Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
It's clear Noah sinned. He got drunk (a sin) and he verbally abused another person (also a sin). Where does the Bible ever say its okay for leaders to go around cursing others? Where does it say that Noah was right for doing so?
The Bible simply records the story. Ham was wrong, but so was Noah. Human interaction is rarely black and white. Noah was wrong for getting drunk and lolling around naked. Ham was wrong for exposing him. Noah was wrong for cursing Ham. It was one big nasty meltdown that wrecked a family and produced a rebellious tribe--the Canaanites. Hardly a high point for spiritual leadership. So why try to pretend it is?
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Getting drunk is a sin as some know it. Yet getting drunk was easily a part of OT life . . . without comment. Being a drunkard was spoken against, but it was also not referred to as being a sin, but more like a serious character flaw.
The sin of haranguing Ham and Canaan (if it actually was a sin) was after the sin of Ham which was the thing that Nee/Lee pointed at as the wrong of exposing the sins of the deputy authority. I think that I am questioning whether Noah being drunk in his own tent was truly a sin other than as we now have it from Paul's writings. (Or more rightly, how we have it as a heritage of our "don't even touch alcohol" evangelical, or more rightly, fundamentalist roots.) It would seem that Boaz was somewhat drunk if someone managed to come into where he was sleeping, uncover his feet, and then lay down nearby until he awakened. But no comment about a sin there.
While there are clearly reference to drunkards, that speaks of being in a fairly constant state of inebriation. Even the command of Paul to be filled with the Spirit rather being drunk with wine does not create an absolute state of sin for being drunk.
Now I am not one to consider being drunk as a good thing. But like a lot of things, there are sins that are a matter of degrees rather than simply black and white.
What I am getting out of this is that we American (mostly) evangelical Protestants tend to have a background of something like the old Southern Baptist position of "don't drink alcohol at all," coupled with a theology that says that the "wine" spoken of in the NT was actually just grape juice.
Yeah, most of us are beyond that. But are we sure that being drunk is simply a sin? Not suggesting it as a regular thing. And surely not giving an "OK" to being a drunkard. But does the Bible actually say (prior to Paul, if you want to take his statement as defining a sin that was not previously defined) that being drunk, in private, on a particular occasion is a sin?
If it is not, then there was no sin of Noah for which deputy authority excused him. The Bible never refers to him as having sinned. (Even with regard to his curse on Canaan.) Therefore the story is not a viable basis for saying that average followers of God should not expose the sins of their leaders. Further, Paul and others directly said the exact opposite, therefore the back-door, tell-a-story method does not create what is otherwise not there, and more importantly, does not override what actually is there.