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“It melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth and calm. This can be a life-changing experience.”
That’s what drunkenness offers, as pointed out by this Telegraph article which picks up on the actor Charlie Sheen’s struggle with the bottle.
And let’s be honest: that’s what drunkenness delivers for many people.
Of course, there’s a downside. Andrew Brown continues: “life for heavy boozers tends to be punctuated with agonizing catastrophes, messes that need to be cleared up, phone calls, pleas for forgiveness.”
But still, alcohol offers us a chance to be the "me that I want to be". It gets rid of inhibitions and gives the confidence to be "yourself".
I wonder if that’s why the traditional line churches (and particularly youth groups) give doesn’t work for people who struggle with drunkenness, as I did for years. I regularly heard: “Don’t get drunk. It’s not good. God doesn’t like it”. And yet the thing is: in many ways, drunkenness is good. And in many ways, I like it!
So this article got me thinking about how I need to remember, and I need to encourage others to remember, the sentence which follows Paul’s famous “no” to getting drunk in Ephesians 5 v 18:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery…
“Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
Why is the answer to the temptation of drunkenness to look at the Spirit? Because the Spirit “melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth, and calm.”
To put it another way, people filled with the Spirit, who work to let the Spirit work in them, “are being transformed into [Christ’s] likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from … the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3 v 18).
The Spirit offers us the ability to become the me that I want to be: a Christ-like me. And there’s no downside, no morning after, no hangover. There's no need to get drunk because for the Christian, there is something better than the good things alcohol offers. I wonder if that’s why Paul finishes Ephesians 5 v 18 as he does.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
