Expert: Pastor Don Carpenter - 1/13/2005

Question
Hi,

I'm a Baptist believing in the Bible and would appreciate your answer to the following question:

Is it ok for a Baptist eat food in an expensive restaurant where the food contains alcohol? You may have seen how chefs add wine and other forms of alcohol to their food as they cook it.


Answer
Hi Stewart,

Thank you for this great question.  There is no doubt that it is a sin to drink alcohol because of what it does to the brain and the body.

Proverbs 23:29-35
29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? (8675) who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. 32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.  33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. 34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.  35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.  

The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

Now let us consider your question...what about alcohol when you cook with it?  It is my understanding that alcohol cooks out of the food rather quickly.  So even if one uses cooking wine...by the time that you eat it...there is no alcohol poison left in it.  Therefore, I am not as strict on wine that is cooked...because I believe the alcohol to be gone when I eat it.  Now if it is added and not cooked...then that is another problem.

I hope that I have helped.

In Christ,
Pastor Don