Ep. 036: The Christian and Alcohol

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, welcome to the indoubt podcast. I’m Isaac, your host and with me today is Britt.

Brittney Dagneau:

Hey guys.

Isaac Dagneau:

We have an awesome podcast ahead of us today. Part of what we do at indoubt, which our listeners would know, is that we just look at the present young adult culture, and then we help Christians navigate their faith and works within that culture. In doing this obviously you can’t really get too far without hitting the subject of alcohol. That’s what this podcast is all about. We’re talking about alcohol, the consumption of alcohol in the Christian life. I’m going to be chatting with Christian blogger, author and speaker, Tim Challies about gaining a more biblical and balanced view. Alcohol obviously is not this new thing, but in many urban areas today I find that more and more breweries are just opening up and it’s just become this trend. Many, I don’t know, young adults it’s a hobby now to go and try out different craft breweries and everything like that.

Isaac Dagneau:

You just hear about that a lot in churches and just in the Christian life. But I guess the main issue, whether you don’t drink or you do drink, is that just many young adult Christians just aren’t really biblically or critically thinking about alcohol, what the Bible has to say about alcohol. They’re not praying really about it before they go into it, so they’re just engaging it blindly. But anyways, let’s listen to the conversation with Tim Challies and then we’ll come back to discuss more. Well, it’s a privilege to be talking with Tim Challies this week on the podcast. Tim is a blogger, he’s author, pastor, book reviewer, many different things from Ontario so he’s a fellow Canadian. Thanks Tim for coming on the show.

Tim Challies:

It’s a pleasure thanks for having me.

Isaac Dagneau:

I first came across challies.com, which for our listeners is his blog, back in January of this year so I’m relatively a newcomer. I started to subscribe to his daily blogs, which are really I see them as these goody bags of relevant articles, videos, quotes, things like that, they’re a little a la carte things, and I found those extremely helpful and enjoyable. Thank you so much for doing that. How do you, just for our listeners to know, how do you just sort of, do you just subscribe to many different blogs and just pick the ones that you like the most? Or how does that work?

Tim Challies:

I pretty much subscribe to a bunch of different websites, a bunch of different blogs. I graze a lot, take a little from here a little from there. I tend to gather a bunch of articles over the course of the day, and then go back in the evening read through them all carefully, see which ones I want to tell others about. That’s the way I’ve been doing it for years and years now.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s awesome. I find that when I go through them, I don’t know, probably about 60% of the quotes are Carson quotes. Is that right to say that he’s one of your favorites or?

Tim Challies:

I get the quotes every day and I put a quote on there every day and I get them. Actually I’d say 60% of Charles Spurgeon and then there’s a good chunk from D. A. Carson. That’s partly because I follow somebody on Twitter who all he does is put out D. A. Carson quotes, and there’s so many good meaty ones there that I tend to take those as well. But Charles Spurgeon was definitely the king of Twitter long before Twitter existed, he had an amazing way of distilling truth into short pithy statements.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s awesome, I love that. Well, for those who have never heard of you before, or don’t know much about you, well why don’t you just share just a brief summary of who you are and what you do?

Tim Challies:

Sure. Again, the name is Tim Challies I am married to Aileen, we’ve been married for 18 years now after meeting in high school and getting married as soon as we finished college. We’ve got three children who are 16, 13 and 10 years old, and they’re about to start into new school years of course. I’ve been blogging writing now for about oh, I guess it’s a little over 12 or 13 years now. I’ve been doing that at challlies.com and it went from something I just did for my family to something of a hobby, and now it’s what I do for a living. It’s come a long way since I began.

Isaac Dagneau:

Cool, that’s awesome. We’re taking a week to look at the Christian and alcohol. The reason we’re even bringing this topic up is really based on three things. One, the Bible obviously addresses, talks about alcohol talks about drunkenness. So we just want to know what the Bible says. Two, at least in the more urban areas, and you could let me know about Ontario, but local breweries are popping up like coffee shops these days. You could almost say local breweries are the trend right now. Many people who call themselves Christians haven’t really I found biblically or critically even just thought about it. It just happened and they’re in it.

Isaac Dagneau:

Then the last reason I find there’s a confusion, it’s either a conscious one or unconscious on how Christians ought to drink and how they ought to just view drinking alcohol in general. That’s why we’re digging into this today. I came across an article that you wrote on alcohol and Christians a few years ago now. I just found it really well balanced and it was biblical, and that’s why I’m excited to chat with you about this. Let’s just jump straight in. First of all, what does the Bible say about alcohol? Which is a really big question.

