02/5/19

Another Bozo on the Bus

“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23a). The main thing alcoholics have in common is they all drink to get drunk. Just as there is nothing to serve as a possible ground for someone being a ‘lesser’ or ‘worse’ sinner before God, in Twelve Step recovery there are no differences among alcoholics or addicts, since all are powerless over alcohol. In “Just Another Bozo on the Bus,” an anonymous AA said in his Grapevine article that the story of his sobriety was one of a growing realization of all the ways he was exactly like others in Alcoholics Anonymous. “That experience of being ‘the same as,’ of being ‘one among many,’ of being ‘just another bozo on the bus’ is critical to the maintenance of my spiritual condition.”

This sense of ‘no distinction’ lies at the heart of Twelve Step recovery: “We are either all alcoholics with no distinction (and therein lies our power) or we might as well shut up shop.” It is truly is a matter of life and death: “There are no distinctions made for color, race, economic status, or education. We are all equal and have to reach out to one another in order to survive.” Felicia G. recalled how two women first talked to her about what she would find in AA: “It is a pattern and you are not alone. You are not the only woman who has been like this. Thousands and thousands of men and women have been like this. And now they are sober.” An anonymous twenty-year old AA put it this way:

To me, God is an artist and he sculpts people into what they really are. He accomplishes this through the Twelve Steps. I can see he has done this, and is still doing this, with my friends and me. Although we are all sculpted differently, there is a certain fact that holds us all together. That fact is alcoholism. I have heard it referred to as the “great equalizer.” Now AA is the great equalizer in my life because no matter what people have done, thought, or felt, if they are alcoholics, we have a common bond.

The self-same sense of oneness exists within Narcotics Anonymous (NA). Like “a lifeboat in a sea of isolation,” NA is: “a fellowship of people with a common bond of recovery.” They all have one thing in common: “All of us, from the junkie snatching purses to the sweet old lady hitting two or three doctors for legal prescriptions, have one thing in common: we seek our destruction a bag at a time, a few pills at a time, or a bottle at a time until we die.” The common problem was addiction and no one was greater (or less) than any one else: “No member is greater or lesser than any other member.” Herein lies its power: “We found that no matter what our past thoughts or actions were, others had felt and done the same. Surrounded by fellow addicts, we realized that we were not alone anymore.”

This common bond—whether it is sin or addiction/alcoholism—this great equalizer cuts across all peoples. We do not understand our actions. We do the very thing we hate. We have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:15-20). We are powerless; we are sinful.

There are no social or cultural distinctions made by God with regards to the universal sinfulness of all people; regardless of their particular sin, they all fall short. “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (Romans 2:9). Here, and other places in Scripture ‘Greek’ can be an equivalent for those who are non-Jews or ‘Gentiles.’ Everyone who sins, Jew or non-Jew (Greek or Gentile), faces tribulation and distress.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addressed the human tendency to deny or minimize personal sinfulness when He said that whoever relaxed one of the least of the commandments and taught others to do so, would be least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:19). Anger has the same liability for judgment before God as murder; a man who looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:21-30). Paul clearly had this sense in mind when he said that the “dividing wall of hostility” has been broken down in Christ (Ephesians 2:14). But we need some context to fully understand the significance of Paul’s statement here.

Paul traveled to Jerusalem and was counseled by James and others to demonstrate his obedience to Jewish religious law by purifying himself in the temple. Jews from the province of Asia had spread the rumor that Paul taught Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses by not circumcising their children; to stop keeping Jewish religious customs (Acts 21:21). The Christian leaders wanted Paul to demonstrate this was not true; that he even continued to follow Jewish religious law himself. Some Ephesian Jews saw Paul in the temple as he completed this rite of purification and assumed he had dared to bring an Ephesian Gentile named Trophimus into the temple with him. They raised an alarm, seized Paul and beat him (Acts 21:27–32).

The inner court area of the temple in Jerusalem was raised slightly above the outer court of the Gentiles and surrounded by a barrier. Notices in Greek and Latin warned that no responsibility would be taken for the probable death of any Gentile who ventured within. According to The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament, taking a Gentile beyond the dividing wall of the outer court in the temple was considered to be such a serious breach of Jewish law that the Romans permitted Jewish leaders to execute those who violated this law. The Ephesian Jews accused Paul of violating this law.

