“Addiction is a Disease and Not a Moral Failure”

I just heard that quote from the Surgeon General in an advertisement for a rehabilitation program touting itself to be a place of mercy and compassion and not one of judgment. They likened addiction to the disease of diabetes which caught my attention because I have diabetes.

The disease model of addiction has definitely become the prevalent paradigm by which our culture understands the subject. It is also the basis of a $36 billion rehab industry in this country which must show a medical model in order to receive health insurance payments for treatment. Certainly the influence of genetics and the biological and physiological components of addiction need to be recognized for effective treatment.

In a similar way, Diabetes (type 2) has a hereditary link (but no gene for diabetes) which makes a person more susceptible to the disease. However, genetics does not guarantee its inevitability. There are other life-style factors that come into play with diabetes; age, obesity, high blood pressure, lack of exercise, etc.

Unlike diabetics, most recovering addicts that I have spoken with have recognized far deeper issues than a disease model can explain.  They remembered days of being out of control; when they reached the point when “the drink (or drug) made the choice” and not them. Yet, when they sobered up for any length of time they recognized the need to take responsibility for their powerless condition and to realize they were not helpless; though they felt out of control, they still had choices to make. One person said that her alcoholism was a “disease of the free-will”. While genetics and biology may predispose to addiction, they cannot an addict make. There is a vast difference between predisposing and determining.

God created us with physical needs and desires which when kept within the boundaries of our love and obedience to Him can lead to pleasure and joy. However, sinful human nature is curved in upon itself and wants to consume these cravings upon itself without the limits of restraint. These cravings become our idols and we worship them so they will give us what we want. Edward Welch in his helpful book Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave writes: “The purpose of all idolatry is to manipulate the idol for our own benefit. This means we don’t want to be ruled by idols. Instead, we want to use them. For example, when Elijah confronted the Baal worshippers on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18), the prophets of Baal slashed themselves and did everything they could to manipulate Baal to do their will. Idolaters want nothing above themselves, including their idols. Their fabricated gods are intended to be mere puppet kings, means to an end.”

Bottom line: We do not want to be ruled by God. Every addiction breaks the command “You shall have no other gods before me.” We also do not want to be ruled by our cravings. No one wants to be a sex addict, a gambler, an alcoholic. We just want to be happy and to satisfy our hearts with our “drug of choice” without any consequences. Our selfish hearts want to construct a world in which we can live as we please and have everyone else live for our benefit and under our control. (I think Hitler tried that.)

However, our idols do not cooperate (Welch). Instead of allowing us to manipulate them for our benefit, they begin to control us. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for he will either hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matt.6:24) In the context Jesus was talking about money, but it should be noted that there is a deeper significance here. Jesus implied that we are never the master, but always the slave. Paul said the same thing; “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey; either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.” (Rom. 6:16) So much for being in control!

How could sticks and stones enslave Old Testament Israel? How can simple substances or lifeless objects or harmless images enslave us? Certainly they hook some of us who have emotional vulnerabilities or trust issues because of our dysfunctional backgrounds, while others of us are captured biologically or physiologically. All of this is explained by the disease model. However, there is a deeper spiritual struggle that rages in every form of idolatry. First, there is desire to run from the worship of the true God, and run to those gods who will help us cope, give us pleasure, and ask nothing in return (so we think). Second, behind every idol of addiction there is a world of the demonic and we expose ourselves to the power behind “not-the-god.”

Thus we do not struggle in our addictions “against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) This is why we need a power greater than ourselves not only to restore us to sanity (a new mind), but to help us turn our lives and wills over to God (a new heart). This comes through the gospel.

Any treatment program that is going to have the maximum effect must be based upon more than a disease model. Our addictions may have morphed into a disease, but our healing will always begin with the spiritual. As Christians, we believe it must begin with the love, mercy, and forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. From there we must learn to be people who are responsible for the choices we make. Then, we must  learn to make those choices daily to deal with the biological, physiological, and social components that have  intertwined to make our lives “insane.” This will take a lifetime; we will not be driven by the fear of slipping back, but by trusting in God’s grace to grow up and move on.

