I was reading this post by John Piper the other day. In it, he addresses the question of whether it is okay to get drunk sometimes. Not blackout drunk, remaining in control, but nevertheless drunk. The question posed is couched in terms of desiring to be closer to God and yet wondering if this is sinful.
I appreciated some of the way Piper parsed the question. I think with a desire to get closer to God, Piper rightly asks: ‘does getting a little drunk every so often get me closer to God?’ He then speaks into that question. I think it is the right one and he (largely) speaks about it helpfully.
But I found one section of his answer worth speaking about a little more. It was this:
If your desire is truly to draw near to God, you don’t calculate your behavior by asking how close you can get to sin. If you want to get close to God, you don’t ask, “How close can I get to sin?” If you’re asking how to get close to God, you ask, “How can I do everything that would enhance closeness to God?” not, “How can I nuzzle up as close as possible to sin without really sinning?”
That’s like asking, “Is it okay to drive a car when I’m a little bit sleepy?” Well, if your goal is to drive safely and get to your destination (namely, God), you’d better pull over and take a nap and not indulge in sleepiness while driving, not even a little bit of sleepiness. Open the windows, stick your head out, drink something, slap your cheek. Taking steps away from sleeping is not, “How close can I get to sleepiness and still drive?”
You will need to read Piper’s whole post to understand the context and purpose behind this section. But it was this I wanted to speak into a little.
For my part, the answer to the question itself is quite straightforward. The Bible is very clear about drunkenness. It is sin. There is little more to be said about it. We can look at the reasons why, we can go into what lies behind the command, but at the end of the day scripture is clear: drunkenness is sin.
On that basis, Piper’s slightly reframed question (which is a good one) is also relatively strightforward. Does getting drunk every so often get me closer to God? The short answer is, no. The Bible tells us the very reason Jesus came was because we were separated from God by our sin. If there was no sin, we would not be separated from God by nature. We, therefore, do not get closer to God by sin. It is the very thing that separates us from him and why Jesus had to come to remove our sins from us. If drunkenness is sin, and sin separates from God, drunkenness ipso facto doesn’t get us closer to God.
All that, I think, is in line with Piper’s answer. I think it should be, for bible-believing Christians, relatively uncontroversial. It is a question the bible answers in black and white, it is a question the bible also explains the reasoning why. It isn’t a difficult question to get to an answer.
But that little quoted section of Piper’s answer does bear a little more scrutiny. It is my view (along with Piper, I think) that you don’t get closer to God through sin. But Piper’s answer in this section speaks about asking the question, ‘how close can I get to sin?’ He insists to get closer to God you don’t ask ‘how close can I nuzzle up to sin wthout really sinning?’ Here is where I want to push back a little.
This kind of question is close to the ones the Pharisees used. They were experts not just in the law, but were very keen to make sure people kept as far away from the line as possible. After all, if people want to be close to God, they don’t want to be as close to the line as possible! You don’t get close to God by nuzzling up close to the line, even if you stand the right side of the line i.e. you are not actually sinning. This is precisely the mode of logic the Pharisees used and the very logic that Jesus condemned them for tying up great burdens on people.
I agree with Piper that you cannot get closer to God by doing what is sin. But I disagree with Piper’s characterisation of not nuzzling up close to sin. Rather, God himself has set clear boundaries in his word. We are not nuzzling up to sin by asking whether this is sin or not. We are simply NOT sinning if this is not sin and we ARE sinning if this is sin. It makes perfect sense, then, for somebody to ask the question: is this actually sin because I want to get closer to God? I won’t get closer to God through sin so I don’t want to do this if it is sin. That is a good and right question to ask.
Re the specific question asked, I think the biblical answer is clear: it is sinful to get drunk so this won’t get you closer to God. But I think it would be wrong to couch the question as whether something tends towards, but is not itself, sin and therefore will also impede your closeness to God. The same live question would be true of drinking altogether. If getting drunk is sinful and won’t lead me to be closer to God, drinking may lead to drunkenness so isn’t it just cosying up to sin to drink? Isn’t it questionable to ask, is this sin too because it tends towards other sin? The problem here is that the Bible also gives us a clear answer: Jesus drank, the Bible affirms wine as a good gift from God, Jesus turned water into a whole load of wine. Drinking alcohol is not, by the bible’s own witness, sinful. Drunkenness is sin; drinking is not.
Here, I think, we get into issues of Pharisaism. If you want to be closer to God, we need to fence the fences. What the bible says on its own terms isn’t quite enough – we need to go a bit further – we need to help God out by keeping his people further away from sin than the boundaries he drew up for them himself. I am very worried whenever I see that kind of thinking rear its head because Jesus had an awful lot to say about it. If the answer isn’t specifically what the bible says, if it isn’t the particular boundary God has given us, it isn’t one we should be imposing.
This is my issue with statements about ‘nuzzling up as close as possible to sin’. The thing is either sin or it is not. In this case, I think the particular answer can be biblically anddirectedd addressed: it is sin. And it is sin because the bible expressly says so. But is it wrong to ask is this tangential thing sin? Is this thing, steps back from what we’re talking about, sin? I don’t think the heart of that is about cosying up to sin; it is about not wanting to sin. It is about being clear what is and is not sin. And what is not sin is not sin and therefore is not a matter that impedes our fellowship with God.
