Have
you seen advertisements like this in leading magazines during the past
years? Two or three young people appear in a happy social setting. Their
facial expressions are joyful, and in their hands they hold an alcoholic
beverage. In evidence are bottles bearing the name of a well-known beer.
Across the bottom of such full page illustrations are sometimes printed
the words "beer belongs".
The implication is clear. According to many advertisements, beer belongs in the home. It belongs to the social gathering. It enhances good fellowship. It provides for good times. It belongs in the company of carefree, fun loving friends. Beer belongs.
Or perhaps a beautiful girl is shown endorsing some brand of beer. She is the picture of health with a winsome smile and sparkling eyes. Or a handsome guy in full manhood. The obvious inference — the social drink and normal living are synonymous. They infer further that health and alcoholic beverages are not contradictions.
What these youngsters do not show are the torn clothes, the loosened teeth, the blackened eyes, the bodies bruised and cut in a beer-sodden fight. They do not show the drunkard in his hallucinations. They do not show the thousands of graves dug each year for chronic alcoholics. They do not show the beast that man becomes with alcohol in his blood. They do not show the worn, haggard harlot selling her body for another drink.
They do not show the shattered glass and twisted metal, the smashed cars, the bodies lying grotesquely in the warm blood on the cold pavement, the white-coated intern and the waiting ambulance, the sheeted form stretched stiff in the morgue.
They do not show the relentless power of alcohol that drags people from the social drink to alcoholism. They do not show the sordid endings of many drinking parties. They do not show the bleary-eyed drunk staggering down skid row. They do not show the shattered homes, the wrecked lives, the ruined careers, the lost souls.
They do not show the realism of alcohol. Only a deceptive pleasure, a beautiful woman, a handsome man, a suggestion of distinction and — beer belongs.
Beer doesn’t belong.
It doesn’t belong on the grocery store shelf. It doesn’t belong on the
table. It doesn’t belong at the social gathering. It doesn’t belong as
a sign of good friendship. It doesn’t belong in the glass you raise to
your lips. It doesn’t belong in your stomach. It doesn’t belong in your
blood stream. It doesn’t belong in your body which is the temple of the
Holy Spirit. And still, in spite of the truth and common sense and medical
evidence and national statistics, we are told that — Beer belongs ... but
let me finish that statement. Let me erase the false implications. Let
me assert the facts. Beer is a robber. It is a
crippler. It is a poisoner. It
is a killer. With its distinctive characteristics, with its results so
evident, with its death-dealing potentialities, if it belongs anywhere
— beer belongs in the sewer.
In the meantime, however, this
motif — beer belongs — has enmeshed many. Snared, they long for deliverance,
but know not which way to turn.
For such people there is hope.
There is freedom from the bondage of alcohol. There is a new life possible.
This new life comes through faith in Jesus Christ. He can make you His
child, can make of you a new creation, can help you to live in victory
over sin.