Keep on telling yourself addiction is a medical problem, not a moral or spiritual problem. We will have a lot more casualties in the war. We are in a war that is not against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities of this world. This is just the enemy’s most deadly physical assault at the moment, which finally attracted enough attention to now rally everyone’s attention. But medical, mental health, law enforcement, educational, or financial solutions alone are not going to win the war. We have a cultural soul sickness and spiritual blindness that is killing our youth.
A professional with personal experience of loss of a child to drug overdose said, “it’s not a moral problem. My child was a wonderful, productive, good, loved person…..a Christian. It’s a medical problem.”
It’s a medical and mental health problem. AND it’s a spiritual problem. That’s not the same as a moral problem. There is a longing in the soul and spirit, a hollow place or a woundedness that needs the Comforter’s healing touch. Knowing Christ as Savior is not the same as having a vital, intimate relationship with him and living in accountable and supportive interdependence with his people.
If addiction has no character or moral root involved why do you, as a professional, say to parents, “You must teach them to be a tattle tale. You need to search their rooms and purses and backpacks,. Know their friends and their friends parents. Be diligent. Watch and listen. Know what they’re doing, where they’re going.”
If there’s no moral risk involved why is such diligence (i.e. parenting and supervision) important? Because brain maturity and the capacity for good decision making isn’t mature until well into young adulthood? Because of the inherent potential for wrong choices and behaviors in the human condition? Because youth are particularly susceptible to the influence of peers as they pull away from the authority of the family (assuming it was ever present to start with)? Because people who are hurting, physically or emotionally, often give in to to quick, easy, and readily available solutions to self-medicate or self-soothe in ways that are not healthy? Because evil comes with enticing wares that cause curiosity and fantasizing and thrill-seeking, and proving oneself as tough or adventurous or strong or sexy or whatever it is one is desiring to communicate who they want to be at a time when self-identity is so important and so fragile?
At Titus 2 we do these things by teaching accountability to those with whom you live in mutual caring community, setting healthy boundaries, limiting negative influences or high risk situations, learning what it means to one’s identity rooted and grounded in Christ, knowing and living into the values you hold, disciplining appropriately, teaching respect for authority, allowing violators of standards to experience their consequences, and practicing delayed gratification, self care, and healthy emotional responses.
One mother who lost a 29 year old daughter to an accidental overdose on Xanax laced with fentanyl that she bought on the street called the current drug epidemic “World War III”..
She said our children are conditioned to expect every kind of pain and ailment to be treated with a pill.
That’s the attitude against which we’ve been teaching and attempting to transform in women at Titus 2. We have sought to be a beachhead in that war,
From April 28,2018