Southern Baptists deem Jesus unelectable

In its ongoing campaign to increase legalism in the church, the Southern Baptist Convention has passed a resolution encouraging (mandating?) a "total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages." It goes on to "urge that no one be elected to serve as a trustee or member of any entity or committee of the Southern Baptist Convention that is a user of alcoholic beverages."

It seems odd to me that a Christian church would see any wisdom in labeling anything Jesus Christ himself did as sinful. In John 2, we see that Jesus' first miracle involved the manufacturing and distributing of alcoholic beverages, and the Pharisees' accusation of Jesus being a drunkard in Luke 7 would be total nonsense if Jesus didn't drink wine at least occasionally. But, according to this resolution, the Messiah himself would be unfit for service in a leadership position within the SBC.

In an effort to protect Christians from a sin that is apparently more taboo than the rest, the SBC glories in its legalism as it erects its hedge around the law. In doing so, they also indict Jesus himself for leading people down a path that leads toward addiction, emotional damage, health problems, and more.

They are missing the point. Alcohol isn't the root of this pattern of destruction and abuse, but rather the hearts of sinful men. I spent four years in a fraternity, so you don't need to enlighten me with a lecture on the dangers of alcohol abuse. Like many blessings from God, alcohol can be misused or abused in a way that is dishonoring to God, and dangerous to a man's soul. So can automobiles, firearms, money, women, and even the sun itself. Luther addressed this issue in his day:

We must not…reject [or] condemn anything because it is abused. This would result in utter confusion. God has commanded us in Deut. 4 not to lift up our eyes to the sun (and the moon and the stars), etc., that we may not worship them, for they are created to serve all nations. But there are many people who worship the sun and the stars. Therefore we propose to rush in and pull the sun and stars from the skies. No, we had better let it be. Again, wine and women bring many a man to misery and make a fool of him (Ecclus. 19:2; 31:30); so we kill all the women and pour out all the wine. Again, gold and silver cause much evil, so we condemn them. Indeed, if we want to drive away our worst enemy, the one who does us the most harm, we shall have to kill ourselves, for we have no greater enemy than our own heart, as the prophet, Jer. 17, says, "The heart of man is crooked," or, as I take the meaning, "always twisting to one side." And so on - what would we not do?

-From his fourth Invocavit sermon from 1522, found in Works, American Edition, vol. 51, p. 85s (ht: Vitamin Z)

Luther properly identifies the enemy. It is not the bottle, nor is it the woman. "If we want to drive away our worst enemy, the one who does us the most harm, we shall have to kill ourselves, for we have no greater enemy than our own heart."

I long for the day when the Southern Baptist Convention will turn its attention from the outward appearance and instead engage the root of man's sinfulness: his dead, cold as a stone heart (Eze 36:26).

I am starting to feel like a broken record on this point, but I see a direct connection between an Arminian soteriology and absurd behavior as exhibited by the SBC in this resolution. When you reduce "getting saved" to an act of praying a cute little prayer and finally letting Jesus come into your heart, your very definition of what a Christian is will lead you into all sorts of problems, chief among them being the discipleship of and fellowship with a man who hates God and has not truly been born again. As I discussed in my post on Born-againism, discipleship for this pseudo-convert will consist of him abstaining from the sin he loves to fulfill a duty to do things he hates. Because his heart is still dead, and he remains an enemy of God, he will turn back to his sin over and over, until he finally abandons the Christian shroud he has woven for himself.

Southern Baptists will label him a back-slider and blame the object of his sin (alcohol? women? money?) for his apparent falling away. I would label him an unregenerate man whose will is only as free as the nature that directs it.

True sanctification involves the spiritually regenerate man agonizing to mortify the sin he so vehemently hates, empowered by the Holy Spirit who indwells his supernaturally redeemed heart. He loves God and hates his sin, not because he has mustered up enough free will to finally choose Jesus and follow his commandments, but because God has ransomed him from the bondage of his sinful nature and redeemed him to be a child of the Holy, Living God. He is no longer a slave to sin, but to righteousness.

The SBC can pass as many resolutions as it wants to, railing against any and all of the perceived vices of this world. Unfortunately, until they begin to address the sinfulness of man at its most fundamental level, they will reap nothing but superficial "holiness" and "sanctification" that extend to the liquor store, but not into the heart.

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Chad Degenhart examines the inconsistencies of the teetotaler position in a post that has been very influential to my approach to this issue.

John Piper addressed this issue back in 1982, stating that "God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism," imagining that there are likely "ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism." Piper is himself a teetotaler, so his is an interesting perspective.