Tim Challies:

Well, the Bible has a lot to say about alcohol, it’s one of the things you see as you read through. Sometimes it speaks about it just by the by, so we hear about Noah getting drunk and that’s not a prescriptive passage. It doesn’t tell us anything about how we should behave or not behave, it simply describes his experience with alcohol. But then there’s other parts of the Bible that are very clear when it comes to alcohol, and I’d say generally we can discern three things as we look at the Bible. We can see that alcohol is created by God, it falls under the all things that God has made, there was nothing now there’s everything. So in some level then alcohol was created by God, it wasn’t a surprise to Him that humans did this. Secondly, I’d say at least on some level alcohol is a gift and we see that medicinally, right? That it’s been used to save many lives, it’s been used in some great ways.

Tim Challies:

But also I’d say it’s a gift biblically and the way the Bible says it cheers the heart. There’s a kind of joy in alcohol, just as there’s joy in coffee and chocolate. It does something in our brains, it triggers pleasure that isn’t necessarily I don’t think at least according to the Bible, isn’t necessarily wrong. But then the third thing is that alcohol can be abused. So alcohol like all of God’s good gifts is exactly the kind of thing we can take too far, and instead of dealing with it with moderation and care, instead we can outright abuse it. That’s similar to sex or money or food, all of these things, they’re good gifts that we can abuse. I’d see alcohol very much in that stream as well. Created by God, a gift of God and yet something that we as human beings can terribly abuse.

Isaac Dagneau:

Exactly. I actually remember listening to an Ask Pastor John podcast with Piper and he said that it’s the same thing as drinking water, it can be a sin if you do it too much. That pretty much speaks into the exact same thing there. That’s awesome, that’s very helpful Tim. In 1 Corinthians eight and in Romans 14 Paul talks about this idea of not letting your freedom in whatever action or belief it may be, become a stumbling block towards others. I feel like it’s one of those kind of passages in the Bible that a lot of people throw around maybe not with thinking about it much or not really knowing the exact context. What does this passage look like? What does this not causing a brother to stumble look like in regards to drinking alcohol?

Tim Challies:

Well, the gospel gives us tons of freedom, right? We’ve become Christians, we’ve been adopted into God’s family, the gospel has done that amazing work in us. Now the gospel gives us a great freedom. Now the freedom the gospel gives us is the freedom to not indulge in these things. Even if I am convinced that alcohol is fine, even if I’m convinced that I can give thanks to God as I sip my beer, the freedom of the gospel is the freedom to say if that offends my brother, then by no means will I prove a stumbling block to him, by no means will I offend him.

Tim Challies:

I’ve got total freedom to put the alcohol aside in his presence and say I will not do this out of love for you, out of care for you. Just recently I was reading a Christian couple about their marriage, and they came into marriage with differing views. The husband said if it’s a problem to you, if this is something you’re convinced that alcohol is wrong, I will never have another drink in my life. That is my way of honoring you my wife and living in an understanding way with you. He did that, he did that joyfully and willingly. That’s the attitude all of us ought to have. So if you and I are together and you are offended by alcohol, I do not have the freedom then to drink in front of you lest I offend you.

Isaac Dagneau:

No, that’s good. I think you’re already speaking into it a little bit, but one of the groups I find confused are those who let’s say are a little bit more legalistic towards alcohol. I find that it’s easy for this group to maybe look down on Christians who do drink. Even if they’re drinking completely God in a godly way, they feel more righteous and godly because they don’t drink. I guess the question for those, because I think there is a large majority that feel this way. What would you say Tim to those that need to work towards a healthier, more biblical understanding of this?

Tim Challies:

Well, first I say that nobody actually thinks they’re legalistic, right? There’s nobody out there who says yeah, yeah I’m a legalist. Everybody thinks that their view is right, and then they look at other people as either legalistic or licentious. Either you are bound by law and you will not drink, or you’re licentious you’re going off the rails there and you are drinking. So you’re not going to find someone who says yeah I’m legalist and you’re not. Each of us needs to look very, very carefully then, and we need to probe God’s word to see if we are making a law where there is no law.

