Does it make you angry when a drunk driver kills a child on a local highway? Does it make you angry to hear how much liquor is being regularly sewed to teens in your community? Does it make you angry that the best and shrewdest advertisers in the business are promoting alcohol, tobacco, and gambling? Does the human cost of alcohol abuse ever grieve your soul?

What do you do with that anger and grief?

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines temperance, in part, as “self-restraint in conduct, expression, indulgence of the appetites, etc.” Those words are reminiscent of the biblical call to self-control and to focusing on God rather than focusing on one’s needs. What do you think would happen to the alcohol industry in this country if everyone practiced biblical self-control? Or, perhaps more apropos, what would happen tomorrow if all the believers truly practiced self-control, and set the standard for others to follow?

This issue of the Witness is not going to revisit the debate that raged for 20 years and longer in the RPCNA. Instead, we will posit in this issue that, if the RPCNA believes what its standards proclaim, we must do something with that message. It will be impossible for us to hold to what we believe and to keep silent in a culture that hasn’t a clue what it means to rely on God rather than indulge one’s appetites.

For a long time it seemed that the big issue for us was whether a person believed taking a drink was OK. Then, and now, the biggest issue is whether we are salty salt and laser light. Does how you live your life, how you handle your appetites, declare Jesus or stir a mud puddle? This denomination has always believed in the importance of a corporate—not just individual—testimony. We have not only the right but the obligation to speak to our society and to our government and to our institutions.

We once had a “Temperance Committee” and a “Witness Committee.” Perhaps it is time for a new committee like that—perhaps less formal, and certainly one that can communicate to this generation—to rise up from among us. It is certainly time for Reformed Presbyterians to make their witness on alcohol clear, and to make their voice heard. Regardless of whether you take a drink occasionally, if you aren’t appalled at the culture around you, you simply don’t know what is going on. Lets be that denomination that proclaims God’s truth in our private character and in the public square. People aren’t just dying for a drink; they’re dying without the truth. If you don’t believe me, go out on the street and talk to some passersby. Knowing the people of the RPCNA as I do, I am certain we can make a difference if we set our minds to it.