Did Jesus Turn Water into Wine or Grape Juice?

The issue of alcohol and the Christian is an incredibly volatile subject causing great division and stern judgments upon both sides. I have been deeply affected by this issue myself as there are many of my friends and family members who are controlled by alcohol. I am not a teetotaler, but I rarely drink. I don’t like wine. Some beers are pretty good. I like Tequila. But if the comsumption of alcohol were made illegal, I would not even really notice.

There are so many different positions out there with regard to this issue. Let me try to name a few:

1. Those who abstain from alcohol and believe that this is the biblical position for everyone.
2. Those who abstain from alcohol but don’t believe that this is a biblical mandate to enforce on others.
3. Those who drink alcohol only for “celebratory” purposes (i.e. Lord’s table), but don’t get drunk.
4. Those who casually drink wine or beer, but abstain from “hard liquor” and don’t get drunk.
5. Those who casually drink alcohol in order to feel “merry” or “tipsy” but don’t get drunk.
6. Those who drink alcohol and get drunk occasionally but are not “drunkards” (i.e. addicted).

Outside of this, all Christians would (or should) agree that being addicted to alcohol is expressly forbidden in the Scripture as it relinquishes control of our faculties to the alcohol rather than to the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18). Paul warns Timothy about such abuses with regard to the qualifications of a deacons (1 Tim. 3:8) and elders (1 Tim. 3:3).

Concerning the above positions and which is correct, I am not going to directly discuss here. However, I do want to discuss one passage of Scripture that vexes the problem of alcohol with great passion. It is the subject of Christ and his relation to alcohol while here on the earth. Most specifically, I want to ask the question of whether Christ, during the miracle at the Wedding of Cana in John 2, turned the water into wine, unfermented grape juice, or something else. Here is the text:    Continue at C Michael Patton

Liar from the Pit of Hell

I got another one of those emails calling me a liar. It comes with the territory. It was not that my particular view was wrong, misinformed, or even misguided. Nope. I was a liar. I was deliberately misleading people. I know the truth, but I withhold it so that I can consciously exchange it for something that is false. The old bait-and-switch. I was a “liar from the pit of hell.”

I am often humored by extreme rhetoric that Christians will employ, but never more so than when people become so loose with the accusations about lying. Maybe humored is the wrong word: it’s a very disturbed type of humor.

The presupposition is this: Whenever someone teaches something we disagree with, the rhetoric employed to combat such is accusations of lies. In other words, if someone does not teach the truth in our opinion, they are lying. 

Period. No question about it.  Since I am right and they are wrong about the issues, they must be liars. That is the only solution, right?

Be careful with such rhetoric. Better, let’s just stop it.

I read it on blogs and hear these accusations in debates. It is the default position in the media. Christians—well-meaning Christians—use such rhetoric in blogs, sermons, books, articles, and on Facebook. All the while proclaiming to defend the faith.

According to the dictionary, a lie is “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”

There are a couple of things to note here. A lie is intentional and deceptive. It is not simply something that is untrue. There is the supposition of intent with deception to make someone believe something that they know is false.

I believe that there are indeed many times when people teach something that could truly be called a lie. I could give many examples. But when our default position is that when someone else teaches something we believe to be wrong that they are lying, we have big problems.

Four come to mind immediately.  Continue at C Michael Patton

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