[HOTL's Got Questions] Is Drinking a Sin?

The HOTLCast crew tackle one of the most common faith questions they receive: is drinking alcohol a sin? They dig into what the Bible actually says, from Old Testament passages celebrating wine to Jesus' own first miracle at the wedding in Cana, and unpack the key distinction Scripture draws between drinking and drunkenness.

The conversation gets personal as Ryan shares his five years of sobriety, Matt reflects on the denomination's evolving standards, and the group discusses why alcohol — even if technically permissible — may not be beneficial for everyone. They also walk through the United Brethren Church's official position and what it means to be "mastered" by anything.

Whether you're curious about what Christianity really teaches on this topic or wrestling with it personally, this episode offers an honest, grace-filled conversation grounded in scripture.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

All right, welcome back to Hollow's Got Questions. We changed the name. I like it better. Um, so here, welcome back. We're here. This is AutoCast. I'm here with Ryan and Matt and Mark and Cameraman Nick. And we're we're answering your questions about faith-related questions. And here's a big one. Is drinking okay? Is it a sin? What do you guys think? This is crack crickets.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Drunkenness is a sin, but drinking is not.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Okay. Well, um, yeah, what do you think, Ryan?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah, I mean, I I think I I think on a on a on a very technical level, I a hundred percent agree with Matt. I know I can I I I think on a practical level, in my experience, in in what I know is is alcohol does not work in my life.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

So I mean it it is But Jesus joke wine.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

So that means you can go and get plastered if you want.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't yeah, I didn't hear that from people. I can use grape juice. Yeah, it doesn't work in my life. Yeah, so you know, I I nothing ever good has come in my life when alcohol was involved.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

So important clarifying point though, if you are using it as an idol, even if it's not drunkenness, then too it would be a sin, even if you're not getting drunk as a result of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

I had a um, you know, where I was summer sub beach camp and the camp it has a no alcohol policy, no no drugs policy. It's great. And so I had uh one of the teenagers was like, hey, why don't your family camp here? And she's like, Well, my my family won't camp here because they won't camp without alcohol. So I'm like, oh that's sad. So like we're going to this other place and it smells like marijuana the whole time, but like they can drink. So it's just sad that like that was a disappointment for that student about her family. And there are people who love the Lord, but like there's a difference between you know having a drink and and having a lifestyle that of drinking, which is becomes dangerous. And so there's I think we we look at like what does the Bible say? Yeah, Jesus drank alcohol, um, the disciples drank alcohol in the old testament, they drank alcohol, and I what scholars will say or people will say was, well, that alcohol was not as fermented as the wine of today, and so although alcohol today is like a lot stronger, that was very weakly fermented, so it wasn't really alcohol. And I just call that bubkiss because Jesus actually at the wedding ceremony, his first miracle is changing water into wine, and he makes it the best wine. The best wine in their mind was not going to be a low alcohol wine. So true, and so Jesus himself created a probably a high, higher level of alcohol, uh percentage of alcohol wine, which would have been the best drinkable wine. Um, not for people to get drunk, but for that for them to have, you know, at the at the ceremony. So what the Bible says about alcohol is a few things. We see uh in the Old Testament, we see verses like Psalm 104.15, which says, drink your wine with a joyful heart. We see Amos 9.14 that says that God gives wine that gladdens human hearts. So we see um Isaiah 55, 1 says, Come by wine and milk without money and without cost. I mean, in the ancient world, drinking water was dangerous because water has parasites and they didn't have cleaning, they didn't they didn't have the understanding we have of modern science. So to kill the parasites, you just mix it in alcohol and it killed everything. So there's that, right? But that's that's often used as an excuse. Well, we don't we have modern science, so we don't need alcohol to clean our water. Yeah, I agree with that. But that's not necessarily the only reason they they drank. They did drink to enjoy life and you know, community together. And so what we see in the New Testament when Jesus comes, Jesus gives us a kind of a new set of standards to live by, to follow him. And in Ephesians 5.18, we are warned about it, you know, getting drunk. It says, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. The Bible always makes it clear that what we're supposed to be filled with is God's spirit, not alcohol. Like, and so when we get to the point of we lose, we lose control of our own self, we are actually in control of that created thing. We're not in control of the spirit. We're not in control by controlled by God. We are basically controlled by that created thing, and that's the danger of drunkenness. And so that is forbidden in in Ephesians uh in the Bible. We're told in 1 Corinthians and and 2 Peter that we should not be mastered by anything. It's very clear in the Bible. We should all things are beneficial. Uh oh, no, all things are permissible, like drinking, but not all things are beneficial. And so, like for you, Ryan, you said alcohol is not beneficial for me, so that's that's a no. Um, but for some people who don't have a problem with it, it's not a no, as long as they can control it and navigate. The the the issue is there is always a propensity that it can become a problem because it's such an addictive thing, it's such a problematic thing in people's life, and so we're not supposed to be mastered by anything. So, Matt, you've been pastoring for long enough that I'm sure you've had these discussions, and we we work in the United Brethren Church now, so th they have a standard which you can share. But what are some of your thoughts on on drinking?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