When Christians Win, They Lose

The following blog post is from Peter Wehner (contributing opinion writer for the New York Times) giving his reflections on Good Friday and Easter.

“The writer Philip Yancey recently offered this:

I wrote in Vanishing Grace about an important insight I learned from a Muslim scholar who said to me, ‘I have read the entire Koran and can find in it no guidance on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society. I have read the entire New Testament and can find in it no guidance on how Christians should live as a majority.’

“(Yancey) put his finger on a central difference between the two faiths. One, born at Pentecost, thrives cross-culturally and even counter-culturally, often coexisting with oppressive governments. The other, geographically anchored in Mecca, was founded simultaneously as a religion and a state….”

“While Islam seeks to unify religion and law, culture and politics, Yancey wrote, Christianity works best as a minority faith, a counter-culture…. Historically, when Christians have reached a majority they too fall to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Add to this the fact that, as sociologist of religion Rodney Stark has pointed out, Christianity’s greatest period of vulnerability and political weakness was the time of its most explosive growth. He estimates that Christianity saw a 40 percent growth rate per decade from 30 AD to 300 AD. As a result a tiny and obscure movement became the dominant faith of Western civilization. And its enduring symbol is not the shield or the sword but the cross.”

“Early on in my faith pilgrimage – a journey that did not come particularly easily to me – I was struck and to some degree captivated by how in many respects the Christian faith is a radical inversion of what the world deems worthy and worth celebrating. The last shall be first. Strength is made perfect in weakness. The humble will be exalted. Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Love rather than hate your enemies. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for God. Whoever loses his life for God’s sake will find it.”

“Jesus himself came not as a king but as a servant. He was born not to wealth and privilege in Rome but in a manger in Bethlehem. He was a God who wept, was acquainted with grief and was ‘counted among the outlaws.’ He preferred the company of sinners to that of religious authorities, with whom he repeatedly clashed. He was abandoned and betrayed by his disciples. And he endured an agonizing death on a cross.”

“It is hardly the script you or I would write, a God whose crown was made of thorns. But for those of us of the Christian faith, Good Friday gives way to Easter Sunday – the days of God’s overpowering acts in history, acts in which God’s judgment and grace were revealed to all the world, in the words of the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

I would agree with this assessment. What have we learned from the Moral Majority, the rise of the Evangelical Voting Bloc, and apparent majority of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump?  We have learned that our victory at the polls have not produced a more Christian nation; just as the Crusades and the Inquisition did not advance the gospel to the world. Jesus was asked by Pilate if he was a king; his reply, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

In no way am I saying that we should be uninvolved in our society. Social reform was very much a part of evangelical thought (at least in the North) from the 1830’s to the Civil War. However, after the war, the evangelical movement became more centered on personal salvation and piety than social concerns. For example, leading evangelists D.L. Moody and later, Billy Sunday, held crusades that were segregated, especially when they preached in the South. Evangelicals were more concerned about the evils of alcohol and liberalism than the issues of race and women’s rights. (Divided By Faith, Emerson and Smith, 41).

What I am saying is that we (the Church) have not been called to rule, but to serve and to live out Christ’s kingdom here on earth. Our sign will never be a scepter, but always a cross because it will include suffering. Our prayer should not be for America to become “great,” but as Francis Schaeffer used to say even back in the 1960’s, we should pray that God would have mercy on America and bring us to our knees in humble repentance. This will be our greatest victory and greatest witness to the world. This is the pathway that Jesus took from Good Friday to Easter and beyond.

 

A Job or A Calling?

I used to think there wasn’t much of a difference between a job, a career, and a calling. I bet you didn’t know that my first job was in an orange juice factory, but I got canned. I just couldn’t concentrate. Then I went up north and worked as a lumberjack, but honestly I couldn’t cut it so they gave me the axe. Finally I tried an inside job and was trained as a tailor, but it soon became obvious that I wasn’t suited for it. (You know I’m kidding, don’t you?) I did have other “real” jobs like working at Burger King, being a lifeguard at the ocean, and on the maintenance crew at a hospital. None of these had my heart, but they paid the bills while I was in seminary.