Thanks some good points. I wonder if it is always black and white though. An action might be sin if it is excess. In the specific case I wonder if the use of the word “drunk” skews things. Some would be very black and white, getting drunk is sin, alcohol is what gets you drunk and so we don’t drink alcohol. But what about the description of a little wine gladdening the heart. Are all affects of alcohol sinful. I’m not so concerned with the example whuch is perhaps not the best but more the thought process where there might be legitimate enjoyment if something but that can become sin. A challenge if that is the case is when it does become sin. Is it sinful to drive fast? No. Is it sinful to drive recklessly? Yes. Breaking the law by breaking the speed limit would be sin also but not the measure of fast.
I think the wider issue is black and white: is this sin or not. In the issue at hand, and in what you describe, you are doing exactly what I said we should do: ask, is this sin?
My concern with the answer as framed by piper is he was taking what you are calling a spectrum and what I am saying, on that spectrum, there is a point somewhere that tips into actual sin, and was saying keep as far away from that as possible. Keep off the spectrum altogether if you can at all help it otherwise you cosy up to sin.
It is that last bit I am really speaking into. I think God has defined sin and it’s boundaries and it is Pharisaism to add to them.
I answered the question straightforwardly because, if you read the question as put to piper, it specifically stated ‘getting drunk’. The Bible is clear on that. I may (seemingly like you) recognise a few stops between drinking and being drunk that are not sinful because I consider them to fall short of drunkeness itself. But the question asked specifically about being drunk, on which the Bible gives a clear answer. What I objected to was the extra implied fences going up around that clear answer.
I don’t think there necessarily have to be fences. The question is how do you handle it. So, if by “nuzzling up to sin”, Piper means “okay getting even a little bit drunk is sin”, so let’s impose a rule not to drink at all, then that is the kind if extra fence around the fence, Pharisaical stuff you describe. Another example might be around looking at pornographic images on the internet. Some people have said that therefore, to avoid nuzzling up to sin, don’t have the internet. It was TVS and nightclubs in the old days for the Brethren wasn’t it. However, there is another way in which we can be nuzzling up to sin to use his terminology. It’s when our starting question is “how much can I get away with?” Does he mean this (I need to take a look at the full post), if so, then the issue is more around understanding our desires and being alert to temptation. I shouldn’t be asking “is it okay to get a little drunk?” because my orientation is wrong at that point. I should stick with the question about what will draw me closer to God and that means (unlike the Pharisees) I need to be looking at where my heart is. So, to come back to the example. If someone happens to enjoy a glass of wine with friends, then our response should be “so what”? However, when they start to ask the question “when does this get sinful”, I don’t want to be saying “it’s on your fifth drink or it’s when you are at a certain level of merriment. I want to come back to why they are asking that question and where their heart already is.
It would help if you read the OP before commenting as context is always key in these discussions!
The question as framed in the OP was about ‘getting drunk’. My understanding of scripture is pretty clear on that question on the face of it: getting drunk is sin. The Bible expressly says so. Piper himself (and me too) do not answer a whole load of questions that are tangentially related because the question, as framed, accepted drunkenness had occurred. So, if we are all agreed that – however we cut it – you are drunk: here is what the bible says about that.
My concern in Piper’s answer was the ‘nuzzling up to sin’ question. He likened drunkenness to the example of driving. Basically, don’t drive when tired, at all. But things on a spectrum (am I drunk; am I too tired to drive, etc) are slightly different questions. Am I drunk is a valid question, am I too tired to drive is a valid question, but there is a point somewhere on the spectrum (that may differ for all of us) where the question is yes or no. Knowing where that point is matters.
My point in questioning the specific section is simply this one: we need to be careful not to draw lines where Jesus doesn’t. In my experience, whenever people talk about ‘cosying up to sin’ or ‘seeing how much I can get away with’, what they actually mean is something like although *this* isn’t sin, you should keep away from it as though it were and if you don’t you are basically saying you want to sin. I think the logic is faulty.
Heart-orientation is a legit thing to think about here too. But at the same time, if your motivation is to honour Jesus (as the questioner seemed to want to do) and there is a clear line – this side is sin; this side is not – it seems reasonable and valid to figure out where the line is in order to stay the right side of it and it does not seem good – indeed, it is pharisaical – to suggest the line is X but you must also do A, B and C just to make sure you keep well away from the line otherwise your heart is basically in sin too.
I don’t think the Bible teaches that and I think the Pharisees were the primary source of that kind of principle and were excoriated by Jesus specifically for it!
Yeah, I’ve read the whole thing to double check context now. Though to be fair you have an extended quote which should be enough. I don’t get the impression that Piper is saying “put some extra fences round”. I understand him to be saying “can I do x?” Is tht wrong question. Don’t work out what you can get way with, which is as much a pharisaical question. Instead focus on the what will draw you closer to God question as the priority. I suspect that we are all on roughly the same page there.