The Alcohol Problem

Frightening and terrifying are mild words to describe the tragic existence of 5,000,000 alcoholics who are in helpless bondage to strong drink. This is a distressing situation, not only to be weighed in terms of a personal hell being endured by alcoholics alone, but more, by the anguish, suffering, shame and tears of those who are related to them. To that staggering number of alcoholics, however, must be added also the appalling number of some 2,000,000 others who are today problem drinkers, verging on alcoholism and whose indulgence is wrecking cars, ruining lives, and destroying homes. Who actually can estimate the moral damage that is resulting from a habit which the liquor industry in a thousand ways is endeavoring to call, “the American way of life?”

Reaction to this deplorable, distressing social problem finds expression in the question Cain once asked: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The liquor industry, society in general, and even the Church seem little shocked or alarmed at the many alcoholics existing in our society. There is a hardened unconcern on the part of the public which accepts the damage resulting from the liquor traffic and absorbs, without a protest, the consequent financial toll. And despite the havoc being wrought and the powerful forces promoting such liquor sale, efforts to stem this evil seem pitiful and inadequate. Is it not obvious that the public ought to be aroused and especially the Church if this nefarious traffic is ever to be controlled and its blight removed from the life of the nation?

The liquor industry speaks with fraudulent piety of temperance as the solution to drinking consequences; but meanwhile it moves heaven and earth to increase individual consumption and entice people to become habitual drinkers. Radio and television have given the liquor industry unparalleled opportunity to assault daily the minds of young people and old. With a cleverness that is diabolic, it suggests that the vitality of youth, the hospitality of the home, and the success of business depend upon the cordial imbibing of alcoholic liquor. It seeks to surround its wares, salesmen, and victims with an aura of respectability. But where are its “men of distinction” generally to be found? Not always in aristocratic clubs; more often in the gutter, “skid rows,” or broken homes. Taverns are not principally places for “fellowship and hospitality”; they exist for profit and gain by catering to the weaknesses of men.

Most appalling is the manner in which the liquor industry today has leeched onto professional sport events for the purpose of foisting its body-weakening products on a defenseless public. The public, of course, is defenseless because it deliberately ignores ways to control harmful beverage advertising. For instance, the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee has before it the Langer Bill to ban interstate advertising of alcoholic drink, but we doubt whether the general public will evince sufficient interest to urge any sort of speedy and favorable action. Even amateur sports are no longer protected from the wiles of brewing industries. Pabst Brewing Company, via its public relations expert, sent a case of Pabst beverages to Earl L. Craven, Head Football Coach of Taylor University, Indiana, for the purpose of providing a contact with the college students. Coach Craven refused the gift, stating: “My greatest disgust is in the fact that it is virtually impossible for me to view a sporting event on my television set with my three young boys and little girl without having to sit through a well-planned appeal from you to them to get mixed up in the heartaches and moral decay you are inviting them into. I am further very much disappointed that you chose my position as an athletic coach on this campus to make contact with the young people here.… I feel that it is only proper to inform you that copies of this letter will be photostated and distributed in every legitimate agency that is interested in using it as a demonstration as to the length to which your industry will go to victimize the young and immature. I wonder what has happened to the conscience of the people that have made this decision.”

What has happened to the conscience of the people? Why does the cainitic attitude still prevail? Why is the opposition to the liquor industry so feeble? And why has the Church failed to battle effectively against alcoholism?

Before attempting to answer these embarrassing questions, credit must be given to agencies that have been waging the battle. Denominational church boards have in past years alerted the church and instructed the young as to the dangers of alcoholic consumption. The seriousness of the social problem brought into existence the Anti-Saloon League which finally developed into the National Temperance League. This League has provided a medium through which individuals and churches may cooperate in promoting abstinence and group action to diminish and eliminate liquor traffic. In spite of their efforts, however, the evil of alcohol has not diminished in the life of the nation.