Paul was imprisoned and later transferred to Caesarea when a plot to assassinate him was discovered. He remained in prison there for two years. Eventually he appeared before the newly appointed governor, Festus. Another plot to ambush and kill Paul during his transport back to Jerusalem to stand trial before Festus was thwarted by Paul’s appeal to Caesar.

Paul said he had done nothing wrong against the law of the Jews, the temple, or against Caesar. He was willing to die if found guilty of anything deserving death but rejected Festus’s request to return to Jerusalem for trial. Since the charges against him were not true (the Jews could not prove any of their charges), Paul said no one had the right to hand him over to the Jews, so he appealed his case to Caesar (Acts 23:20-33; 25:1-12). Paul was transferred to Rome, where he wrote the epistle to the Ephesians from prison. This set of circumstances has a somewhat poetic circle to it: the riot in Ephesus; the Ephesian Jews accusing him in Jerusalem; Paul’s appeal to Caesar; and then his writing the epistle to the Ephesians from Rome.

The believers in Ephesus would have been aware of the circumstances of Paul’s arrest and imprisonment. So his statement in Ephesians 2:14 about Christ breaking down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles had a special meaning to them, since a dispute over Paul violating the dividing wall in the temple was what had precipitated his arrest. Originally separated from Christ and strangers to the covenant of promise, Gentile believers have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Breaking down the dividing wall of hostility in his flesh, Christ has created in himself one new man, reconciling both Jew and Gentile in one body through the cross (Ephesians 2:11-16). So the divisions between Jew and Gentile, the circumcision and uncircumcision are no longer valid in the body of Christ. The dividing wall of hostility has been destroyed.

If somewhere within human diversity, there is a people group whose sinfulness is less than (or more than) others, there cannot be a universal need for salvation in Christ. Charles Hodge said that the universal nature of sin is “one of the most undeniable doctrines of Scripture, and one of the most certain facts of experience.” Until this fact is admitted, there is no place or need for the Gospel. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, whether they are Jews or Greeks (non-Jews), will be saved (Romans 10:12-13). “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). “For God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11). And I am just another bozo on the bus.

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is the 8th in the series. Enjoy.

01/15/19

Born of the Flesh

Bill W. had just finished telling his companion about how he was finished with liquor forever. “I’m one of those people who can’t manage it.” Among other things, he described the allergy and the obsession when he drank. Then the bartender brought them each of them a drink, saying it was on the house because it was Armistice Day. Without a moment’s hesitation Bill drank it down. His friend said: “My God, is it possible that you could take a drink after what you just told me? You must be crazy.”

The Psalmist declares that we were diseased and depraved from the beginning: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalms 51:5). A favorite term of Paul’s when describing this depravity is flesh: “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14); “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18); “with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans. 7:25); “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Romans 8:7); “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). In this sense, sin is the great leveler. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

So when he listed the works and desires of the flesh in Galatians 5, Paul was complementing the list of “lusts of the heart” and “all manner of unrighteousness” described in Romans 1. Our flesh is ruled by lust and unrighteousness; it is depraved. “Sin never consists in a voluntary act of transgression.” It is something more deeply rooted than mere free will. In the New Bible Dictionary, John Murray said:

From whatever angle man is viewed, there is the absence of that which is well-pleasing to God. . . . all have turned aside from God’s way and become corrupted. . . . there is no area or aspect of human life which is absolved from the sombre effects of man’s fallenness, and hence no area which might serve as a possible ground for man’s justification of himself in the face of God and his law.

This sense of ‘flesh’ means something in addition to our mere physical body. Turning to Galatians 5:16f, we see that Paul contrasts flesh and Spirit, saying that the desires of the flesh are opposed to the desires of the Spirit; and that this opposition is so that we can’t do the things we want to do. God intends for us to be powerless over the desires of the flesh, over this deeper sense of sin so that we will in turn realize our need for Christ: Romans 7:24-25 says: “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

In Twelve Step recovery the realization of powerlessness over alcohol and drugs (Step One) is followed by coming to believe that a Higher Power can save you from the hopeless insanity of active addiction (Step Two). Clearly there is a radical theological and spiritual difference between coming to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and coming to believe in a Higher Power. But the dynamic of recognizing personal inability and powerlessness over sin (or addiction), with the concomitant need to believe in and surrender to a Higher Power (or Jesus Christ) captures the ‘conversion’ process present in both Twelve Step recovery and becoming born again.

