Sadly too often preachers and teachers give lopsided presentations of their subject matter to align with personal, political, or perhaps unknown biases.

This occurred recently at the church my wife and I are members of in an evening topic related to alcohol. For some reason, this (along with music styles) seems to be the biggest dividing point between otherwise-identically-believing Christians: is it OK to drink, or not? Does God condemn it or not? If it is not condemned, should I participate? If it is condemned, why would I participate?

While I work-up my entire response to the recent “sermon” (it was really more of a diatribe against drinking rife with missing biblical references, and gross historical errors), I want to leave a single thought: on its own, there is no physical object (natural or man-made) that has a moral value (positive or negative) – the created world is amoral, whereas it is only by the choices of divinely-inspired living beings (Gen 2:7) that moral issues can be seen; in other words, it is by the instrumentation of man that an object can be used for good or evil – on its own, it can do nothing.