The writer of this article, in this first of two installments, states: “Tragic but true, there are more alcoholics in Grand Rapids churches on Sunday morning than Bridge Street could hold. About one in 20 alcoholics is given sobriety; about one in 20 lives long enough to make it to skid row. The rest don’t live that long. Heart attacks, Strokes, Cirrhosis. The No.3 killer.”

I sat down to read the evening paper, seeking out Billy Graham‘s question-and-answer column. Wow. As to drinking problems, there it was: No alcoholic could enter heaven. The apostle’s damning statement proved the point.

No, my amazement was not prompted by the typical attitude toward the alcoholic. Just a few weeks earlier, Dr. Graham‘s column had praised Alcoholics Anonymous as being used by God to bring hundreds of thousands of “Christian alcoholics” into fellowship with Christ.

The dual concept of the alcoholic-Christian and the alcoholic-be-damned fits neatly into one of my favorite Calvinist expressions: An antithesis.

As an alcoholic, I expect the all-too-typical attitude of many Christians: I’m naively trying to be sinister in avoiding sin with a polite euphemism.

In anomalous contrast, I expect the insults of the problem-drinker –sure, with the familiar slur, he may be slurping a bit too much, but he (or, of course, she) is far from being an alcoholic. “Look, mishter, I can shtill shtop. I’m not one of you alkies.”

When I chose to “go public” as an alcoholic, I knew what was ahead. For many Christians, I would be no more than a drunk slapping whitewash over sin. For problem-drinkers, I would be more than the loser with a pail of stain in my other hand, spreading my smear on them,

As an alcoholic-Christian, no whitewash; I’m a sinner. No smearing of those whose stain is obvious, either; just Christian hope.

I seek no arguments, only understanding.

Despite the title, this is no attempt at a scholarly dissertation on the baffling etiology or the deceptive symptomology of alcoholism, much as I want to tackle that S/S (sin-sickness) file in the cabinet.

Many if not most Christians do not understand that even the “drunken bum” may not yet be an alcoholic. By contrast, most alcoholics won’t wear the label; estimates are that 95 of every 100 at least are still on the job, still in the home, admitting at most tippling too much, but vehement in their denial they are trapped in alcoholism.

Drinking alcoholics don’t wear the label; quite the contrary they keep it as hidden as their problem. Tragically, most families join the conspiracy of silent denial. Who wants that shame and scandal?

We alcoholics when drinking have strange ways of proving we have no problem. We’ll fight a brain-splitting headache to “make it” to church Sunday morning or to the job Monday morning. Too many know about the Sunday-Monday flu syndrome that is practically a public announcement of alcoholism.

A recent study (which I can’t find—apparently hidden in one of my to-be–filed files) showed that church-related alcoholics typically step up their church activity in a last-ditch ploy to prove they have no problem.

Tragic but true, there are more alcoholics in Grand Rapids churches on Sunday morning than Bridge Street could hold. About one in 20 alcoholics is given sobriety, about one in 20 lives long enough to make it to skid row. The rest don‘t live that long. Heart attacks. Strokes. Cirrhosis. The No. 3 killer.

Whether I wear the label publicly or seek anonymity, I’ll be an alcoholic until I die. As to sobriety, I cannot even make promises I’ll never taste liquor again. Each day, and I am now in my seventh year without a drink, I must surrender and admit I have no human power over alcohol. Each day, I must be given the God-power I need to keep me from an alcoholic death.

The latest polls still show that of 20 social stains, the alcoholic ranks No. 20 -at the bottom. Below rapists, murderers. I knew all this when I felt it was God’s will to make publicly known I am an alcoholic –and that I sinned in becoming one. At times I wince, and am tempted to seek anonymity rather than Christian understanding. In times like that I find that talking to the sinless One who went to His death in public scorn to be my Savior straightens this sinner‘s thinking again. If sinless He bore scorn, I a sinner can.

On the record, I sinned in becoming an alcoholic. I suffered the consequences -alcoholism. I’ll not sneak into the back door with subtlety. I’ll put it very plainly –1 do not believe alcoholism is a sin, although the result of sin. The eternal consequence of unforgiven sin is hell; the time-bound consequence of alcohol abuse is alcoholism. For me, “recovery” from alcoholism without drinking took at least two years.

Without a Savior, the result of sin is hell. Do I minimize sin in saying so? Having gone through the indescribable agonies of alcoholism because of sin I publicly have confessed, am I belittling how serious sin is? I suffered long after my last drink. Was that suffering sin?

Intellectually I have always believed I as a sinner deserved hell. As a sinner I got what I deserved here on earth—alcoholism, If I say alcoholism is living hell, I could be misunderstood, I know. Let me put it this way; former Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa (an alcoholic-Christian) has said publicly everybody trapped in alcoholism has considered suicide, I did. (Alcoholics have a suicide rate 60 times higher than others.) Could hell possibly be worse than this? thought.

David‘s prayer, “Restore to me the joy of my salvation,” was answered for me. With a bonus. I do not recommend the method, but teetering over the abyss has made my joy overwhelming.

