Does the Bible Prescribe Alcohol to the Depressed?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Today's question is about depression, and it comes to us from an anonymous listener.
00:00:08.480 | "Pastor John, about a year ago I was going through one of the lowest times of depression in my entire
00:00:13.520 | life. During this time I was reading scripture. I came across Proverbs 31, verses 6 and 7, which say
00:00:18.880 | this, "Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to him whose life is bitter. Let him
00:00:27.280 | drink and forget his poverty, and remember his trouble no more." That seems like exactly what
00:00:34.960 | I didn't need. Does this passage teach us to use alcohol in numbing the pain of depression?"
00:00:41.680 | Let's read these verses, Proverbs 31, 6 and 7, in context. So here's verses 4 through 9,
00:00:53.680 | and they're very short. "It is not for kings, O Lemuel." So this is Lemuel's mother. You know that
00:01:02.080 | early in the context. This is Lemuel's mother teaching him about how to be a king.
00:01:07.520 | "It is not for kings, O Lemuel. It is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink,
00:01:18.240 | lest they drink and forget what has been decreed, and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
00:01:26.000 | Give strong drink to the one who's perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress.
00:01:33.520 | Let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more. Open your mouth
00:01:42.080 | for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously,
00:01:48.960 | defend the rights of the poor and needy." So there's the context. On both sides of the verse
00:01:56.160 | about giving drink to the one who's perishing, the stress is, "Don't pervert the rights of the
00:02:02.880 | afflicted. Judge righteously, defend the poor, and as a means to that end, watch out for strong drink.
00:02:11.120 | It unfits the mind for the kind of thinking that leaders have to do in order to do justice.
00:02:16.160 | So Lemuel's mother is picking up on a theme that runs through the Old Testament
00:02:23.840 | about alcohol and how it distorts reality and unfits the mind for responsible action and therefore
00:02:35.760 | should be used with the greatest caution. Let me just give you a taste of that theme that she's
00:02:41.440 | picking up on. Ecclesiastes 10, 17, "Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of the nobility
00:02:51.520 | and your princes feast at the proper time for strength and not for drunkenness." In other words,
00:03:01.040 | happy when you have princes that don't abuse their alcohol. What happens when leaders give
00:03:07.280 | themselves to strong drink? 1 Kings 16, 9, "When Asa the king was at Tirzah drinking himself drunk
00:03:16.560 | at the house of Arzah, who was over the household of Tirzah, Zimri came and killed him." Or
00:03:22.640 | 1 Kings 20, 16, "When Ben-Hadad the foreign king was drinking himself drunk in the booths
00:03:30.000 | they attacked him and defeated him." Or Isaiah 28, 7, "The priest and the prophet
00:03:36.560 | reel with strong drink." They are swallowed by wine. They stagger with strong drink. They
00:03:43.920 | reel in vision. They stumble in giving judgment. That's what Lemuel's mother is so concerned about.
00:03:52.400 | Or Hosea 4, 10, "Hoard him wine and new wine. Take away the understanding." That's what she's
00:04:01.280 | so concerned about. Or Proverbs 20, verse 1, "Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is a brawler. Whoever
00:04:09.040 | partakes is led astray by it and is not wise." Or Proverbs 23, 31, "Do not look at wine when it is
00:04:17.920 | red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and
00:04:24.320 | stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things and your heart will utter perverse things."
00:04:34.320 | This is not what kings should do, Lemuel's mother is saying. Your heart must stay clear. Your eyes
00:04:40.000 | must be open. Your mind must be sharp so that you can utter just and wise things. So the greatest
00:04:47.840 | concern of this passage is verse 5, "Lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert
00:04:55.840 | the rights of the afflicted." Now that leaves two possible meanings for these words inserted here
00:05:05.120 | about—let me read them. "Give strong drink to the one who's perishing and wine to those bitter in
00:05:13.760 | distress. Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more." Now here's two
00:05:20.080 | possible meanings for that in that particular context. One, use strong drink like we use morphine.
00:05:28.160 | If someone is perishing and in great pain, use the means at your disposal to relieve the pain.
00:05:37.280 | Give strong drink to the one who is perishing. I don't think—this is his specific answer to his
00:05:43.840 | question—I don't think that justifies us in using alcohol to escape our sorrows or our mental
00:05:52.640 | miseries. That would not relieve the symptoms of sorrow but would cut us off from the real remedy,
00:06:02.000 | namely knowing clearly the truth of God in Christ. So that's the first possible meaning. Use it like
00:06:08.960 | morphine. I mean, that's the way it's been used in history. Every TV western I've ever seen, when
00:06:14.720 | they're gonna cut off the guy's finger, they give him whiskey, right? Well, so would I. I mean, come on.
00:06:19.360 | Just like I'm so thankful today for pain medication. Number two, and this is what most of the
00:06:25.840 | commentators I've looked at believe is the case, namely that this is irony. This is Lemuel's mother
00:06:32.480 | who has just told her son that the king should beware of strong drink, and then she says,
00:06:39.760 | "Give it to the miserable." Tremper Longman, in his commentary, suggests that she would be saying
00:06:47.200 | this. This is a quote, "Don't act like those derelicts who drink to forget their hardships.
00:06:53.840 | Be like the king you are." So it's irony. It's saying, "Go ahead and give it to them to do with
00:07:01.520 | it what they do, but you're the king, and you don't use alcohol that way." Now, frankly, I'm just not
00:07:09.280 | sure which of those, but both of them, I think, would be legitimate interpretations of these
00:07:15.040 | verses. In either case, she's not teaching her son or us in our very low and discouraging moments
00:07:23.840 | to damage our ability to see the truth that can heal us deeply. Don't open your mouth to obscure
00:07:35.440 | reality. Open your mouth to make right judgments. In other words, don't open your mouth to take in
00:07:42.640 | the very thing that would make you blind to the truth that can heal you. Open your mouth as a king
00:07:49.840 | to speak right things, and open your ears to hear right things that would deliver you from misjudgment.
00:07:56.960 | That's a good exposition. Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John
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00:08:31.600 | that than over the weekend, which is upon us. Lord willing, we will return on Monday with another of
00:08:36.640 | your questions, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. In any case, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks
00:08:41.280 | for listening, and we will see you on Monday.
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