The politically liberal online news magazine, Slate, reports the efforts of Democratic Senator Joe Biden to introduce a bill that would change the names of two national health organizations in order to strip away moral responsibility from alcohol and drug addicts. The article, co-written by a psychiatrist and psychologist begins, “A full-scale campaign is under way to change the public perception of drug addiction, from a moral failing to a brain disease.” Surprisingly, the authors of this article actually fall on the side of moral responsibility and “personal agency,” and are unafraid to refer to those who choose to remain addicted to foreign substances as being guilty of “moral failing,” though the word guilty is avoided. They also bravely say, “You would think Congress has better things to do than legislate name changes. And in the long run, the well-meaning effort to overmedicalize addiction could have baleful consequences. Addiction is not as hopeless or uncontrollable as the brain disease metaphor suggests.”
It is refreshing to hear conclusions like this coming from people outside of the biblical counseling world, however, we who know Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Deliverer from sin also know that voluntary bondage to sin is a spiritual problem in the human heart rather than a physical problem in the brain, and “self-governance” without a relationship with the Redeemer is not the answer. Alcohol and drug "addicts" need more than an anonymous twelve-step god. They need to repent of their sinful choices, tear down the idols of the heart, and submit to the only one who can truly set them free. It is Jesus who came to “to set free those who are downtrodden” (Luke 4:18). It is the good news of the gospel that they ultimately need. Once free in Christ, the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit of self-control in the child of God as he disciplines himself for godliness, daily denying self and following Christ.
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