The biggest thing for me is, and this is the way I've explained it, not only to teenagers but to adults as well, is you don't know exactly what number sip you're gonna have to get to before you cross the line. And because you don't know, that's something that should be uh on the forefront of your mind is maybe this shouldn't be for me just because it would be so easy to go from not sending, not sending, not sending. Well, I just send to go from not being drunk to being drunk. And people don't like that answer. It's not the popular answer. They want you to just say, Oh, well, yeah, you can do this, you can do that, you can do that. Like they want the permissiveness of it, and I don't it goes back to the you know, beneficial versus permissible. I don't think it's beneficial. Like when I was younger, yes, I drank alcohol occasionally, but then in 2013, I had a surgery where I physically can't drink alcohol anymore. Like, if I would, it would make me incredibly sick. So I can't even partake of it. Not that I want to, but it's one of those things where I don't miss having that in my life. It was never something that was a necessity. So not having it is not that big of a deal. There are other people who don't feel that same way where they're like, well, this is just a part of who I am. Whenever I go out to dinner, whenever I go out for this, I I drink. That's just that's kind of what I do.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

But then it becomes a crutch. And I think that's the problem. When it's something that becomes a crush, crutch in your life, then it's nothing that you rely on, and that that can become a really unhealthy thing for you. We should never need a crutch to be the person God created us to be. Exactly. Well, I've had people tell me, Well, I'll go out and have a drink and it just lets me loose and let me be my real self. And like, no, we should be our real self without alcohol. And if you can't, then I think that's leading you to a problem because then you always have to have that created thing to go be your real self, which is going to lead you down a path to destruction. And that's you know, that's kind of why you say you can't, you've realized in your life you can't do it. Um, it does lead people to destruction. It does not that it's not like people who say, hey, my life is so much better because of alcohol. I've never had somebody come to counsel and be like, oh, my life is so much better because I drink. It's usually I it was good for me for a time and then it became a major problem, and now it's destroyed my life, ruined my marriage, ruined my life. So um, those are some other things. What does the UB say about like what we in our denomination we have some social standards, one on drinking? What does it say about drinking in the UB standard?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Well, it actually breaks it down a couple of different ways. There's uh like a handful of points here. I'll just kind of go through them a little bit quickly. But uh one is the use of alcoholic beverages is often personally injurious to the users and at the core of significant family and social problems. I think that most people would agree that there are times where that is absolutely something that we've witnessed. Uh the use of alcoholic beverages is often found to be contrary to the best interest of personal and social morality, economy, and welfare. Holy scriptures teach us to exercise good stewardship of our bodies. Scripture also admonishes us to avoid abusive indulgences of alcoholic beverages. The United Brother and Church in Christ uh believes that and and experience demonstrates that the abuse of alcoholic beverages is harmful to our physical bodies and is a detriment to the best stewardship and witness of our lives. Therefore, we urge not command but urge all of our members to avoid using alcoholic beverages. We also urge our leaders to teach as well as counsel about the hazards of abusing alcoholic beverages and that the deliverance is possible through the ministry of the Spirit.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

So it doesn't say strongly urge anymore.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

It does not say strongly urge.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

I used to say strongly urge. When I came into the eight years ago, they had a when I ten years ago when I came in, pastors were banned from alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