A dramatic development in the fight against the consequences of strong drink has been the unique fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous. In the decades of its existence, A.A. has had a phenomenal growth with a current membership of approximately 200,000. Members represent men and women who once drank to excess and are engaged now in helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety. Having experienced relief from the agony of what seemed to be a hopeless situation, they are seeking to aid others and are thus manifesting a keen sense of being their brother’s keeper. Services and assistance are available to all who express a true desire to stop drinking. But wonderful as the work has been, A.A. has been able to assist only a small fraction of those who desperately need help. It has been estimated that there are 250,000 new alcoholics every year. As a matter of policy, A.A. has had to limit itself to the work of the uncontrolled drinker and not involve itself in public measures of prevention and control.

Would that the conscience of the Church were as alive as that of A.A. to the necessity of reaching and helping today’s 5,000,000 alcoholics! The Church has by-passed this sore problem in the same manner that the priest and Levite by-passed the wounded man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Church has failed in an all-out effort to seek and to save those who are lost in alcoholism. Many within the Church are hardly aware of the problem. Is it harsh then to say that the Church ought to be lashed with some unpleasant facts in order that she awaken out of her cainitic lethargy?

Reading certain temperance literature would give one the impression that the Church has adopted statistics as her best strategy for battle. Ten billion dollars a year is spent for alcoholic beverages, three times the amount given to all churches—400 million dollars is spent for alcoholic advertising—for every dollar of beer and liquor tax received, the state spends over $3.50 for known and measurable costs—drinking drivers are involved in about 30 per cent of all fatal accidents, a toll of 10,000 Americans—alcoholism is now six times more prevalent than cancer and eleven times more prevalent than tuberculosis—one out of ten diagnosed first admission to Public Mental Hospitals is an alcoholic-wage losses attributed to alcoholism amount to $432 million a year—the costs of alcoholism to industry is estimated more than $1 billion a year—there are 136,340 more alcoholic beverage outlets than combined total of churches, synagogues and temples—alcohol-related arrests represent 59.49 per cent of all arrests for all offenses, and so on. These are shocking and terrifying figures, but they have done little to arouse the conscience either of the public or the Church, and excessive drinking is still continuing its havoc on the life of the nation.

The Church would be better advised to base her strategy on publicity of God’s Word rather than on statistics, revealing and startling as they may be. Thus saith the Lord is more powerful than any statistical account and sharper than any two-edged sword. The Word confronts individual and nation with the Lawgiver and supplies the Church with an authoritative message to convict people of sin. Drunkenness makes a man unfit for worship of God; it makes him guilty of worshiping Bacchus, it loosens his tongue in blasphemy, makes him dishonor his parents, destroy his body, prepares him for adultery, obliterates truth and leads him to dishonesty and coveting. Drunkenness strikes at every law that God has enjoined. And not only the drunkard but all who have aided and abetted his condition must ultimately face the judgment of God. Why is this not the clarion message of the Church?

Until the Church cleans the inside of the cup she can never hope to clean the outside. To do this cleaning she must have the courage to adopt the discipline Paul advocated: “But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a … drunkard … with such a one no, not to eat” (1 Cor. 5:11). To insist on the breaking off of such fellowship is at the same time to insist upon the exercise of discipline. When a man professes to be a Christian and exhibits this profession side by side with drunkenness, the Church is bound to protest this false union and exercise proper discipline. This is one way by which the Church can show her abhorrence of the vice and awaken the consciences of guilty sinners.

The Church must also reveal clearly that the habitual drunkard forfeits all rights to the eternal Kingdom. Paul declared to the Corinthians and Galatians that “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:10; Gal. 5:21). This he had to emphasize again and again. The twentieth century with its seven million problem drinkers needs the message of eternal perdition much more than did the first century. Many would hesitate to walk down the road of alcoholism if they knew that its end was perdition. But the Church, for the most part, has muffled the apostolic warning and has thereby thrown away a powerful deterrent to excessive drinking.

Strange as it may sound, A.A. has adopted with effect what modern theologians call an outworn, outdated doctrine—namely, total inability. In its program, one of the first steps to a man’s personal recovery is his admission that he is powerless over alcohol—that his life is unmanageable. The modern church has thrown away that biblical doctrine; but the principle has become the first step in an effective program of secular reclamation! What an utter condemnation to modern theology! It is this biblical doctrine—that total inability of man to help himself, and thus his need of the Power higher than himself—that the Church must recover and preach.

