Asking questions about alcohol

This was originally posted as a comment on Frank Turk's blog. The events related here are true.

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Since you've advertised this as a rabbit trail anyhow, I'm gonna take up some of your comment space by relating a series of events that happened when I attempted to ask questions about alcohol in the church I attend. (I derive some security from believing that no one I know personally reads this.)

Let me start by saying that the last time I drank alcohol as a beverage was over 19 years ago. (I have had some alcohol in medicines like 50 proof Nyquil and relatia. I'm convinced these are made to taste bad so people will not be tempted to use them for intoxication.)

I have asked a few times in Sunday School how (given the fact that my church teaches abstinence) we are to respond to Christians who disagree, e.g., conservative Presbyterians. From my both my teacher and from my pastor (both now in other churches) I got only testimonies. From the pastor: "I knew when I was saved as a college senior what that meant I would have to do about my drinking." From my SS teacher: "Before I was saved, I drank to get drunk." Neither of them set forth more than a single verse; in both cases, it was "Do not be drunk with wine ..."; you know the line of argument.

This brings me to two pet peeves.

First

is the tendency to solve everything with a personal testimony. How many times have you heard, "Someone you're witnessing to may be able to shoot down your argument, but they can't touch your testimony."? This is true as far as it goes, but giving your testimony is not the same thing as presenting the Gospel.

Second

is the argument of the "trump verse." (I can hear someone yelling, "Wait a minute! This is supposed to be about drinking, not about cards!" It's a figure of speech. Deal.) Rather than taking into account everything the Bible teaches on a subject, it's easier to pick a comfort zone of verses and just live in those. (This is rampant in the Calvinist-Arminian debate, by the way. I recently heard the same Sunday School teacher declare, "No one has repealed John 3:16." 1 John 2:2 is a favorite for this as well. And neither has the extent of the Atonement as its subject.)

Neither of these things, testimonies nor individual scriptures, is wrong in itself. Sometimes your testimony will illustrate the Biblical point you are making. Sometimes there is a summary verse that packages a lot of what the Bible has to say about something. But neither a testimony nor a single verse is any kind of substitute for the hard work of understanding the Bible.