Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.
The call of entertainment is plethora and powerful. Many entertainments, indeed, are within righteousness’s border, when enjoyed in their right place. Wine, sports, fantasy fiction, board games, and many more fall into this category. Others, by sin integral or inseparable, are impermissible in any form: hard drugs, pornography, fornication, the occult, et cetera. Even the righteous entertainments, however, can become sins when placed wrongly in our lives—and sources for immense damage.
Back in the day, when Solomon wrote Proverbs, drugs were not so varied as they are now. While they may have had some sort of narcotic, the prime chemical intoxicant was the classic: alcohol. Now, alcohol is not wrong in itself, contra some. In various times and places, weak alcohols provided a much cleaner source of water than the literal water that was the alternative, due to distillation technology and the condition of the water sources. More than that, though, wine is a proper means of pleasure; Psalm 104:15 declares that “wine to gladden the heart of man” is a gift from God.
The critical point, the line of distinction which Proverbs 20:1 sets forth, is the place we give to wine, and to other sources of pleasure, in our lives. Many good pleasures are given by the Lord, and we are to “be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Is. 65:18), knowing (according to the rest of that verse) that He has created such things for the purpose of bringing us joy. Proverbs 20:1 warns us, however, that we must not let these pleasures ‘lead us astray.’
The pattern here is the universal pattern of sin: taking what is good and placing it outside of the context God commanded we place it in. We take the animals, given for our joy and His, and worship them (Ex. 20:4-6). We take ourselves, meant to steward the earth to His glory (Gen. 1:28; Matt. 28:18-20; Ps. 21:5), and we rebel against Him most vilely, with murder and fornication and idolatry and much else (Ps. 14:1-3; John 1:4-11). We take all which He gives us, and we turn it to evil ends. So also with wine, with sports, with physical exertion, with the marriage bed: we take these and their components, then turn them against His command.
We adore ourselves, our idols, our desires. The result of this perversion, where we assign to a thing an importance and a place greater than it ought to have, displacing what we ought to do, is self-destruction. (Nor is entire abstention a remedy. While at times entertainment is inappropriate, refusing God’s pleasures as a matter of principle is self-righteousness (1 Sam. 15:23) and a replacement of His wisdom, His law, with ours (Prov. 3:5; Col. 2:18,23). We may not call evil what He calls righteous.)
Wine becomes a master, instead of an assistant. No longer does it make our hearts glad; instead, it debilitates us from self-control, unleashing the sins we ought to destroy (Rom. 8:13). Sex becomes a ritual of self-worship, using another, whether within the covenant of marriage or outside it, to raise ourselves above God (and intent matters here, not just form; a pleasure in its proper physical place becomes sin when our purpose in it is wrong). Art, learning, fiction, nonfiction, videos, communication, friendship, physical exhilaration, camaraderie, and the thousand other good gifts of God become forces of destruction in our lives—even when they themselves seem harmless, by removing us from what should occupy the time and place they fill, they tempt us to harm (omission, as well as commission).
The trap we build thus for ourselves can be excruciatingly difficult to climb out of, even part-way. With wine and other physically addictive substances, this danger is particularly emphasized and apparent, but habits of vice will build with any sin (and, though less physically dramatic, will be built into the body to some extent). In some cases, such as physical addiction, the sin has built an accretion of physical damage which must be accounted for. The only remedy for this sin, for all sin, is the blood of Christ; the only remedy is faith and repentance (Mark 1:15), utterly abhorring sin and trusting entirely in the Lord to both bear our sin’s guilt and to make us truly holy in thought, word, and deed.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Colson Potter writes copious fiction and nonfiction, including a weekly Proverbs post and his blog at Creational Story.
