Do You Drink Alcohol? In Moderation?

[Bible Speaks]

Alcohol Dangers
“Alcohol-related injury, disability, and deaths in younger age-groups in Europe have increased alarmingly in recent years,” reports Britain’s medical journal The Lancet. In Europe, where alcohol consumption is the world’s highest, alcohol kills 55,000 young people every year. When asked about their drinking habits, one third of the students polled in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, and Ireland admitted having been drunk at least three times during the previous month. 

According to a study of 100,000 students aged 15 to 16 in 30 European countries, the greatest increases in alcohol consumption by youths occurred in Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic. As reported in London’s Independent newspaper, Britain’s Royal College of Physicians warns that “advanced cirrhosis of the liver, traditionally found in hard-drinking men in their 40s and 50s, is now being diagnosed” in women in their early 20’s. The college “identified alcohol as one of Britain’s most expensive public health problems.”

Intoxicating drinks in ancient Biblical lands included wine made from grapes (De 32:14) and alcoholic beverages prepared from grains. (Isa 1:22) Moderate use of wine and other strong drinks is acceptable to Jehovah, who provides “wine that makes the heart of mortal man rejoice.”—Ps 104:14, 15

The drunkard’s personal experience is described as the writer continues: “And you will certainly become like one lying down in the heart of the sea [experiencing the confusion of one drowning, finally passing into unconsciousness], even like one lying down at the top of a mast [as the rocking of the ship is greatest at this point, the drunkard’s life is in danger from accident, stroke, a fight, and so forth]. ‘They have struck me, but I did not become sick; they have smitten me, but I did not know it [says the drunkard, as if talking to himself; he was insensible to what was actually going on and to the punishment that the experience has inflicted on him]. When shall I wake up? I shall seek it yet some more [he must now sleep off the effects of overindulgence, but he is enslaved by the drink and looks forward to drinking more when he is able].’” He will come to poverty, by spending excessive amounts for liquor and also by becoming unreliable and rendering himself unable to work.—Pr 23:20, 21,34, 35.

Prohibited in the Christian Congregation. The drunkard is prone to boisterousness or rough, unrestrained noisiness and to ridiculous actions, bringing reproach. (Pr 20:1; Ps 107:27; Isa 19:14) 

Consequently, the practice of drunkenness is not to be tolerated in the Christian congregation. God’s attitude toward drunkenness was revealed in his Law to Israel. A son who was stubborn and rebellious, who was a glutton and a drunkard, was to be stoned to death. (De 21:18-21) 

Similarly, the Bible commands that unrepentant or habitual drunkards are to be expelled from the Christian congregation. (1Co 5:11-13) “The works of the flesh” include “drunken bouts, revelries,” which things the nations in general practice. A Christian, having been cleansed from such practices but thereafter returning to them and proving unrepentant, would be prevented from entering God’s Kingdom. (1Co 6:9-11) 

He is to cease spending his time working out the will of the nations by engaging in their excesses with wine and their drinking matches. (1Pe 4:3) He must devote himself to producing the fruits of God’s spirit.—Ga 5:19-24.

Moderation and soundness of mind are therefore among the requirements for Christian overseers (1Ti 3:1-3; Tit 1:7); ministerial servants (1Ti 3:8); aged men and women (Tit 2:2, 3); young men and women (Tit 2:4-8); children (especially those of overseers).—Tit 1:6.
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001226#h=6