In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin extends the metaphorical use of ‘flesh’ in a nonphysical sense for sinful human nature by referring to the behaviors that proceed from the depravity of the flesh as ‘disease.’ In a discussion of how we are all, without exception, “depraved and given over to wickedness,” Calvin noted that God is pleased to put forth His healing hand to some who “labour naturally under the same disease.” In other sections of the Institutes, he refers to the diseases of evil-speaking, concupiscence, distrust and sin: “Had he not foreseen that his people were constantly to labour under the disease of sin, he never would have appointed these remedies.” Matthew Henry, Charles Spurgeon, Warren Wiersbe and others have also conceived of sinful desires and behavior as disease—with Christ as: “the Great Physician who heals the heart from the sickness of sin.”

Ralph Robinson, a Presbyterian minister in the 1600s, cautioned his readers to watch against sin as they watched against sickness. Noting how many people are careful to avoid eating or drinking anything that would disturb the quiet in their bodies, he asked why they aren’t as cautious of sin? “No sickness is so catching as sin is. Everyone has the root of it, and an inclination to it in their hearts. . . . It is worse than the small pox, worse than the plague. Other diseases will kill the bodies of your children, but sin will kill both body and soul.”

Alcoholism and drug addiction are often accepted as ‘diseases’ in their own right, and said to have no real differences from other diseases such as diabetes. Research on addiction increasingly refers to it as a ‘brain disease.’ In “Addiction is a Brain Disease, and It Matters,” published in the journal Science, Alan Leshner said that recognizing addiction as a “chronic, relapsing brain disorder” would benefit society’s overall health policy and help reduce the costs associated with drug abuse and addiction.

Similarly, in an HBO documentary Addiction, Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse specifically claimed that addiction was a brain disease: “Drug addiction is a disease of the brain . . . that translates into abnormal behavior.” She added that this leads to an inability to control the drug, because the brain will view its need for the drug with the same intensity as if the person was starving. Brain imaging research done by Dr. Volkow has revealed “neurochemical and functional changes in the brains of drug-addicted subjects that provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying addiction.” In The Science of Addiction, Carleton Erickson said research suggests that continued exposure of the MDS (mesolimbic dopamine system/pleasure pathway) pathway of the brain to a drug leads to changes in nerve function. The changes reach a threshold, which then leads to compulsive substance use over which the individual has impaired control.

However there is a biblical problem with addiction as merely brain disease. In Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave, Ed Welch said: “When we have a disease, we can still be growing in the knowledge of Christ, but addictions are incompatible with spiritual growth.” Genetics and biochemistry can influence human behavior, but they cannot determine it. While addictive ‘disease’ may include actual physiological dysfunction, it is also an “infection of the human heart.” The “translation process” from brain physiology to abnormal behavior passes through the human heart.

Addiction is then simultaneously “an infection of the human heart” and “a disease of the brain.” To emphasize or ignore either aspect of addiction will lead to an incomplete picture of what constitutes addiction. Carleton Erickson attempts to approach this truth from a purely scientific or general revelation perspective in noting that if addiction is a brain disease, then “behavioral therapies probably change brain chemistry.” He then comments that for some people, “spirituality could be a very effective way to do this.”

The morning after Armistice Day his wife found Bill unconscious in the area way of their home. He’d fallen against the door, and was bleeding heavily from a bad scalp wound. He settled hopelessly into a kind of bottomless bingeing. He no longer went out except to replenish his supply. Then an old drinking buddy came by, but declined Bill’s offer to drink. When asked what had got into him, his friend said: “I’ve got religion.”

