The United States has endured the over-moralizing and underwhelming Temperance movement for years.
In the early eighteen hundreds, though, alcohol abuse was a major problem, largely due to the poor water sources in rapidly expanding urban centers.
The water was so bad, that men would resort to "the water of life".
The Temperance Movement then reached its way into the highest eschelons of the government, with advocates displaying anti-alcohol rhetoric in kid's textbooks. Ken Burns issued a massive documentary exposing how temperance leaders infiltrated schools, thus poisoning kids' minds and heightening society's intolerance to alcohol abuse.
If a man or woman chooses to drink, that's up to him or her.
I do not drink, myself. I do not care for the stuff. I had one glass of wine when I was fifteen, got sick off the stuff, and decided that I did not want to drink anymore.
I do believe that there are people who drink and harm themselves by choosing to do so. I also believe that some people do not have the physical constitution for drinking.
What made "drinking" such a serious problem, then, for people, especially in the early 1900s.
The shame about having a drinking problem -- thus brings so many people into bondage.
Alcoholism, like another perversion in human life, is borne of man trying to get something for himself, when what we all need is life, and that more abundantly.
The shame about having a drinking problem, this leads individuals to strive in their own efforts to break free, and the result is the exact opposite, they end up sinking deeper into the drink.
The shame about alcohol dependence brings people into bondage, pure and simple.
During the age of Prohibition, men and women went to jail because of alcohol abuse, which does not set people free, but brings them into greater condemnation. Now they feel compelled to get sober, because they are afraid to go to jail, but then the problem gets worse, not better.
When Alcoholics Anonymous meetings began, men and women were so ashamed of their "disease" that they would wear masks when they came into meetings. The real problem, therefore, was not the drinking, but the shame about drinking.
Yet to label people according to their perversion does more harm than good. There is no pride in parading one's shame, as if that can set anyone free.
Deal with the condemnation, then the drinking will fall away like dead leaves off a living tree:
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8: 1, NIV)
and
"For he hath
made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5: 21)
As we are established in His righteousness, which is a gift that He wants us to keep receiving (Romans 5: 17), and this gift allows His Spirit to live and thrive in us:
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of
the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3: 18)
God wants us to change from within, which He accomplishes in us by His Spirit, not by our effort.
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