As a preacher‘s son, I must confess as a young child I was more concerned about what my mother said about my behavior in the family pew than with what my father said from the pulpit. Yet I remember vividly his saying something that struck me as “odd.” I don‘t remember the words, of course, but the message that remains after about 50 years was something like this: His joy in salvation increased with every tear he had shed in sorrow for his sins. My dad crying when boys weren‘t supposed to? My dad, a saint, crying over his sins?

My sin in drinking has been wiped away. Living day by day in total dependence on God to keep me from taking that first drink has given me a whole new perspective on the enormity of even little sins. The tears come easily—sorrow for and joy in salvation from.

Maybe I can gain understanding by stating my lack of understanding. 1 find it difficult why those who confess the wages of sin are death cannot understand that the wages of sin can also be a total sickness—involving a sick soul, sick emotions, a sick body, a sick mind—involving the total person in relation to Cod and neighbor. Without a drink, the effects linger long.

I know of no Christian who frowns at using the word “intoxicated.” The core of the word is obvious: “toxic,” poisonous. In an age of antibiotics and vaccines, I can understand the assumption that sickness can result only from bacteria and viruses. The Psalmist may not have been very “scientific,” but he made the sin-sickness relationship very clear: “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.“

Alcohol is unique among drugs i.n that it can be a deadly poison attacking the total person—yes, even the soul. No other poisons I know can hit the total person—every facet and the complexity of their innumerable relationship with each other. Alcoholism embraces the poisoning and its after-effects.

Do the horrible consequences which I call “sickness”—not due to n germ, a virus but rooted in sin—minimize sin, or affirm it?

Few Christians would describe a syphilitic dying from brain damage as anything else than a very sick person. In saying so the sin involved in immoral promiscuity is not denied. The compassion for the sickness involved is so great that few Christians would even probe whether the sin was that of the person afflicted or a roving partner. It’s no wonder that syphilitics rank higher in the list of 30 social pariahs than does the alcoholic.

Much closer to alcoholism is the person dying of lung cancer after many years of cigarette-smoking. I know of no Christian who would deny the sickness of terminal cancer; as to whether sin is involved, I have found Christians evasive. They are quick to paint out they know of many who smoked much more heavily and did not get lung cancer. In any event, Christ’s redemptive power is assumed, and every effort is to ease the suffering one in walking the death road.

Speaking for myself, my mostly-private use of alcohol was not nearly so grossly sinful as my totally-private abuse of God in pride. I was to wear the winner’s wreath with a gracious nod to God as my faithful assistant in my victory over alcohol. Hight up to the point of total human defeat and loss of all self-respect, I wanted to bask in my wisdom in letting God have a hand in my eventual victory. As I progressed in my alcoholism, my spiritual, emotional, mental, physical and “social” health “wasted away.”

Many conservative Christians keep such a wary eye on Alcoholics Anonymous they skip over the very first of A. A.’s 12 “steps,” drafted about 40 years ago by the early “winners” over alcoholism: They all admitted no human power, theirs or that of others, could save them from total defeat in death. Only God.

As the first step says, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” No almost—powerless. No willpower victory. Absolutely no human power left.

In the classic book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in introducing the 12 steps of A. A., Bill W., co-founder of A. A. and a Christian, put it this way: All had surrendered to God with “complete abandon.” No partnership; God alone.

Oddly, Christians can easily say the one with a terrifying hangover on New Year‘s day is “pretty sick.” Yet, when the compulsively–addictive “need” for alcohol results in the humanly-hopeless state called alcoholism, where a mere hangover would be welcome, for some reason many Christians feel if they recognize the sickness involved they deny sin’s role.

Perhaps I can gain better understanding by admitting what puzzles me; No Christian would call a hangover “sin” and most Christians would assume the person involved—it’s rarely said, by the way—recognizes that it was brought about by sin. When the cause and effect are so clear, there is no difficulty in distinguishing between the sin and its consequences.

With alcoholism there is no neat cause-and–effect predictability. It’s more like cigarette smoking and lung cancer. All we know is that one of every 10 who drinks will succumb to alcoholism. One of the 10 may enjoy drinking, and get drunk too often and then make a decision to stop. That drinker may legitimately deny he is an alcoholic. He may accept congratulations for exercising his willpower.

By contrast, the alcoholic, regardless of his drinking pattern, has to admit his willpower is gone—only God has the power. “I am powerless over alcohol.” Without attempting to define—just describing—the drinking alcoholic suddenly finds drinking unexplainably compulsive with loss of control of intake despite the desperate but futile efforts to exercise willpower, with all the totally-damaging results spiritually, as well as in all other aspects of the personality, and socially.

When drinking becomes alcoholism, I admit to being puzzled as to where sin results in insanity. For an alcoholic, the first drink is always a sin. When I know so many who literally become insane on the first drink, their alcoholism has progressed so far, I will let God be the judge as to where sin ends and insanity takes over. I know no Christian faith that holds insane acts are sin. 

(To be continued)