Post #7 - Alcohol

Let's put this age-old debate to bed right now - it is impossible for alcohol consumption to be a sin. Jesus drank wine. Jesus is without sin. Thus, drinking wine is without sin.

Further, He turned water into wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana. Jesus, the same man who authored "lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" converted barrels of water into wine for a wedding feast.

Saying drinking alcoholic beverages is a sin thus requires one of the following to be true: (1) Jesus sinned. (2) Jesus provided the material for sinful acts where before there was none, and in so became a hypcorite. (3) All the wine Jesus consumed and created contained no alcohol. Points #1 and #2 requires one to scrap critical tenets of Christianity, so if you base your claim on either of these arguments, you're bringing a football to a hockey game.

Thus, Argument #3, being the only argument not impuging out Lord and Savior, must be the argument for the Christian who maintains that alcohol is sinful. This argument, however, is almost as ludicrous. Everybody drank the same wine, and a lot of people got pissed from it around Jesus - especially at the Wedding.

Those wedding feasts lasted for days - nobody could sing and dance and celebrate for days upon days back then while only drinking tasty grape juice. They had fields and flocks to tend and/or hours of water-hauling and food preparation depending upon gender, as well as a healthy set of Jewish laws to abide. Sober partiers would break up the deal after about a day and a half in guilt and shame to return to their assigned chores (or to supervise the servants doing their assigned chores) - they absolutely needed the mental lubricant of alcohol to let the joy of marriage override the compulsion to duty for that long.

Thus... consuming alcohol is not a sin in itself. Consuming alcohol to excess is a sin. The same can be said for overindulgence in anything. Overindulgence in Christmas cookies is a sin - one for which my belt is still demanding pennance - but I haven't heard of any Christian congregations condemning cookies out of whole cloth for their potential to lead our children astray.