This one has vexed me for some time now. Where exactly does it say in the Bible you can’t drink whiskey? In fact in Jesus’ first miracle, the miracle at Cana (John 2: 1-11–look it up ), he furnished people with the good stuff. The good stuff! The good stuff is usually higher in alcohol (I know a little about wine and Whiskey).
Anyway, some Christians believe it’s God’s will that they don’t drink alcoholic drinks. Where do they get that from? Specifically what ‘scripture’? Certainly none I know.
And BTW, I could bring up dancing and gambling too. But I don’t know what the Bible says about them. So I will leave it just at that.
Oh, and I just know someone is going to ask me ‘which Christians?’ I know there’s more than one. So I will just cite as one example the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Okay ?
Jehovah’s witnesses don’t object to the moderate consumption of alcohol; in fact they regard it as basically a good thing. But they do object to drunkenness, over-indulgence and alchohol abuse. Basically, you shouldn’t consume alcohol in a way that will harm you or others. And they recognise that there are some people - e.g. alcoholics - for whom any consumption of alcohol is, or threatens to be, harmful, so those people ought not to drink at all.
There are some Christians who regard any consumption of alcohol as bad, and they interpret all the positive scriptural references to wine (and there are many) as refering to unfermented grape juice. (NT Greek has, I believe, one word for both.) But they are pretty marginal; most Christians not only permit alcohol but use it in their liturgies - it’s bread and wine, remember.
“Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an snake.” Proverbs 23:31-32
The John 2: 1-11 reference is not necessarily alcoholic. Alcoholic is the conventional translation, but there is enough wiggle room there for the prohibitionists.
Of course, not all prohibitionists were or are biblical fundamentalists. But since you asked…
The line “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now” just doesn’t make much sense if we’re talking about non-alcoholic grape juice, but does make perfect sense if we’re talking about an alcoholic beverage.
So, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus made wine–a lot of wine, around 150 gallons worth–for a party full of people who had already had enough to drink that they wouldn’t even have noticed if the host had brought out the cheap stuff.
I think this is the crux of the matter. It isn’t so much about scripture, as it is the avoidance of poor behaviour. Banning alcohol altogether is just the easiest way of making sure everyone is behaving themselves.
Well it wouldn’t have been whisky as distilled spirits simply weren’t a thing the masses had access to back in the day. Miracles not included I guess. Baptists in the United States focus on things like Proverbs 23, which most other groups interpret as a statement against alcohol abuse rather than wine in general. It’s always seemed odd to me that some Christian sects are against alcohol given that one of Jesus’ best known miracles was turning water into wine. But, again, there are those who believe the translation of the Bible was incorrect and that truly it was referring to the juice of the grape. An interpretation that wasn’t too popular outside the United States.
I remember one person explaining it as God getting angry that Noah beclowned himself by getting drunk and sleeping naked in his tent. Genesis 9:20–23
I believe a lot of the alcohol temperance movement comes from earlier years of America. Thanks to surpluses of corn and sugar, the country was awash in hard liquor much more than wine and beer, especially in the South. The drinking culture was a bit harder and a lot of men spent their waking hours just blind drunk.
I think churches and temperance movements stepped in to oppose what they saw as an alcohol culture that was dangerously excessive and harmful. Had the predominant beverages been wine or beer or cider, I don’t think they’d have felt the same urgency to step in.
When I read the famous Christian novel In His Steps, it helped me understand the U.S. Prohibition movement a bit better. As portrayed in the book, a lot of society’s ills were related to alcohol abuse (e.g. workers going to a saloon and drinking away their paychecks instead of bringing it home to their needy families, and maybe being violent and abusive when they did get home). It felt to me more like how hard drugs are seen nowadays.
I grew up in the South and the Christians that didn’t believe in drinking didn’t specifically tie it to a verse. They just saw it as “bad immoral” behavior that any good Christian shouldn’t do because it obviously leads to drunkenness and poor decision making. I think this is still part of the culture from the temperance movement. Apparently my great-grandmother was big into that movement and my grandfather still boasts that he has never drunk a drop of alcohol.
The next step up are Christians that don’t see it as sinful (in moderation of course), but still do not drink because it is seen by others as sinful, and they do not want to “harm their witness.” In other words, they don’t want to look like a hypocrite that says they are a Christian but does things that other people think are sinful.
The next step up is the ones who drink, but just keep it on the down low for the same reason as above. They may drink with certain Christian friends or with coworkers, but don’t talk much about it at church to prevent little old ladies or other hollier-than-thou types from getting too upset.
And then there are some that love to drink and everyone meets at the bar after church!
For example, Catholics don’t see shy about alcohol at all.
Aside: A lot of Christians would consider Jehovah Witnesses to be pretty far out on the Christian spectrum and many Christians consider them to be more of a cult.
The first story in the Bible is about the sin of giving into temptation. Every church based on those scriptures recognizes on a practical level that the single greatest ally of temptation is alcohol.
OTOH, there’s that renowned moralist Paul writing in 1 Timothy 5:23 - “Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.” (NIV)
And yes, as Dewey_Finn points out, for a long span of history, the water was not safe. But the scripture itself condemns drunkenness, not any consumption of beverages. ( And as to the “oh it means grape juice”, well, pre-pasteurization wouldn’t virtually all grape juice be subject to some fermentation going on unless you drank it fresh pressed?)
And didn’t Lot also have relations with his two daughters while drunk in a cave? There appears to be no repercussions from God on this one, in fact it seems justified. And I quote:
“Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt, but Lot and his daughters escape to Zoar, and end up living in a cave in the mountains. In Genesis 19:30-38 Lot’s daughters got their father drunk , and over two consecutive nights had sex with him without his knowledge.”
I’ve had two day binges, but not one where I slept with relatives for two days.
New Testament Greek didn’t have a separate word for non-alcoholic grape juice because non-alcoholic grape juice wasn’t really a thing back then. The techniques for making grape juice that would keep were only developed in 1869, by a Dr. Thomas Welch (whose name might be familiar, in connection with grapes). Before that, the only way to get non-alcoholic grape juice was to drink it within a day or two after picking the grapes.
And IIRC there was plenty of leaders in the Temperance movement who were women who objected to alcohol consumption because it exacerbated domestic violence.
So basically it’s the same thing they’ve been doing all along- taking some sort of behavior that they don’t like, (incorrectly) wrapping it in religion, and lending prohibitionist efforts that weight, and then trying to force everyone else to toe that line.
I mean, it’s always baffled me as a kid how one side of my family was like “NO Drinking!” and it always had an extra weight because it seemed to be emanating from my grandmother’s Baptist faith. Meanwhile, the other side was like “Sure, have a beer. Just don’t get tore up.”
), he furnished people with the good stuff. The good stuff! The good stuff is usually higher in alcohol (I know a little about wine and Whiskey).