And then like a couple years after that, they decided to make it match the Bible because we really in this denomination, what the Bible says matters, what it doesn't say matters. And so it didn't match the biblical standard of what Jesus' own life and ministry were. So they changed it to urge urge. It was strongly urged, now I guess it's urge, it's strongly urge or urge not to uh participate in it. But it doesn't mean you can't, it just means be responsible. Alcohol consumed in reasonable quantities is neither harmful nor addictive for most people. The problem is like my family, my my extended family have a lot of addicts. So thinking about the genetics of that, there's there's a likelihood that I would have a high propensity for being addicted to alcohol because I have, you know, I like board games. I'd probably have a board game addiction at some point. I work on it in recovery, sort of probably. I was it was until Kickstarter this year. Um, but like ultimately if you have an addictive personality, you should never you should never participate in an addictive thing. That's the reality of it. No. Um my whole life I'd never drank alcohol until I went to my 20-year anniversary trip to Italy or once-in-a-lifetime trip. And I'd always watched all these shows and movies and thought, oh, that must be really fun. And I had this like dream since a child, since I was a teenager. I watched some show where they got brought grape grape vines across America, back in like wagon trains with there were Indians and they were coming, go gonna go on Conestoga wagons across the West, and they were taking grape vines from the east, and they were gonna plant them in California, and there was from the the region of Spain, Catalonia, and they like had superpowers. So they would like drink wine and they could like bounce off cliffs and stuff and jump from high. Like, so I was like, man, this is pretty cool. And uh and they would they would go, yeah, yeah, yeah. They'd jump like it was, it was the wildest thing. So I always thought, man, one day I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to Europe and I'm gonna go to one of these places and and I'm gonna go to a vineyard, I'm gonna sit down and have a drink. And so um, but that was always like I'm never gonna, if that never happens, I'm never gonna do it because I don't I don't need alcohol. You know, I was raised alcohol with sin, and if you drink, you're going to hell uh in a church growing up. I learned that that wasn't the case. What the Bible says when I would cut off on my own in college, learned that that you just need to have better healthy standards and be able to say no. And so, but I refrain from it the whole time. So we go uh to Italy, we're sitting across from the Coliseum, and this major D comes out and says, Hey, would you like a glass of wine? I'm like, you know what? I'm sitting here looking at the Coliseum, it's literally right across the street, it's like 20 yards away. And I'm like, this is kind of like one of those epic moments. I might as well have a glass of wine. So he's like, I said, Yeah, I've never drank wine before, sir. So, like, you know, just get me something, that'll be good. And he's like, Oh, I got you, I got you, I got you. So he comes out, he just he fills my glass up, it's a huge goblet. He fills it. I was like, just give me a little bit. He filled it to the top. It's like to the top. And I'm like, I took one sip of that thing, it was the worst thing I ever put in my mouth. I hated it, I hated it, hated it. Like, I was like, this is awful. Tastes like battery acid. Why would somebody why would somebody like this? And it was warm, like pea. See, it was like pea warm, and it was battery acid. Like, this is terrible. This is not chilled grape juice at all. Like, I love sparkling grape juice with a passion. That's what I thought alcohol tasted like. So um, so I was very disappointed. So it was kind of like this this like little fantasy I had from a childhood, defeated. So alcohol is not a thing for me that controls my life, and it's never gonna be a thing because I think it tastes terrible. Uh, but I know for a lot of people they like the flavor, the taste of it, whatever. Um, they grew up with it, but uh, it's just to me, the reason I don't drink it is you know, not because I feel like I'm gonna go to hell if I do, it's because I recognize I do have an addictive person. I need to be very careful about things and things that could lead me down a path of destruction and not things I want in my life, especially when like the UB standard says strongly urge you not to do it because of how it could destroy your family, your health, all those things. That's true. Science proves alcohol can be bad for you, really bad for you. And so, like, I think the context is if you're gonna drink, drink responsibly, like drink with people uh that that you know can hold you accountable to the standards of what the Bible says. And if you can't, then don't. And if you have any problems or you have a addictive personality, stay away from it. Like, I mean, how has it been hard for you to stay away from alcohol since making a decision? Like, you're not gonna have anything to do with that?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, September 4th, I'll be five years sober and completely sober. Congratulations. And I've been working at it for a second. It's five years.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Let's just let's celebrate that. Sure, let's have a party, let's do it. It's like Labor Day. Yeah, yeah, like Labor Day.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

It's right around there.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

But it's not a Labor Day party. That sounds like playing board games. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

You know, but I I I think that for me it's it's a one day at a time sort of thing where where I just you know, I just work at it every day. And but honestly, I mean, I do a lot of counseling and I and I got a lot of a lot of a lot of time in this space working with people in recovery. And I I don't I don't know too many people that drink alcohol that it doesn't dominate them on some level.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

So and and so any anybody that says, oh, it's not a problem, you're already justifying that it's not a problem. Like, you know, I mean, I even the same idea with a campground, like a good friend of mine, like I was trying to get him to come out and oh, you should go with they're like, Oh, well, you know, we'd like to we like to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol. I'm like, well, yeah. You can do that every other day, yeah. You can't do it there. So but the um the amount of like choosing not to do that, um, and the amount of like family time and connection and and all the beautiful moments you miss out just to choose your your your your substances that you know alter your body chemistry so you don't have to be in reality, is seems for me in my life that just doesn't work. I I ain't got time for that.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Yeah. So well, great. So thanks for sharing for that. I put it in my calendar, September 4th. We're gonna have a party.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

So well, um, hope that answers your question. Like, if you drink, drink responsibly with and with responsible people. And if you can't, don't. Like we strongly urge you not to. If it causes you health problems, run from it. Um, even even in the Bible, uh, Paul tells Timothy, who's got stomach issues, he tells them to have a little wine because like water had parasites back then. We wouldn't give the same advice in today's world, we would give some other prescriptions. So you can't take what happened in biblical times for a one-to-one in today's world because the world was different then. You have to always look at read the Bible in context of what's happening in the community, the world at the time. What did that mean for the original audience based on what was going on in the world? But we can take the truth of God's word. We are not to be drunk on anything, mastered by anything, and that's clear in scripture. So don't be mastered by alcohol or anything related. And we hope you the best as you move forward in your own journey. So we'll catch you on the next episode of HODL's Got Questions.