Article: The Alternative to Alcohol

By David Feddes

I awoke to the sound of someone pounding on the door at 4 o'clock in the morning. The person at the door said there had been a terrible car accident. Three young men had been killed. The three had been out drinking at a nearby bar. The young man who was driving had been under the influence of alcohol.

That was just one of many times I’ve encountered the deadly power of alcohol. Someone I knew was arrested for armed robbery. He did it while he was drunk. Someone else I knew was charged with raping his best friend's girlfriend. In this case, the rape charge didn’t stick because the jury was not convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the young woman was unwilling. But it was beyond doubt that sexual sin had occurred and that the man and woman were both drunk at the time.

In my years of ministry, I have heard many people weeping over marriages that dissolved because of drinking or drugs. I have grieved with desperate parents mourning what their kids have become because of addictions. I have seen the struggles of children who have alcoholic parents. I have met people in prison whose crimes were committed under the influence of alcohol.

You could probably tell stories of your own about relatives or friends who died, or got in trouble with the law, or ruined their families, or messed up their lives while “under the influence.” Maybe your own life is being harmed by alcohol.

You might expect me to say people should never be under the influence. But I'm not going to say that. You need to be under the influence of something outside yourself. There's more to life than just staying sober and being in charge of your thoughts and emotions and actions. The best and happiest life is when your thoughts and emotions and actions are affected by some other power that makes you someone you wouldn't otherwise be. You shouldn’t be under the influence of alcohol, but you should be under the influence of the alternative to alcohol.

In Ephesians 5:18 the Bible says, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit." In other words, be divinely drunk, spiritually soused. God puts getting drunk side by side with being filled by his Spirit, and the Lord hints that there’s at least something in common. That’s a shocking comparison! There’s also a contrast, of course—getting drunk and being Spirit-filled are very different—but by putting the two side by side, the Bible is saying that they are also comparable in some ways.

Under the Influence

When you drink too much alcohol, you became another person. You do some things you wouldn't otherwise do. Likewise, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you also become another person and do some things you wouldn't otherwise do. In both cases, you're under the influence of another power.

On the day of Pentecost, shortly after Jesus rose from the dead, God poured out his Holy Spirit with tremendous power on the followers of Jesus. When Jesus’ disciples were filled with the Spirit, they began to praise God and to speak of him in such a way that those who heard them could tell they were under the influence of something beyond themselves. These onlookers reacted in one of two ways. They were either amazed at the power of God and his mighty wonders, or else they made fun of the disciples and said, "They have had too much wine." Apparently, there is something about the Holy Spirit's influence that is so unusual and overwhelming that if you didn't know better, you might think a Spirit-filled person was drunk.

One of the most basic facts about human beings is that God designed us with a desire to be under an influence beyond ourselves. You and I were not designed simply to be our own persons. We were created with a need to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God and to live under his joyous influence. If we're not under the Spirit's influence, we may try to satisfy our craving by putting ourselves under some other influence, like alcohol or drugs. In a sense, getting drunk or getting high is a religious experience. It's an attempt to satisfy our religious craving to be under the influence of some other power. We have that craving because our hearts are restless and empty until they are filled with the Spirit for whom we were created. Alcohol is an alternative to the Spirit, and the Spirit is the alternative to alcohol.

No matter where you go nowadays, you're told that happiness and alcohol go together. You can hardly watch a game on TV without seeing a beer commercial. You can hardly open a magazine without seeing liquor ads. You can hardly make it through school without classmates offering you booze or drugs. You can hardly go to an office party without getting pressure to drink too much. Some church people dress well on Sunday morning but drink like pagans on Friday night. Many church weddings begin with a sacred ceremony and end in a drunken dance.

In contrast to all that, the Bible says bluntly, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery." Now, "debauchery" isn't a word we use every day. What does it mean? It means to squander, to overdo, to go to excess, to waste, to throw away. Debauchery means throwing away money, throwing away time, throwing away energy, throwing away health, throwing away family, throwing away dignity, throwing away purity, throwing away intellect, throwing away yourself, throwing away your life. Abusing alcohol leads to debauchery, to trashing everything that matters. There's a sharp contrast between that kind of life and the Spirit-filled life.

But that's not the only reason Scripture mentions alcohol and the Holy Spirit side by side. Yes, there are contrasts, but there are also parallels. By looking at the impact liquor has on people, we can get a better grasp on the impact God's Spirit has on people. Ephesians 5:18 says, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit."

One obvious thing about alcohol is that it's not just an abstract idea. Alcohol changes you. When you drink a lot of it, you're not the same person you were before you got drunk. So it is with the Holy Spirit. He's not just an abstract idea. He's a person and an active power. When you've got the Holy Spirit in you, you're a different person than you were without him. You're under the influence of a power that changes who you are.

