ANOTHER WHACK AT THE BOOZE INDUSTRY
Well, finally! The British Medical Association finally uttered the unutterable though they had been thinking the unthinkable for quite a while. The BBC news a while back announced that the BMA wants the government to ban booze commercials and ban bargain prices on booze (like three bottles for the price of two and such offers). They can’t stay silent any longer with the figures of teenage drinkers climbing (fifteen year-old girls in the lead) and older people boozing more at home, illness and crime soaring in connection with the rot-gut. [You rarely see anyone smoke now in the major “Soaps” in the UK but booze is there for about half the thirty minute show. The actors are either drinking in bars or at home all that time.]
Many believers cluck their tongues and shake their heads at cocaine, heroin, marijuana, amphetamines and the other drugs but the most abused drug in the world, certainly the Western world, has been and continues to be and will continue to be—booze.
The industry is an enemy of all that believers are for and a support to all that believers are against. One day we’ll all come to know that and we’ll regret every word we spoke in its favor.
The question is not “Will I go to hell for drinking a beer now and then?” The question is not, “Should we make social drinking a test of fellowship and salvation?” I don’t know that I ever believed an occasional drink damned anyone—not even when I was a kid and we thought going to the movies was a sin and smoking was “a poor witness” for Christ.
The track record of this industry and the damage it does to individuals, families, cities and nations can’t be fathomed. To look at that damning and damnable industry, claim Jesus made alcoholic wine in John 2 and say therefore “there’s nothing wrong with the booze business” is a blunder of great magnitude.
“A beer now and then doesn’t bother me. Jesus was no teetotaler!” Then a shrug, a grin and down goes another beer (or maybe a whiskey or...). Attaboy! Show them how free they are.
So what should we do? I don’t know how to deal with the booze plague but I can’t forget what was done to the tobacco industry. [Who’d have thought it twenty years ago?] I don’t know what a government should do but I’m satisfied I know what believers should do! Brand the industry for what it is! A parasite and a predator.
A poor soul once told me that ethanol is a substance and a substance can’t be evil. I don’t believe I ever thought a substance could be; not even heroin or cyanide, cocaine or the stuff that constitutes a dirty bomb.
“People don’t have to drink it!”
That’s true and they don’t have to watch hard-core porn either but the government believes in some level of censorship.I'm sure this is spittin' in the wind.
Still, there’s something mysterious about having to persuade believers to acknowledge that the booze industry is a slithering slimy parasite.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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