Tim Challies:

We need to be very, very careful to understand what the Bible does say what it doesn’t say, what it says clearly, and then what it says descriptively versus prescriptively. I think this is where it often goes wrong. Does the Bible really tell us that alcohol is wrong or does it simply time and again show us the effect or the problem with overindulging in it? I’m very much convinced that again the Bible says you can drink, but you better be careful. Just like you can have sex and you can eat chocolate, but you’ve got to be very, very careful because all of these things you’re prone to take God’s gift and become enslaved to it.

Isaac Dagneau:

Exactly, you pervert it, distort it all those different things.

Tim Challies:

Yeah. I want to throw something else in here.

Isaac Dagneau:

Sure, definitely.

Tim Challies:

I’d say people need to heed conscience. As we look to the Bible, as we come to a conclusion in a matter like this which is a disputable matter, very good, godly Christians come to very different conclusions here.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s very true.

Tim Challies:

Then you need to search God’s word and then you need to heed your conscience. If you really are convinced that alcohol is wrong, that it’s unbiblical, ungodly to drink it, then by all means heed your conscience. Even if God doesn’t say that, if that is your conscience then you need to heed that and you need to obey your conscience. It would be a sin therefore to violate your conscience. For me if I do have freedom, it would be wrong for me to badger you, it would be wrong for me to give you alcohol and say just drink it. I should not cause you to violate your conscience. We end up in this very interesting place as Christians where we’re called personally to heed conscience, and then again to act in love toward one another to make sure I’m not afflicting anyone else’s conscience. Love always rules in these ways.

Isaac Dagneau:

If I’ve looked into the Bible and I’ve come to the conscious decision that I’m not going to drink because it’s wrong, this is my belief. The loving thing for me to do is when I go out with my family or friends and they are drinking beer, my love would be not to push my own conscious beliefs on them and just allow it to go on.

Tim Challies:

I would think so yeah. If you can abide with it and just say no I don’t drink, then by all means let them drink, and hopefully they’re not flaunting it. I think one way this has gone really wrong in the last maybe 10 years of Christian history, especially with young people, is they’re flaunting their freedom especially before that older generation. I’d say in general the older generation of Christians, particularly I’d say American evangelicals are very, very bound by this view that scripture or that alcohol is wrong. Younger people feel far more freedom. The problem comes when those older people are now judging the younger people and trying to squelch them. Then the younger people are saying well, you know what, I’m going to drink in front of you just to show you the freedom I have. It’s not freedom at all, you’re not free if you’re rubbing it in someone else’s face, you’re now bound by sin.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good. On the other side, just briefly speak to those maybe that tend to be overindulgent, or just maybe I think there’s a lot of people that just have an over interest in alcohol. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Ontario, but over here in BC there’s a lot of young Christians or they call themselves Christians, and it just seems to be the subject of conversation, topic of conversation at every gathering.

Tim Challies:

Well, I do think there can be this obsession where alcohol is cool and as Christians maybe we feel like we don’t get to do the cool stuff, but now I’ve learned that alcohol is okay and so I’m going to talk about it a lot, I’m going to flaunt it before other people. Then there’s the problem of course of enjoying it too much or at least partaking of it too much and getting drunk, which the Bible so clearly forbids. You just have to read the news to see the consequences of drunkenness in 100 different ways, you just have to read the Bible to see the consequences of drunkenness in 100 different ways. When you’re driven to drunkenness I think it’s so important to ask what is it I’m looking for there in the bottle? Because nobody really wants to be drunk, nobody really likes being drunk, they don’t like the after effects of it.

Tim Challies:

Drunkenness is simply bringing them to a state that they want, it’s giving them something. It makes them feel popular, it makes them feel funny, it makes them feel good. Somehow it is just feeding some other idol in their life. Alcohol itself isn’t the idol, there’s something else that alcohol does to that person. That’s what they need to go after, that’s the root of the sin. If they can get rid of that sin, the sin of drunkenness will fall by the wayside as well. Don’t think that alcohol itself is the sin, I mean it is a sin but it’s not the root sin, it’s just showing you there’s something else going on in your heart.

Isaac Dagneau:

No, that’s really good. When we look at the Bible, we see Christians, God fearers engaging with alcohol, even Jesus Himself was engaging with it. At the same time we see Paul, others, obviously speaking against the drunkenness to use your saying of the day. When you look at that biblically, what areas today do you think alcohol consumption is appropriate looking at it biblically and also culturally of our day as well?

