God and Drug Addiction
We’ve all heard stories of people who abuse opiates and use heroin, but they just can’t help themselves it feels so good and hey, my family can carry on without me and my company will carry on without me while I shoot up underneath some overpass in a bad side of town, shivering in the cold and one day I may overdose and die, but what do I care?
Maybe it started when trying to alleviate a pain that won’t go away, and the buzz that comes with the opiate is just so good but it’s expensive so I go to heroin which is much cheaper and also makes the pain go away and gives me the same buzz and yes, it makes me lethargic so I’m not good enough for anyone or anything, don’t bother me man unless you can get me some more heroin so I won’t have to force myself to get up and go get it myself…
Figuratively speaking these people dug their own pit and have fallen into it. In yielding to the temptation of opiates for their own sake, they are following other gods. Satan breaks open a bottle of champagne every time some unfortunate soul has given in to their body and is on the road to self-destruction and taking down anyone else.
You can consider them as God’s way of testing the rest of us, to see if we can carry on toward righteousness with them in our midst. Or maybe God is testing our love for eachother no matter who we are or in what fix we’re in. It seems that if God tested those who have fallen into their own pit, they have failed the test. Is there no hope of redemption for them? How do we help them under God?
Some things need to be brought up. First of all, Jesus gave us two great commandments…that we love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and that we love eachother as we love ourselves. Secondly, there are two passages in the Bible that are directed at all of us: Genesis 1:28 in which God says to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth,” and Psalm 139:14 which says, “I praise you [God], for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
God meant for us all to be fruitful and so on, and to use what He created us with to do so. In addressing Adam and Eve, He also addresses all future generations so we as a whole must be fruitful. Anybody who’d rather spend time shooting up will not be fruitful, so by definition it diminishes the rest of us. We have a moral obligation, therefore, to help these others through any way possible for us, including prayer, when they come to our attention.
To paraphrase Jesus, if we saw an animal trapped in a pit, would we not do what we can to help it out? So, is a human being worth any less than that animal?
How do we individually, or as part of society, approach such a person who is in a drug-induced stupor, or who may rationalize by saying ‘Just this once let me shoot up and I won’t do it any more? I CAN HANDLE THIS’? How many have heard someone say that, then find out later that they died of a drug overdose?
If they’re in a condition where they can reason, and surely if they can rationalize they can reason, we have a window of opportunity to show them the light. We can convey to them what God expects from us, since it is because of God that we are here. We can enlighten them that the time on earth they get pleasure from shooting up is nothing compared to the eternity they would spend in damnation for their defiance of God. They might try to put us off by saying, “I can stop anytime.” How many times have we heard a smoker say the same thing? Our answer to them could be, ‘Any time may be too late since your fate may be sealed by then, so stop now while there’s still a chance to gain God’s favor.’ As with smoking, heroin use damages the body that God has so wonderfully made. And there is nothing fruitful in that.
We’ve all heard stories of people who abuse opiates and use heroin, but they just can’t help themselves it feels so good and hey, my family can carry on without me and my company will carry on without me while I shoot up underneath some overpass in a bad side of town, shivering in the cold and one day I may overdose and die, but what do I care?
Maybe it started when trying to alleviate a pain that won’t go away, and the buzz that comes with the opiate is just so good but it’s expensive so I go to heroin which is much cheaper and also makes the pain go away and gives me the same buzz and yes, it makes me lethargic so I’m not good enough for anyone or anything, don’t bother me man unless you can get me some more heroin so I won’t have to force myself to get up and go get it myself…
Figuratively speaking these people dug their own pit and have fallen into it. In yielding to the temptation of opiates for their own sake, they are following other gods. Satan breaks open a bottle of champagne every time some unfortunate soul has given in to their body and is on the road to self-destruction and taking down anyone else.
You can consider them as God’s way of testing the rest of us, to see if we can carry on toward righteousness with them in our midst. Or maybe God is testing our love for eachother no matter who we are or in what fix we’re in. It seems that if God tested those who have fallen into their own pit, they have failed the test. Is there no hope of redemption for them? How do we help them under God?
Some things need to be brought up. First of all, Jesus gave us two great commandments…that we love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and that we love eachother as we love ourselves. Secondly, there are two passages in the Bible that are directed at all of us: Genesis 1:28 in which God says to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth,” and Psalm 139:14 which says, “I praise you [God], for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
God meant for us all to be fruitful and so on, and to use what He created us with to do so. In addressing Adam and Eve, He also addresses all future generations so we as a whole must be fruitful. Anybody who’d rather spend time shooting up will not be fruitful, so by definition it diminishes the rest of us. We have a moral obligation, therefore, to help these others through any way possible for us, including prayer, when they come to our attention.
To paraphrase Jesus, if we saw an animal trapped in a pit, would we not do what we can to help it out? So, is a human being worth any less than that animal?
How do we individually, or as part of society, approach such a person who is in a drug-induced stupor, or who may rationalize by saying ‘Just this once let me shoot up and I won’t do it any more? I CAN HANDLE THIS’? How many have heard someone say that, then find out later that they died of a drug overdose?
If they’re in a condition where they can reason, and surely if they can rationalize they can reason, we have a window of opportunity to show them the light. We can convey to them what God expects from us, since it is because of God that we are here. We can enlighten them that the time on earth they get pleasure from shooting up is nothing compared to the eternity they would spend in damnation for their defiance of God. They might try to put us off by saying, “I can stop anytime.” How many times have we heard a smoker say the same thing? Our answer to them could be, ‘Any time may be too late since your fate may be sealed by then, so stop now while there’s still a chance to gain God’s favor.’ As with smoking, heroin use damages the body that God has so wonderfully made. And there is nothing fruitful in that.
