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Let’s Play the Evangelical Never, Ever Game

game show

Several years ago, The Foundations of Morality blog posted an article by “Dr.” David Brown that gives seven reasons why Christians should NEVER, EVER drink alcoholic beverages (links have been removed due to the malware they serve up):

  • Drinking leads to drunkenness
  • The Bible condemns strong drink
  • In Bible times what Christians drank was sub-alcoholic, basically purified water
  • It will call others to stumble
  • It harms our bodies which are the Lord’s
  • Alcohol is addictive
  • Believers are kings and priests separated unto God

Are you ready, contestants? It’s time to play The Evangelical Never, Ever Game.

Using David Brown’s “logic,” I can come to the following conclusion:

  • Eating food leads to gluttony
  • The Bible condemns gluttony
  • Gluttony will cause others to stumble
  • Gluttony harms our bodies
  • Eating food is addictive

Conclusion? Don’t eat food.

Wasn’t that fun? Let’s play another round.

  • Sex leads to fornication and adultery
  • The Bible condemns fornication and adultery
  • Fornication and adultery will cause others to stumble
  • Fornication and adultery harm our bodies (not really, but Christians think they do)
  • Sex is addictive

Conclusion? Don’t have sex.

Isn’t this game fun?  Feel free to continue playing the game in the comment section.

“Dr.” David Brown is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Oak Creek, Wisconsin. You can check out his blog here.  First Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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18 Comments

  1. Avatar
    TLC

    Um, OK, there’s this: if “in Bible times what Christians drank was sub-alcoholic, basically purified water,” then how did the Bible writers know that drinking alcohol was bad and caused drunkenness? I’ve never gotten drunk off water. And where does this claim about “sub-alcoholic” beverages appear in the Bible?

    As for the game, I submit this: “Never, ever read this findagelical crap without being skeptical and asking lots of questions. Most of it won’t stand up under scrutiny.”

    • Avatar
      That Other Jean

      Pfffft. Wine in Biblical times was diluted with water by most drinkers. Those who drank it straight–as the Emperor Tiberius was reported to have done–were regarded as drunkards. Nothing “sub-alcoholic” about it.

  2. Avatar
    Melody

    Oh… now I know why I deconverted…. Those glasses of wine must be the culprit! Never mind that Jesus drank and even created wine himself. Out of purified water no doubt.

  3. Avatar
    Brian

    Bruce wrote: Sex leads to fornication and adultery…
    Among Baptists, we avoid sex not because of fornication and adultery but because it will and clearly does lead to dancing, a far more despicable sin. (We got him there, Susan-Anne. He’s down for the count!)

  4. Avatar
    August Rode

    I visited the link you provided, Bruce, as I found the statement, “In Bible times what Christians drank was sub-alcoholic, basically purified water,” frankly incredible. I found this statement: “”…What the Bible frequently meant by wine was basically purified water,” purified by adding some alcoholic wine.” If I’m following this, the wine added to the water isn’t wine and wine diluted with water probably also isn’t wine but water ‘purified’ with wine *is* wine. Thank you for linking me to the stupidest thing I’ve read all month.

  5. Avatar
    Karen the rock whisperer

    The thing is, ancient people weren’t stupid, and knew what alcohol does to bodies. If you’re going to have feasting that lasts all night and you decide that you really don’t want to get wasted, you have to slow down your consumption rate. An easy way to do that was by adding water to your wine. And who knows, that might have made it taste better. You could still end up nicely buzzed at the end of the evening.

    Furthermore, if you were rich enough to attend or host one of these long feasts, there was politics at the table. Getting drunk, for most such people, would have been politically inexpedient. You could end up without a job, with a diplomatic post somewhere on the margins of the Empire, or even in jail, depending on what your filter-free mouth might serve up.