Tim Challies:

Well so much depends on context. I was at a Presbyterian church out on the West Coast a couple weeks ago and they served the Lord’s supper, and they said the outer ring of little cups is grape juice the inner ring is wine. Right there in a sacred Lord’s supper service in church they were serving alcohol and I was absolutely fine with it. I travel a fair bit and have been to the UK and to Australia and to other places like that. You’ll see youth groups or at least young adult groups going to the pub together, they’ll go there for their meetings. Contextually or culturally that is their Starbucks, that is their version of the place you go just to hang out. So much depends on context.

Tim Challies:

North America tends to have a different view on alcohol than outside North America. This is where prohibition was at least in the States, and this is where there still is a lot of people who are very opposed to it. I think consumption of alcohol is appropriate in the home, it’s appropriate in the pub if you’re going to go there, but it’s always, always in moderation. If Christians never got drunk we wouldn’t have to have this discussion, if Christians could simply have one and walk away. It’s drunkenness that ruins alcohol for everyone.

Isaac Dagneau:

Exactly. Lastly, Paul in Galatians 6:1 he says, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.” Now it is not uncommon in Christian circles, especially among the younger generation as you were saying, it’s just different in North America here. It’s not uncommon to see a Christian see another Christian overindulgent in their consumption of alcohol. Does this verse apply to that situation? If it does, how does that work out in a very practical way?

Tim Challies:

Well yeah absolutely it does apply. I’d say especially in the context of the local church, and part of the confusion that can happen on the college campus or places like that is that people tend to become a little bit disconnected from their churches or at least from their usual churches and college groups and other things tend to take over. That can be dangerous because now you’re outside of the usual clear patterns of authority and care. Somebody who’s caught in drunkenness presumably people in the church should come alongside that person and help identify that and help to restore them. If not, if that person keeps going into drunkenness, if that person refuses to correct that, then that person would be put under the discipline of the church and eventually disciplined right out of the church as a sign that this drunkenness proves that you’re not actually a Christian because Christians they don’t get drunk with wine.

Tim Challies:

Now that can be tricky in a college context simply because a lot of that support structure’s gone, people may not be in the same local church. But the principle is that we need other Christians in our lives for all of our sin. We need to be confessing sin to one another so our friends can help us, they can pray for us, they can guide us, they can lead us to scripture, they can come alongside us. We are Christians in community and we all bear this responsibility to help each other overcome sin. Then once you’ve done that to someone, if you’re walking alongside someone who’s been struggling with alcohol, then help that person, hold that person accountable.

Tim Challies:

Don’t be shocked if that person has several backslides into alcohol before they climb back out of it. But then don’t be afraid as well to become involved in initiating some kind of church discipline. That’s God’s means of grace to help people who are mired deep in sin. He gives us this as a means to show who’s really a believer who really wants to follow the Lord and who is not. Then we need to go back to sharing the gospel with that person, back to helping that person see their desperate need of a savior.

Isaac Dagneau:

Just hearing you say that I’m like yes, I’m in total agreement, but obviously you know that living in our Canadian culture, very culturally tolerant, don’t want to offend anybody and that’s seeped into the church in a lot of churches. Just hearing you say that I’m like man to see that work out in let’s say a local church in Vancouver, whatever it would be very radical, and maybe that’s just what we need we just need that.

Tim Challies:

Before you can have really solid church discipline, you need to have meaningful membership in your church. You need to have people who are in and people who are out, people who have formally identified themselves with this church body. Because until you’re in you can’t be put out, right? So the joy or part of the joy of church membership is identifying yourself with a group of people and saying if I’m ever in sin, you need to throw me out of this group, so first I don’t pollute the purity of this church, but also so that it becomes very, very clear to me that my soul is in peril. That’s part of why we associate with local church.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s awesome. Did you have any other last thoughts before we wrap it up? I don’t know if you-

Tim Challies:

Yeah just one, and it’s this. I think in these areas that are disputable, where very good, godly, Bible driven, gospel-centered, all the words you want to use, Christians they align very differently on it. I think our responsibility as Christians is to look at both sides very carefully, so get the absolute best arguments on both sides. You won’t find it very difficult to find both. You’ll find a D. A. Carson who allows alcohol and says it’s a gift of God, but one that must be treated very carefully. You could go to John Piper who’s a little more hesitant to say that it’s wrong, but still says I don’t drink and I really don’t think you should either and here’s why. Or you could go to a John MacArthur whom I believe would say alcohol is wrong and here’s why. I think we owe it to ourselves to really look at issues like this, make sure you’re getting good arguments on all sides. Pray about it, go to the scripture, make your decision, and then be bold in your decision and trust that God will bless you in it.

