And the Pig Got Up
By Bob Prichard
www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com
Benjamin Hapgood Burt (1880-1950) wrote the following song in 1933:
“One evening in October, when I was one-third
sober,
An’ taking home a ‘load’ with manly pride;
My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up an’ lay down by my side;
Then we sang ‘It’s all fair weather when good friends get together,’
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
‘You can tell a man who “boozes” by the company he chooses’
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.”
Many have made light of the sin
of drunkenness. Dean Martin, the singer and actor, joked, ‘You’re
not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” Humorist
Robert Benchley (1889-1945) was scolded by a friend, “Don’t you know
alcohol is slow poison?” Benchley replied, “So who's in a hurry?”
Drinking alcohol is no joke, however. The drinker likes
to overlook the lives ruined and ended by the drunk driver, and the
families destroyed by alcohol. Solomon said, “Wine is a mocker,
strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not
wise” (Proverbs 20:1). Alcohol deceives every day, because the
drinker sees neither the damage he causes, nor the foolishness he
spouts. Over two hundred years ago, Samuel Johnson said, “One of the
disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for
thoughts.”
Solomon also said, “They that tarry long at the wine;
they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it
is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself
aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an
adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall
utter perverse things. 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.
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” (Proverbs 23:30-35). |