Things by Their Right Names

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ISAIAH 5:20

Catherine Booth believed from girlhood that a Christianity worth the name must change not only hearts but the conditions in which people lived. She grew up seeing what drink did to families, and she became a total abstainer while still a girl. She spent her married life among the poorest people of the largest city in the world, and she saw at close quarters the trades that lived on their misery. In her sermons on love in Godliness, she named the failure she saw in the churches: a false love that would not call things by their right names. It gave polite titles to trades that ruined bodies and souls, and it said, when challenged, that it had to think of its own interests. She thought that was the devil’s love.

The drink

Her opposition to alcohol was absolute, and it ran through everything she wrote. She had watched it destroy homes, and she had seen converted drunkards fall again at the first taste. In The Training of Children she told parents that all Christian families ought to be trained in abstinence, and she warned against the parents who kept that rule until an important guest arrived who liked his wine, and then relaxed it just once. She told the story of a broken-hearted father who had brought up his son as an abstainer but let him mix with those who thought moderate drinking harmless. The son was now an outcast; his mother was dead of grief. The danger, she insisted, lay not in drunkenness only but in the thing itself: “Wine itself, not the abuse of it.”

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. PROVERBS 20:1

In How to Work for God with Success she put it more sharply still to the comfortable Christians of the West End. There is drinking, she said; they will have a glass of wine. Very well, you can have it; but you shall not have the wine of the kingdom.

The streets

In 1885 she took up a cause that cost the Army dearly in reputation. The journalist W. T. Stead, working with the Army and with the campaigner Josephine Butler, published a series of articles exposing the trade in young girls in London, many of them barely into their teens, and the laws that allowed it. The articles caused an uproar, and Stead was later imprisoned over the methods he had used to prove his case. Catherine Booth threw her full weight behind the campaign. She spoke at great public meetings and helped gather a petition of hundreds of thousands of signatures. That summer Parliament raised the age of consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen.

Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. PROVERBS 31:8–9

It is worth noticing how she argued. She did not treat these as political questions separate from the gospel. They were questions of love. The love of God, she said in Godliness, cares for body and soul. It cannot look at children being bought and sold and say that it must not disturb the peace. It is first pure, then peaceable.

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. EPHESIANS 5:11

Reality

In one of her Exeter Hall addresses she quoted Josephine Butler’s remark that France was waiting for reality, and added that so was England, and so was the world. That was the link between her campaigns and her preaching. A church that would sing about holiness and profit from the drink trade, or preach love and look away from the brothels, was precisely the form of godliness without the power. The world, she thought, was not waiting for more religious talk. It was waiting to see Christians who would do something.

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. ISAIAH 1:17

Weighing it: the rule of abstinence

Her courage in the purity campaign needs no defence; it was the right cause, fought at real cost, and it protected children. Her teetotalism is another matter, and here the reader must think carefully.

There is much to be said for abstinence, and in her world the case for it was overwhelming. Drink was cheap, strong and everywhere, and it destroyed families on a scale that is hard now to imagine. Paul himself commends the choice to go without wine for a brother’s sake.

It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. ROMANS 14:21

For many believers — those recovering from addiction, those who love them, those who live where drink does great harm — abstinence is wise and often necessary. The Army’s stand has saved countless lives.

But she went further than Scripture. She taught that the danger was in wine itself, and she made total abstinence a rule for every Christian conscience. Scripture does not. It condemns drunkenness in the strongest terms, but it also speaks of wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Psalm 104:15); the Lord Himself made wine at Cana (John 2:1–11), and Paul told Timothy to take a little for his health (1 Timothy 5:23). To bind every conscience where God has not bound it is, in the end, to call a good thing evil — the very fault the text at the head of this chapter warns against. The same Paul who commends abstaining for a brother’s sake also warns against letting others judge us in meat or in drink (Colossians 2:16). Her abstinence can be admired and chosen. It should not be imposed.

What should not be lost is her refusal to call evil good. Every age has its respectable trades that live on human weakness, and every age has Christians who invest in them and say nothing. She would ask where our money is made, and at whose expense. It is a fair question.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask where your money comes from, and where it goes. Does any of it profit from the ruin of others?

2. Identify one evil in your community that respectable people, including Christians, prefer not to name. Pray about how to speak for those it harms.

3. Consider whether abstinence from alcohol would be a loving choice for you, for someone else’s sake. If so, make it freely.

4. If you already abstain, examine whether you have judged others who do not. Give them the liberty Scripture gives.

5. Support one practical work this month that protects children or vulnerable people from exploitation.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You see what is done in secret to the weak and the young. You see the trades that grow rich on sorrow.

Forgive me where I have looked away, and where I have called evil by polite names to keep my comfort.

Give me courage to open my mouth for those who cannot speak, and wisdom not to bind consciences You have left free.

Make me real, Lord, in a world that is waiting for reality. Amen.