic total-abstinence conservative evangelical stance, many young leaders consider it both a badge of honor and a test of relevance to hang out in bars discussing theology over a micro-brew. It’s part of the new ministry checklist:
[✔] Spiky haircut
[✔] Scruffy five-o’clock shadow
[✔] Printed T-Shirt
[✔] Tom’s shoes
[✔] Cryptic tattoo(s)
[✔] Starbucks spot as office
[✔] Beer with the boys, so they won’t think you are religious.
Integrity and intellectual honesty demand, however, that we speak out against the root causes of the evils that destroy lives, even if those root causes are our pet vices.
I got a letter from my Compassion Sponsored Child, Felma, today. We exchange letters often. Every letter Felma sends me from Davao, in the southern Philippines, contains the same prayer request: “Please pray for my father, that he will stop drinking liquor.” I love that child. I have been in her simple home, and met her family. The $38 I send to Felma through Compassion each month is a gift of love, and I don’t begrudge it at all. One must wonder, however, what role her father’s alcoholism plays in the poverty that grips that family. One must also wonder why we prefer to pretend not to see the effects of alcohol in our own middle-class, American world.
I won’t weary you with the stats: you have access to GOOGLE. Suffice it to say the cost in healthcare resources, destroyed families, traffic-related deaths, violence and ruined lives demands that we admit that our social consciousness doesn’t extend to the things we prefer to justify. So we text one another about the latest cause on our iPhones made by Foxconn and hoist a pint or two to show how free we are, blind to the inconsistency of it all.