We could always count on it. Every year, on the second Sunday of January, my dad would preach his drinking sermon — or, I should say his anti-drinking sermon. Having seen firsthand in my mother’s family the deathly cost of drunkenness, having spent more nights than he could remember offering pastoral support to families dealing with the fall-out of alcohol, Dad was convinced that alcohol was a demon. It was all too often the destroyer of the abundant life which God gives us to cherish. His message was pretty simple. If our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul so poignantly reminds us, then when we pollute our bodies with excessive alcohol, we are defaming the very dwelling place of God. He was right and still is.

Saturating the majority of automobile accidents, soaking the fa…