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey Tim before we wrap up, how can people if they want to know about you more and read your stuff, and I know you’re an author as well. I don’t know if you want to share a little bit about where they can find some of your material, new books or anything like that.

Tim Challies:

Sure yeah. They can read my site at challies.com, that’s C-H-A-L-L-I-E-S.com. I post something new there every day and have done for at least 12 years now I think. Beyond that, I’ve written a couple books recently that may be of interest. There’s one called Do More Better, which is a book about productivity, and I think would be applicable especially to young people, young adults. But then also there’s one called Visual Theology, which is relatively new, and that’s one where we’ve really tried to take good graphics and combine them with helpful words, to make a book that is both a pleasure to read and a pleasure to look at. I think both of those might be of interest.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s awesome. I think you’ve posted a few different theological doctrines online, and I think I’ve seen the trinity or I think I’ve seen a few things and it’s actually incredible so I love that, that’s awesome. Well hey, thank you so much Tim for coming on the show today and yeah thank you so much.

Tim Challies:

No, you’re very welcome.

Isaac Dagneau:

That was my conversation with Tim Challies. I grew up in a home that alcohol was there, but my parents were always in the church and serving in the church and everything like that. I grew up with this idea that alcohol was normal to have in the house. But what happened was because I never took time to really look at what the Bible has to say, talk to other people about it, and I didn’t even talk to my parents about it that much. Because I didn’t critically think about it, when I reached 19 even though I was in the church and still doing things, I just engaged it without really thinking.

Isaac Dagneau:

What that led me to, and I understand that this doesn’t happen to everybody, but what it led me to personally was to abuse it. I saw it wrongly used in my life to a point where I’ve decided for at least a season now to abstain from it because I knew that it was more proper for who I am and for who I am to not engage it at this time. It’s a disputable thing I’m not saying that, drinking’s not a sin obviously drunkenness is a sin. But when you see it abused in your life, then it’s good not to do that and that’s what I’ve experienced personally.

Brittney Dagneau:

It’s a hard one to talk about because it’s kind of a gray area in the church. Maybe that’s not the best word to use but it’s disputable, and a lot of Christians have very strong views on what’s right and what’s wrong. I think one of the important things that Tim talked about was just how we have to be sensitive to our own personal convictions on it. I think that’s the key, because as soon as we, whether we’re abstaining or participating, as soon as we are imposing our stance on it on our fellow brothers and sisters, then we’re in the position of being sinful, and not putting their needs and them before our own needs and personal ideas of what it means and looks like.

Isaac Dagneau:

It’s funny you say that, and I find a lot and this is personally too as a young adult Christian living in this more urban area, is that you do want to see a lot of things as black and white. Because drinking is not a sin then it’s right you can do it, and you oppose that on people. But the fact is, is that it is disputable in regards to how you drink and where you drink and all those different kinds of things. I think you’re right in saying that you have to… Your freedom in Christ isn’t all about what you get to do, it really is in what you’re able to abstain. Your freedom in Christ really does immediately affect your love for other people.

Brittney Dagneau:

Mm-hmm. Yeah totally. It’s so trendy right now as well, so that also infiltrates into our culture and our Christian culture. Because that’s human nature is to go with the trends and explore what’s out there. Being able to think critically about all the decisions we make in regards to whether it be alcohol, whether it’s even what we’re wearing, what we’re watching, all of those things the same principle applies.

Isaac Dagneau:

Exactly.

Brittney Dagneau:

This one alcohol just has the line can be so, it can be tipped so quickly. I think that this is definitely one of the areas where it can be crossed so easily if you’re not extra careful. But again, at the heart of it, the same principle absolutely applies to whatever we’re doing.

Isaac Dagneau:

Mm-hmm that’s good. Just the last thought, we aren’t telling listeners to drink or not to drink. We’re telling Christians, including ourselves, that when it comes to areas like alcohol we need to think critically and biblically about them. That wraps up our podcast today. If you have any more questions about the Christian and alcohol, message us on our Facebook page, tweet us we’ll get back to you for sure. Remember to check out challies.com and subscribe to his daily blogs they are amazing I really enjoy them. I’m Isaac.

Brittney Dagneau:

I’m Britt.

Isaac Dagneau:

And this is the indoubt podcast.

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