To speak of liquor and the Holy Spirit in the same breath may not be a flattering comparison, but God wants to drive home the point that the influence of his Spirit is even more real and more powerful than the influence of alcohol. Jesus didn't just come into the world to give us a new set of ideas. He came to give us new life, and to bring a new power to bear in our lives: the power of his Holy Spirit living within us.

We could almost say that getting drunk is the evil twin of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Being drunk and being filled with the Spirit are both cases of being under the influence of something beyond yourself in a way that affects thoughts and feelings and actions, but with opposite results.

Seeing Things

Consider the influence on your mind. Drinking too much liquor can make you think you're having fun even when you're getting hurt. It can make you think you're being funny and charming, when any sober person watching you can see that you're being obnoxious and stupid. Even after you sober up, your memory is twisted—if you remember anything at all. You remember being smooth and smart, the life of the party. Others remember you saying dumb things, making crude sexual advances, and vomiting. Drinking distorts your memory and twists your reasoning. As recovering alcoholics sometimes put it, "The stinking thinking causes the drinking." And the reverse is also true: the drinking causes even more stinking thinking. It's a vicious circle. When you're under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the effect on your mind is as great as alcohol, but with the opposite effect. Instead of clouding your mind and distorting your thinking, the Spirit clears your head and sharpens your thinking.

Booze and drugs can make you hallucinate and see things you never saw before, but the things you see aren't real. The Holy Spirit, too, affects your mind in such a way that you see things you've never seen before, but the things the Spirit helps you see are things that really are there.

The Spirit opens your mind to the deep things of God, things that have always been there but that you never saw until you came under the influence of the Spirit. You begin to see God's purity, power, wisdom, and love in ways you couldn't possibly see without the Spirit. You see what God has done through Jesus to save you. In fact, when we are filled with the Spirit, says the Bible, "we have the mind of Christ" (2:16).

Another part of the clear thinking that comes from the Spirit is that you can see evil for what it is. You become realistic and sensitive to things in your life that need changing. Alcohol makes you less alert to your own faults and weaknesses. When you drink too much, you do more and more rotten things, but your awareness of them becomes less and less. The opposite happens when you're filled with the Spirit: you commit fewer and fewer sins, but your awareness of the sins you do commit becomes clearer and clearer.

Emotions and Inhibitions

That brings us to the realm of emotions. Alcohol has a powerful emotional affect. It can make you feel happy for a while, but in the end it leaves you feeling low. Any doctor can tell you that alcohol is a depressant. Some people say they drink to drown their sorrows, but drinking doesn't drown sorrows. It irrigates sorrows and makes them grow.

Like alcohol, the Holy Spirit powerfully affects emotions, but instead of being a depressant, the Spirit stimulates and encourages and empowers. When you're under the influence of the Spirit, you don't try to run from sorrows or look for a way to pretend they're not there. Instead, the Holy Spirit helps you to face your sorrows and moves you to rejoice anyway, because you hope in Christ and are filled with God’s love. The Bible says, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings... And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Romans 5:2-5).

Another way in which liquor and the Spirit are similar yet different is in the area of inhibitions, things that you won’t do because you’d be embarrassed. Liquor lowers inhibitions. When you drink too much, you no longer feel ashamed of things that would have embarrassed you horribly when you were sober. Like alcohol, the Spirit lowers inhibitions, but instead of lowering inhibitions on bad things, the Spirit lowers inhibitions about good things.

Many of us have two kinds of secrets: those things that are so shameful we don't want anyone to know them, and those things that are so deep and precious that we feel too shy to share them with others who might not understand. Liquor makes you unashamed to reveal your worst secrets, unashamed to revel in your worst instincts, unashamed to celebrate what is disgusting. The Holy Spirit makes you unashamed to reveal your deep yearning and love for God, unashamed to rejoice in Christ, unashamed to celebrate what is truly beautiful. Liquor makes you brazen; the Spirit makes you bold. Liquor frees you from inhibitions that keep you from acting like an animal. The Spirit frees you from inhibitions that keep you from praising God in the company of others.

As he frees our emotions to praise and rejoice with others, the Spirit also frees us to enjoy closer, deeper relationships. Liquor has a phony, counterfeit version of this. Drinking buddies get together and bond under the influence of alcohol. But the fellowship of a bottle can't match the fellowship of God's people who are under the influence of his Spirit.

If alcohol has you in its grip, you need the alternative to alcohol: God’s Holy Spirit. Even if you don’t have a problem with alcohol, you still need to be filled with the Holy Spirit!