One can hear the accusation of oversimplification for those who point to the acceptance of Christ as the solution to the individual problem of alcoholism. Yet the Church has within her membership many who have been rescued from this vice by personal commitments to the Saviour. Would that such people would testify as eagerly and zealously of their salvation as do the members of A.A. What message does the Church have other than the proclaiming of Jesus Christ, the only name under heaven whereby men can be saved? Thousands of suffering alcoholics need to be convinced that they are powerless to help themselves and that there is a Saviour who has the love and power to save them to the uttermost.

The Church does have a responsibility through her membership to arouse the nation to place effective controls over an industry whose products are causing carnage on our highways, breeding crime, and destroying homes. The Church has no business shirking her duty of prodding the conscience of our nation. Moreover, the Church has no right to allow A.A. to put her to shame by performing a more effective work in the recovery of helpless sinners. The Church has the convicting message and the Gospel that heals. Jesus Christ does save from the guilt and power of sin. And therein is the ultimate solution to the alcohol problem.

Evangelism, in the narrow sense, is preaching the Gospel that souls may be won to Jesus Christ. Revivalism on the other hand places its emphasis on rekindling the fires of faith and action in the hearts of lukewarm Christians. That evangelizing the lost at the same time warms the hearts of many cold Christians is something for which the Church should be profoundly grateful.

The place of the doctrine of regeneration in evangelistic preaching cannot be overstressed. Nothing is more futile than attempts of the Church to make unregenerate people act like Christians. When the words of our Lord, “Ye must be born again,” are ignored or explained away, chaos inevitably results. Centuries ago the Chinese had a word for it: “You cannot carve rotten wood.” Only too often the Church is engaged in this futile occupation.

The new birth is a spiritual reality in which God divinely transforms man. It is a supernatural act of God’s grace on condition of the faith of man. It is a transition from spiritual death to spiritual life, a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of an individual who, under the wooing of that same Spirit, senses his need and turns to the Son of God as his Redeemer in repentance and in true faith.

Explain it? Only in the simple terms of our Lord to Nicodemus. Here he makes the clear distinction between physical and spiritual birth, along with the arresting fact that only those who are born of the Spirit shall see the kingdom of God. Christ makes it clear that this is an imperative, not an elective, that it is the only way whereby man’s earth-bound relationships are changed and he becomes a citizen and an heir of the heavenlies.

It is because the Church has so largely glossed over this basic requirement in the divine plan of man’s redemption that she finds her rolls now filled with, and often dominated by, those who have never experienced this transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

The new birth is an act of God in which he exercises his divine power, creating in man a new heart, new attitudes and new desires. It does not transform man into a sinless creature; far from it. But it does mean that he now recognizes sin for what it is and that he trusts the One who alone can deliver from both its power and its penalty. When the Apostle Paul speaks of new creatures in Christ he is affirming the fact that with regeneration there is a newness which comes from without, from the Spirit’s work, not from within. And as faith is the instrument of our acceptance with God, so the atonement is the sole ground.

One of the outstanding contributions being made to contemporary Christianity is Billy Graham’s constant emphasis on the doctrine of the new birth. A few years ago a leading London journalist remarked that Mr. Graham seemed to have been raised up for one outstanding reason—to call our generation back to the preaching of the doctrine of the new birth.

Why has this doctrine been neglected? Among the many reasons has been the modern denial of the supernatural and the substitution of naturalistic concepts of man far removed from that revealed in the Scriptures. In addition, a new doctrine of God emerged in which his relation to the universe was thought to preclude the humbling fact that man is a fallen creature, incapable of saving himself and of responding to the love of God independently of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Looking for Christian maturity, we are prone to forget that the inescapable path to such maturity begins with spiritual birth. None of us would expect an infant to manifest the characteristics of an adult, but we all recognize that physical development has its start with infancy and in no other way. Why should we expect Christians to exist, much less develop, unless there has been a time when they have been born of the Spirit? It is this strange ignoring of the facts of spiritual life which causes untold confusion and does untold harm to the visible Church. As a result, we have the dead posing as living, the blind continuing to walk with spiritually sightless eyes.

