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"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
Alcoholism - Is it a Disease?
Reprinted
From The Plains Baptist Challenger, 1996
Alcohol is America’s number one drug. It is our worst enemy! There is not one good word that can be offered in the defense of the sale of this deadly drug! Alcohol has devastated many men and women, unborn children, and families. Families have been destroyed, their children commit suicide, and hell breaks forth in their lives.
People talk about alcohol being a disease—it is a sin. God has never sent a person to Hell for having a disease, but always because of a rejection of Jesus Christ and a failure to repent of sin.
I do not believe alcoholism is a disease for the following reasons:
The problem is: not alcoholism, but alcohol. There could be no problems of “alcoholism” without alcohol.
- If it is a disease, it is a disease without germ or virus.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that is self-inflicted.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease contracted by an act of the will. This is not true of any other sickness.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that is bottled and sold over the counter for profit.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that brings in tax revenue for the government, state, county and city.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that takes thousands of outlets in every town and city to spread.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that people spend four to five hundred million dollars a year to spread.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that provokes crime and corrupts our courts and law enforcement officials.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that turns our boys into criminals and our girls into prostitutes.
- f it is a disease, it is the only disease that will cause a father to go home and take his baby by the heels and beat his brains out.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that will cause a mother to desert her children, and leave them to the mercy of the world.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that will take the clothes from their backs, shoes from their feet, and bread from their mouths.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that is bottled and sold, causing our reform schools, jails, and mental institutions to be filled to capacity.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that is given for a Christmas and birthday present.
- If it is a disease, it is the only disease that will keep one out of Heaven, and send that soul to Hell.
We know that liquor lords are all liars, the beer barons are all boasters, and the wine-bibbers are all blabbers, but there is one advertisement that does tell the truth: “Our liquor leaves you breathless” by the drunken driver.
Visit the morgue of our city and the funeral homes, and you will see those who have been left “breathless” by the liquor traffic.
Many call alcoholism a “disease.” The Word of God calls it a “sin.”
Which one do you consider correct? “Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:10)
“Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!” (Habakkuk 2:15)
Woe means a condition from deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief.