Leithart: Inebriation

I saw someone at iMonk's site link to this meditation by Peter Leithart.

I have no studies to back me up, but I dare say that removing wine from the Lord's Supper has produced an increase rather than a decrease in drunkenness. If wine is merely excluded from the Christian diet, it takes on an aura of mystery, of transgression. When we drink wine at the Lord's Table, we receive it as a gift of God, and give thanks for it. At the Lord's table, we are not drunk with wine, but we receive wine while singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord.

The central solution to the sin of drunkenness is not tee-totalism. The central solution, the solution of Scripture, is to enjoy the wine of this table as a gift of God, and to come to this feast of wine not to be drunk with wine but to be filled – to be inebriated – with the Spirit.