But it is not for us to say who has been born again. The judgment of others is a sin all too prevalent. There will always be men walking in the twilight zone of Christianity, like the entombed unknown soldier, known only to God. For that reason neither individual Christians nor the Church can make infallible judgments as to who are Christians and who are not.

But for any to think that one can be a Christian without spiritual birth is to go counter to the doctrines having to do with both God and man and against the clear affirmations of Scripture. Furthermore, there are millions down through the ages who have had the glorious experience of the new birth and have had the Holy Spirit testify to their spirits that they are the sons of God.

This is not for one moment to imply that regeneration is always a spectacular experience charged with emotion. For the great majority of Christians it would be difficult to determine either the time or the place when they passed from death to life. But they know that this change has taken place and it is as real and infinitely more significant than the event of physical birth.

By silence when there should have been clear preaching, by evasion when there should have been unequivocal affirmation, by a minimizing of emphasis when there should have been primary concern, the Christian pulpits have often failed miserably to preach man’s need of spiritual rebirth; and through this glaring omission many have come into the church without a saving experience of the Christ of Calvary. Because of this, they go through the motions of religious conformity without the realities of a saving faith.

Pessimistic? Not pessimistic but realistic. Critical? Not critical but factual. Unscriptural? Not if words are to be interpreted rightly. If it can be demonstrated that the new birth is a necessity, and we believe such to be the case, then it can also be demonstrated that any program of evangelism, any philosophy of Christianity, any concept of the basic condition and need of man which ignores the necessity of this work of regeneration is not only contrary to the biblical teachings on conversion, but inimical to the Christian witness.

Admitting the need of Christian instruction and the development and maturing of the Christian in every phase of daily living, we must remember that foundations come before buildings, roots before trees, branches before fruit, and birth before life.

Not only are there priorities without which there can be no Christian life, but the very nature of these priorities must be admitted. Becoming a Christian is not a matter of heredity, for God has no grandchildren. Nor is it a matter of education, for that which is dead and inert cannot be educated. Neither is it a matter of environment, as wholesome and helpful as that may be. New birth takes priority because it always comes first, and an emphasis on this truth is of the greatest importance.

We are living in a time of staggering scientific advances, in a land boasting the highest living standards in history, but also in a time of emotional uncertainties, coupled with a mounting callousness to moral and spiritual values. In all of this, the Church is deeply and rightly concerned. But the primary task of the Church is to preach Christ, crucified, risen and coming in triumph—the only hope of the individual and of the social order itself. What shall it profit if we neglect those things without which our Lord says one can never see the kingdom of heaven? What shall it profit us if we neglect our primary task and dilute or change the message, with the result that the world order remains in the clutches of the devil?

Looking through the astigmatic lenses of the immediate, we are in danger of losing sight of those things which are ultimate and eternal. Only through the new birth do the eternal verities become personally relevant, for only then can we pass from death to life eternal. In this is implicit a recognition of our sinful and lost condition and a willingness to accept that which the eternal Son of God has done for us. It is because this work of personal salvation from sin is so often lacking in messages from American pulpits today that we as a people stand in jeopardy and the Church herself has lost something of her power and witness.

God is not to be mocked. The salvation that he wrought out for mankind in the counsels of eternity and brought into effect on the cross of Calvary is God’s way and there is no other. The nature of man must be changed and this change, this transition, this new birth, is a supernatural experience, a strait way and a narrow gate, the ignoring of which has eternal consequences.

Every newspaper tells of frantic efforts to recoup our scientific supremacy as a nation. With all of this we are in the heartiest sympathy. But what shall it profit us if we successfully conquer outer space, set up a station on the moon and attain domination of these hitherto unattainable areas of the universe, unless we at the same time learn of Him through whom alone the inner reaches of the soul are cleansed and disciplined? “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.