    The biggest problem with the pastor’s argument is that it’s a variant of ye olde slippery slope. That Thing You Could Do is dangerous because, if you take it to an extreme and do it unthinkingly, you make trouble for yourself and others. Therefore, you must never do That Thing, under any circumstances. Now, I admit that we humans can sometimes turn our brains off, and in fact religion depends on us doing exactly that to some extent. But assuming that we will operate with our brains off as a default says very little about the rest of us, and a great deal about the person making that assumption.

  6. Avatar
    Sage

    ok. I’ll give this a try….

    Associating with LGBTQ+ people can make you non-binary
    The Bible condemns everything LGBTQ+, including non-binary
    Bible times what Christians were male and female, there is no non-binary
    -binary have an agenda to cause others to stumble
    -Binary denies our “real” gender which is the Lord’s
    LGBTQ+ lifestyle is a perversion and seductive to others
    Believers are kings and priests separated unto God, not…whatever you non-binary people think you are.

    Conclusion: Keep all LGBTQ+ feelings secret. Repress them and pretend to be a straight, CIS gender man or woman.

  7. Avatar
    Ben Masters

    I’ll give it a try as well–

    –Watching television is immorality
    –The Bible condemns immorality
    –Immorality causes others to stumble
    –Hollywood is the biggest source of immorality
    –Therefore, do not partake of anything from Hollywood, including television (classic or modern, black/white or color, sex or not, violence or not), according to the inerrant, infallible, holy King James Bible (“Avoid all appearance of evil,” don’t you know).

  8. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    Sage—Being LGBTQ is so seductive that all of my family members are…in heterosexual marriages. And they have heterosexual non-binary (at least, to the best of our knowledge) children.

    Am I a menace, or what?

  9. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    Once again, I’m going to draw upon skills I learned in my formal logic class, back in the mists of time.

    Reading leads to an understanding of the world.

    Understanding the world leads us to appreciate who and what are in it.

    Appreciating those things might cause us to love them (some of them, anyway).

    The Bible warns us not to love anything in the world. (1 John 2:15)

    Reading can cause us to love things of this world.

    Therefore, reading is sinful.

    (Oh, and reading can lead you to blogs written by pastors-turned-atheists. Oh, my!)

  10. Avatar
    Obstaclechick

    Fundamentalist Christians: lock yourself in a box with no access to the outside world and shut off your thoughts and senses. Fill your mind with readings from the Bible. Then MAYBE you’ll be ok.

  11. Avatar
    Sage

    well, my post somehow got slaughtered… hopefully it made sense.

    Yes, MJ, you are a menace, out spreading the agenda and turning christians from their proper life. 😁 😁

    And, MJ thank you for pointing out another way in which I sin just simply by existing. Who knew reading was bad?? That was really good, by the way.

  12. Avatar
    William

    Secular music is sinful
    Being outside you might hear secular music in a shop or a radio
    It is sinful to hear this
    Conclusion: Always wear ear plugs when you leave the house

  13. Avatar
    Brocken

    When it comes to the no evangelical should never ever drink alcohol and thinking of types of illogical conclusions similar to that fundamentalist Baptist preacher. I’m not going to play that game.. My father was a chronic alcoholic who lost his driver’s license after his second dui conviction. He didn’t have a driver’s license the last nine years of his life. Guess who would wind up taking him to and from his rural garden five miles from his run down apartment. Yours truly. He was a nominal Roman Catholic and not an evangelical Christian. If he was sober at any time during the last nine years of his life, it was due to health issues unrelated to alcohol. My dad was also a heavy cigarette smoker who developed lung cancer. He died from lung cancer 14 years ago and I can’t say that I miss him. Also, I know that there was some bishop of the evangelical Lutheran Church in Wisconsin who wound up going to prison because he hit and killed someone while he was driving drunk. There was also the case of some some female Episcopal bishop in Maryland who was sentenced to prison because she struck and killed someone when she was driving drunk. Maybe just some people, Christian or non-Christian, should be very careful about the amount of alcohol they drink. Some people are more prone to alcohol abuse that others.

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