“Millions of Americans who in times of personal crisis and emotional and mental anguish once turned to priests, ministers, and rabbis for keys to the heavenly kingdom, now go to physicians and psychiatrists, who hold the keys to the kingdom of pharmaceutical relief, or to drug dealers and liquor stores as chemicals and alcohol replace the confessional as a source of solace and forgiveness.”

That’s a quote from Joseph Califano’s new book entitled High Society.  Have chemicals become the new religion for millions of Americans?  The numbers are truly staggering.  Americans make up only four percent of the world’s population but we consume two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs.  We have 61 million chronic smokers, 16 million alcoholics, and every day 100 million Americans are popping anti-depressants, tranquilizers or painkillers.

There can hardly be a person in this country that has not been affected by addiction.  Every one of the millions of addicts and alcoholics has families and neighbors.  As a pastor, I have spent countless hours counseling and praying with people suffering from various types of addictions.

One of our biggest struggles as a church and as a society is to know whether we should deal with addicts as offenders or victims.  For the most part, our society has chosen to see them as victims.  We have told them alcoholism is a disease and therefore they can’t help themselves.  That resonates well with a person who already feels controlled by the urges of the addiction.  But victimization rarely produces freedom.  It typically produces more bondage which leads to increased guilt and helplessness.

Dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts as offenders makes a little more sense because addiction is the primary contributor to most criminal behavior.  Any corrections officer will acknowledge that most inmates are in prison because of drugs or alcohol.  Indeed, getting tough on drug pushers and manufacturers has produced severe overcrowding in our prisons.

The Bible actually describes the problem in totally spiritual terms.  God calls this behavior sin.  Specifically, the Bible says drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10).  That sounds pretty harsh unless we look at it in light of the First Commandment which warns all of us not to have any other god before the true God.  When a person runs to a chemical for solace and comfort, it is idolatry.

From countless hours of counseling with addicts I have seen a few success stories.  They all follow this pattern.  First the addict admits he (or she) is a sinner and is totally controlled by his sin.  Next he asks Jesus Christ to come into his life and commits to serve Christ rather than self.  Finally, the addict submits himself to an accountability structure of other people who have permission to speak into his life.

Anything less than this kind of radical repentance and obedience ends in failure.  Chemical church doesn’t work.  The church that Jesus founded does work.

Christy Freeman is charged with murder after the remains of four pre-mature babies were found in her house in Ocean City, Maryland.

Two years ago, Christy Freeman could not have been charged with a crime. Like many other states, Maryland recently passed a viable fetus law that makes it a crime to kill a child that could live outside the womb. This law, and others like it around the country, have only come in recent years as states have reasserted their rights to legislate abortion issues.

Grisly events like this highlight the hypocrisy of those who want to kill babies with impunity. Planned Parenthood, The National Abortion Rights Action League, The National Organization for Women, and those they represent continue to maintain that “unwanted” children should not be allowed to be born. Their convoluted reasoning boasts that the right of a woman to live as she pleases completely trumps the right of a baby to live at all.
When some disturbed person like Christy Freeman carries this philosophy to its logical conclusion, we as a society then wonder what could have motivated her to kill her own children.

Millions of mothers do it every year and our society accepts it. The only difference is that Christy Freeman did not go to an abortion clinic and contribute to the extremely lucrative abortion industry.

The bottom line of this philosophical and legal disconnect is personhood. Is an unborn child a person or simply unwanted tissue? It’s the same debate our country struggled with over slavery. As long as Negroes were considered chattel (or property), as the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision decreed in 1858, it was legitimate to keep them in bondage.
But Abraham Lincoln was elected President by campaigning that the Dred Scott decision was wrong, and if elected President, he would do everything in his power to recognize the personhood of the Negro race. It took the bloodiest war in our history to finally settle the issue. But today, no one disputes anyone else’s personhood based upon their race.

However, we continue to do it to those whom we cannot see; the unborn.

The Bible clearly teaches that life begins at conception. The Psalmist David wrote of God’s view of the unborn. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalms 139:13-16).”

We are now only one conservative Supreme Court Justice away from overturning Roe vs. Wade. (By the way, if you’ve never read the Roe decision you should. You will find its logic incomprehensible and its conclusions irrational.) When the next court opening appears, the pro-abortion forces will unleash a virulent battle the likes of which we have not seen.