Unfortunately, it does sound like a familiar scenario for many who go from job to job trying to find something that suits (oops) them. This is very confusing to many men in our culture (and a growing number of women) who tend to define themselves by their occupation. We need to cut through this confusion and first establish our “calling.”

Dr. Timothy Butler of the Harvard Business School acknowledges this: “There are three words that tend to be used interchangeably- and shouldn’t be. They are “vocation,” “career,” and “job.” Vocation is the most profound of the three because it has to do with your calling. It is what you are doing in life that makes a difference for you, that builds meaning for you, that you can look back on in your later years to see the impact you’ve made on the world. A calling is something you have to listen for.”

I would define a job as something you do to pay the bills. I think that a career is also working for the paycheck, but there are usually more opportunities for advancement and training in your field that bring a longer term vision for a professional future.

A calling, however, is where your skill, passion, and gift-mix are so interconnected that you may feel you could make a difference in this world. One of my friends, Paul Sweas, gave me a quote that I think is terrific: “A job/career is what you are paid for. A calling is what you are made for.” What have you been made for? I think that is more important than asking yourself what you would like to do for a living.

There are some for whom a job (and even a career) not only pays the bills, but enables them to fulfill their calling in another area. Many have called it “tent making,” replicating the Apostle Paul who literally made tents to support himself while doing ministry. For others, their calling also translates into a job and a career, like it has for me after 47 years in pastoral ministry. But what really matters is our calling.

This will be my last semester of having “a job”. I will be stepping down as Chaplain of Wheaton College Graduate School. What will I do in “retirement”?  I have no idea. But there is one thing I know that will not change — my calling, as a Pastor. How that will be played out in the future is my next great adventure. Who knows, maybe I’ll be a chaplain in an orange juice factory– this time I’ll concentrate!

Clever Quips, Quotes, and Smore…

I like to collect clever quips, quotes, and statistics. Here are some for your enjoyment:

“USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.” (David Letterman) “The trouble with a rat race is that even when you win, you’re still a rat.” (Lily Tomlin) “Committee – a group of people who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.” (Fred Allen) “When the path ahead of you is uphill, surrounded by rough spots, hazards and obstacles: use a pitching wedge.” (Lee Brachen) “If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?” (think about that and say Amen!)

“It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalm 46, the 46th word from the first word is “shake”and the 46th word from the last word is spear.” (hmm) “A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation’s state legislators.” (Dave Berry, on how statistics can be used to prove anything)

“I know statistically if you don’t get married, you’re less likely to get divorced.” (Craig Ferguson) “If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.” (unknown) “Isn’t Disney World just a people trap operated by a mouse?” (anonymous) “If 75% of all accidents happen within 5 miles of home, why not move 10 miles away?” (anonymous)

“I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” (Woody Allen) “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.” (Groucho Marx) “We need a 12-step group for compulsive talkers. They could call it On Anon Anon. (Paula Poundstone) “What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?” (George Carlin)

Finally some anonymous ones:

“The last thing I want to do is insult you. But it IS on the list.” “Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.” “Treat each day as your last; one day you will be right.” “Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy”! “Jesus loves you, it’s everyone else who thinks your an idiot.” “Why did the chicken go to the seance? To get to the other side.” “How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it.” “Sometimes I just want to go to IKEA, hide in a wardrobe, and wait for someone to open it and yell ‘Welcome to Narnia!'”

Finally (this time I mean it), in honor of Valentines Day:

“I looked in my wallet and it was empty. I looked in my pockets and they were empty. Then I looked in my heart and found you, and realized that you had taken all my money.” “People say you can’t live without love. But I think oxygen is more important.” “Isn’t it ironic that we have Valentines Day at the height of flu season?”  “Will you be my Valentine? That was a rhetorical question, you have no choice- we’re married.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jesus) “We love because he first loved us.” (St John)