Virtue # 6: Temperance

I hate the way that drinking and football seem to go together. The Super Bowl is a testament to that, and of course the funniest and most memorable advertisements are often the beer commercials.

Are you old enough to remember cigarette advertising on TV? Do you think advertisements for beer and alcohol on TV could ever go the way of the long gone cigarette commercial? Could drinking commercials ever become unthinkable?

Do you think colleges and universities could ever get to the place they stop winking at the underage drinking they know thrives on their campusesnot just on weekends, but every night of the week? What would it take? Sure they're against it, yet prominently and freely serve alcohol at almost all donor events, booster club receptions, faculty/staff picnic/dinners. I'm hearing recently that drinking has also become a problem on many Christian college campuses.

Last summer a documentary we produced at Mennonite Media won a major "Voice" award from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). At a ceremony in Los Angeles, Calif., awards were presented by actress Mariel Hemingway, (yes that Hemingway family). My boss, who was in attendance, reported that the event was appropriately an alcohol-free eventeven though it was held right outside Hollywood with many Hollywood-type executives, producers and writers. When will we get to the place that an event like that being purposefully alcohol-free does not surprise us?

In my column series on vices and virtues, the virtue "temperance" is another dandy old fashioned word that conjures up 1920's era women dressed all in white and carrying pickets about the ravages of alcohol. These images are also strongly linked in our associations with the women's rights movement and actually have a very practical basis: domestic violence is often associated with alcohol. Women speaking up for their rights was a natural outgrowth of speaking out against alcohol and domestic violence. However, temperance actually means "moderation."

From 1998-2001, there were about 1700 alcohol-related deaths among college students in the U.S. This doesn't even include the 500,000 students annually who were unintentionally injured because of drinking and more than 600,000 hit/assaulted by another drinking student (from "Magnitude of alcohol-related mortality and morbidity among U.S. college students ages 1824,"Ralph Hingson, others, Annual Review of Public Health, April 2005). How many deaths would it take before we cry out for change?

But why just pick on college kids? Sports arenas from soccer to hockey to baseball to basketball have all been plagued by inebriated adults spoiling the fun for those around them, sometimes resulting in violence and injury.

Even if I'll never get drunk watching my favorite college football game, temperance or moderation is also called for even in my viewing of sportsand with all things. What have I allowed to get out of hand in my personal life? Watching soap operas? Reality TV shows? Blogging to excess? Shopping online or elsewhere? Eating?

The Christian season of Lent of repentance and "giving up things" begins Feb. 21. Maybe this year instead of giving up peanut M&M's, donuts, licorice or coffee (all personal vices), maybe I should give up watching and reading sports articles in the paper. Maybe I should give up watching the morning news show I can't do without. Maybe then I can speak more honestly about the need for temperance in all things.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way