(Proverbs 23:21 KJV) For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Is this a rule or a principle? I lean toward principle. It is a warning that God has placed in His word to remind us of the kind of behaviors that can ruin our lives. If you are concerned about the poor, people in “poverty” (3423), then you need to be concerned about alcohol consumption.
You may be a social drinker. You may never go overboard. That does not invalidate the principle. Look around you. Look at the ways in which alcohol ruins lives. Here it focuses on the financial side of things. Jobs are lost because of alcohol. Careers are ruined. Financial stability is destroyed because of the cost of booze. People who could have been successful and prosperous are in the gutter and in the soup lines.
So? Alcohol consumption is a moral issue. We don’t need laws, we need a witness. You want to help people out of poverty? Quit laughing at drunk jokes. Quit publicly remonstrating on how one drink won’t send you to hell. Become a quiet witness for good lives.
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2 comments:
Amen! Having grown up in the home of a drunk (who was also a chain smoker) I find the fashionable liberality toward alcohol in what were formerly fundamentalist circles distressing. We should exercise more caution in what we approve.
I find my wife, raised outside the church, much more aware of the decline in church standards and acceptance of the world than most people raised in the church. She knows what sin looks like. I think your term "fashionable liberality" sums it up well.
Grace and peace.
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