Getting religion was the last thing Bill was interested in. Yet it was working with his friend. The last he’d heard, the friend was to be committed to the state asylum in Brattleboro, Vermont. “Instead, here he was in Bill’s own kitchen, sober and showing a confidence he hadn’t displayed in years.” He told Bill his story simply, without any attempt to convert him, and then he left. Bill continued to drink, but he was engaged in an “endless interior dialogue with himself.”

Eventually he found his way to Towns Hospital. His friend visited him there and they talked as they had in Bill’s kitchen. When the friend left, Bill fell into a deep depression. There was nothing ahead of him but death or madness. He had reached a state of total, absolute surrender. Without faith or hope, he cried: “If there be a God, let Him show Himself!”

Suddenly my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. . . . Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clear strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought: “You area free man.” . . . . I became acutely conscious of a Presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. “This,” I thought, “must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.”

Bill never drank again. He would eventually meet Dr. Bob and together they would form Alcoholics Anonymous. That which is born of the flesh (the physical body) is flesh (depraved and given over to wickedness). The story of Bill’s “white light” experience was taken from Pass It On, an account of how the A.A. message reached the world.

11/27/18

I Must Have Another Drink!

If we suppress the “fundamental idea of God” that lies within us, then God gives us up to the lusts of our heart. There is war between the flesh and the spirit; we don’t do what we want to do; our lives become unmanageable. We are powerless over sin—and if that powerlessness involves mind-altering substances, alcohol or drugs becomes our god. As Paul quotes in a flurry of verses beginning at Romans 3:10: “as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

Although we are powerless over sin, God has provided a way out through faith in Jesus Christ. And this righteousness is available for all who believe. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray said: “There is no discrimination among believers—the righteousness of God comes upon them all without distinction.” The Old Testament itself (the Law and the Prophets) bears witness to this. In fact, it can be shown that God had this plan for salvation in mind even before the sin of Adam and Eve.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, . . . (Romans 3:21-24)

The root meaning of the Greek word for redemption is to deliver by paying a price. So our deliverance from sin through Jesus Christ is more like a ransom than liberation. We were bought at a price and not simply liberated from the concentration camp of sin and death. So there is a contrast here between the freely given gift of grace and the costliness of the ransom paid by Christ to release us.

Not only have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but all are justified by grace, free of charge, through the redemption in Christ Jesus. “By his grace as a gift” emphasizes the unmerited nature of God’s justification and is the solution to the conclusion of verse 3:20, namely that “by works of the law no human being will be justified.” Nothing we do, not even what we possess as creatures made in His image, can predispose God to cause us to be free from sin and in right relationship with Him. Yet He gives it freely as a gift.

. . . whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)

Here the gospel and mere recovery take different paths, because of the significance of Christ for salvation. Both the gospel and recovery can acknowledge the powerlessness we have over sin (addiction), but Paul asserts that our release from sin was at the cost of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice. In mere recovery there is no redeeming sacrifice; no ransom paid for the release from addiction. Faith in God to deliver from addiction leads to a liberation from addiction, but not to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

This idea of a costly ransom is further asserted in referring to Christ Jesus as a propitiation in verse 25. The Greek word used here is only found one other time in Scripture, in Hebrews 9:5 where it refers to the mercy seat, the covering over the Ark of the Covenant. On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur in modern Jewish worship, the high priest would enter into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the mercy seat with the blood of a sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of all the people (Leviticus 16). The sprinkling of blood over the mantle of the homes of the Israelites was also done so that the angel of death would “pass over” their homes as it brought judgment to Egypt (Ex. 12:1-20). The Passover meal celebrates this deliverance.

So Paul is presenting Jesus Christ as the redeeming sacrifice that takes away the sins of all who believe in him. Our sins are atoned for because of the blood of his sacrifice.

Paul has been unpacking several phrases in these last few verses; and he does so again in verse 3:26. The righteousness of God in verse 21 is noted to be the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ in verse 22. The redemption (ransom) in Christ Jesus noted in verse 24 was specified to be a result of our willingness to believe that he was the true expiatory sacrifice (verse 25). Not only was this to show the righteousness of God because He passed over our former sins (verse 25), but that God did so at this present time, in Christ Jesus (verse 26), because there was no other way. In Jesus Christ alone do we receive forgiveness of our sins and justification from God. Jesus himself was not only righteous, but also the one who declares that all who have faith in him are righteous themselves.

