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  beer       After returning his commission to the Continental Congress at Annapolis, Maryland, George Washington hastened home and arrived at Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783.  He returned to the life he preferred and loved – the life of a farmer.  He was as successful at the head of a plantation as he was at the head of an army or a nation.  Washington was a genius of practicality, diversifying his crops, and his money-making endeavors successfully, and before anyone of his contemporaries did.  He expected the same kind of practicality and efficiency from his employees.  But, practical man that he was, he also understood that not everyone possessed his self-control, and self-possession.

           Washington had a gifted gardener at Mount Vernon named Phillip Bater whom he discharged not long after returning in 1783, because of Bater’s chronic drunkenness.*  A few weeks later when Bater humbly reapplied for the job Washington drew up a probationary agreement, which allowed for certain periods of excessive alcohol consumption.  Phillip Bater was not, at any time to “suffer himself to be disguised with liquor, except on the times hereafter mentioned…(he will be allowed) Four dollars at Christmas with which he may be drunk 4 days and 4 nights; 2 dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk 2 days; a Dram in the morning, and a drink of Grog at dinner or at noon.”  This compromise evidently worked, for no other reference of his being fired for drunkenness is recorded.

            Part of me really admires Washington for managing Mr. Bater’s alcoholism this way.  He was allowed three binges a year (did you notice they are all scheduled for religious holidays?), and two doses of the hair of the dog that bit him every day in between.  But, of course, this was only managing an addiction, not conquering it.

            When it comes to the “sin which easily besets” I imagine we all have tried, do try to self-diagnose, self-medicate, self-accommodate, make probationary agreements with ourselves – which is a way of conceding to sin.

            God does not expect that we will be sinless (I John 1.5-2.2) but He does expect us to triumph over sin (Romans 6).  He expects this of us because He has redeemed us from sin (I Peter 1.18), and provides continual cleansing from sin (I John 1.7).  This process of cleansing – sanctification, is accomplished by God Himself (Hebrews 2.11 10.10, I Peter 1.2).  When Jesus tells us in Matthew 5.48, to be “perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect,” he is calling us to a life dominated by righteousness, not by sin.  It is a life God Himself accomplishes in us.

            Such a life cannot be accomplished if we make arrangements to accommodate sin.  A sin conceded to is a sin not repented of, and thus remains a sin unforgiven.  In James Hilton’s grand book, Lost Horizon, an idyllic community, Shangri-La, is discovered tucked away in the Himalayas.  They enjoy an idyllic life by observing moderation in all things – even truth telling, marital fidelity, and sobriety.  Shangri-La is the kind of place where Phillip Bater would be given his beer money.  Shrangri-La is a fiction.  So is the notion that accommodating sin is ever the right thing to do.

            God expects us to be more than conquerors.  “How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6.2).

*General Washington’s Christmas Farewell, by Stanley Weintraub, Free Press 2003. Pp.145-146

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