Episode 19: Temperance
The Governed Life
In 1830, Americans were consuming an extraordinary amount of alcohol — an estimated seven gallons of pure alcohol per drinking-age person every year.
The consequences helped give rise to one of the great reform movements of nineteenth-century America: the Temperance Movement.
But there is something interesting about the name.
Early advocates often urged abstinence from distilled spirits while accepting beer and wine. Over time, much of the movement moved toward total abstinence and eventually legal prohibition.
Abstinence can certainly be an expression of temperance.
But they aren't quite the same thing.
Abstinence says, “I won't have it.”
Temperance asks, “Does it have me?”
Episode 18 of The Gentlemen's Study continues our journey through the Twelve Virtues with the first virtue of the Inner Life: Temperance — the governed life.
Temperance is not hostility toward pleasure. The temperate man isn't an ascetic. He can enjoy a good meal, a glass of whiskey, a cigar, a vacation, a comfortable room, or an unhurried evening without apologizing for any of them.
The question is whether he can enjoy those things without becoming their servant.
Proverbs gives us a wonderfully ordinary picture of this virtue: if you find honey, eat enough — but not so much that you make yourself sick.
Enjoy the honey.
Know when to stop.
That's the heart of temperance.
This episode explores the biblical virtue of self-control, the difference between moderation and abstinence, the appetites competing for a man's attention in modern life, and the quiet freedom found in one increasingly uncommon word:
Enough.
The gentleman doesn't need to prove his freedom by indulging every appetite. And he doesn't need to prove his virtue by refusing every pleasure.
He receives good things gratefully.
Enjoys them deliberately.
And puts them down willingly.
Because they belong to him.
He does not belong to them.
What We Cover
Why the historical Temperance Movement raises an important distinction between temperance, abstinence, and prohibition
Why temperance is better understood as self-government than deprivation
The lesson of Proverbs 25:16 — enjoy the honey, but know when to stop
Temperance as the biblical virtue of self-control and part of the fruit of the Spirit
How legitimate pleasures become disordered when they begin to govern us
Why abstinence can sometimes be the wisest expression of temperance
The modern economy of appetite — and why knowing when you've had enough is increasingly countercultural
The value of occasionally practicing the “small no”
Five questions for conducting your own Temperance Audit
The Study Close
From the Bookshelf:
Lies My Therapist Told Me: Why Christians Should Aim for More Than Just Treating Symptoms by Greg Gifford — a distinctly Christian examination of modern mental-health assumptions, particularly the distinction between the physical brain and the mind and what that distinction means for counseling and genuine transformation.
From the Humidor:
Perdomo Double Aged 12 Year Vintage Connecticut — a refined, mild-to-medium-bodied cigar whose tobaccos undergo ten years of bale aging followed by two more years in charred white-oak bourbon barrels. Patiently made and meant to be enjoyed the same way.
Reflection:
Temperance is not the absence of pleasure. It is the presence of self-government.
Enjoy the good things. Receive them with gratitude. But learn to recognize the moment when enjoyment whispers, More— and be free enough to answer:
I've had enough.