Notice the similarity between the powerlessness over sin noted above and how Bill W. described the powerlessness over alcoholism faced by the alcoholic in the “Step One” essay of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: “Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that . . . we have warped our minds into such an obsession [for destructive drinking] that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.”

In Twelve Step recovery there is a saying that once you are powerless over addiction, continued drug and alcohol use will ultimately lead to jail, institutions, or death. There is no hope for an addict or alcoholic who remains in an active addiction. Ultimately, they will die in their addiction. Some sociologists even liken addiction to indirect suicide. But sometimes, the suicidal impulse is more direct. Here is a quote from “An Inner Truth,” from the AA Grapevine:

One night, I decided that I couldn’t live with alcohol anymore–but I couldn’t live without it. So, I devised a fail-proof plan to take my life. I took a vacuum hose and connected it to the exhaust of my truck, taped and sealed the windows, started the truck, finished my fifth (I wouldn’t want to leave any behind), and prepared to die. I awakened the next morning in my truck, very sick, with an empty fifth, and very much alive. I looked at the gas gauge and there was still a quarter tank of gas left. The key was in the “on” position and the fail-proof plan had failed. The truck died during the night, and I didn’t. Somehow, a few months later, I ended up at an AA meeting sitting across the table from a man who had attempted suicide with a shotgun and blown his face off. He looked across the table at me and said, “Welcome,” and then, “Boy, you look like crap.” Coming from a man without a nose and a lot of facial damage, this statement stuck in my mind.

Proverbs 23:29-35 captures the clear cycle of unmanageability in alcoholism. It explicitly describes the spiral of progressive sin in alcoholism:

Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine. Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink.

In My Utmost for His Highest (which was used by early members of A.A), Oswald Chambers noted there is something in human nature that laughs in the face of every ideal you have. “If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is vice and self-seeking, something downright spiteful and wrong in human beings, instead of reconciling yourself to it when it strikes your life, you will compromise with it and say it is of no use to battle against it.” So it’s not just that we do wrong things—that we sin, drink or use drugs—but that there is something in human nature that is opposed to our ideals.

There is something within us that seeks to resist the good we want to do. Sinful behavior is an expression of a sinful heart (cf. Mark. 7:20-23; Proverbs. 4:23; 23:7). John Calvin said in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” We dare to imagine a god suited to our own understanding and substitute “vanity and an empty phantom” for the true God. The god whom we have thus conceived inwardly, we then attempt to embody outwardly.

Oswald Chambers said if we repeatedly run after self-serving desires, eventually they become our gods. For the addict and the alcoholic, their drugged state becomes their god. Sin in this sense is wrong being, not wrong doing. It is deliberate, emphatic independence of God:

The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed that Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by sympathy. He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race—“He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of Redemption. Jesus Christ rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross.

Remember that in his divine forbearance, God passes over our former sins—even those we don’t remember doing while in a blackout. This shows His righteousness, for He is the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).

10/10/17

Rejecting God in Addiction

The Bible affirms that every human being has a sense of what is right or wrong. There are moral absolutes which God has clearly revealed, and which we know, regardless of whether or not we live our lives in obedience to his will. There are no circumstances in which a person can ultimately say, “I didn’t know that was wrong.” We all have a moral compass. It is with this moral compass that the alcoholic does his “searching and fearless” moral inventory in Step Four. We are without excuse and cannot deny culpability for our actions before God. Even in our rebellion, God has seen fit for us to know His will. God’s judgment was to give Adam and Eve what they wanted: knowledge of right and wrong independent of God’s revelation.

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis affirmed the reality of the doctrine of objective value, which is the belief that certain attitudes towards the universe and ourselves are really true, and others really false. Lewis referred to this conception of objective truth in all of its forms, as the Tao; a term he borrowed from Chinese thought. Other conceptions of what he calls the Tao in Western thought are: Natural Law, Traditional Morality, and the First Principles of Practical Reason. This doctrine of objective truth is also found in nonWestern thinking.

In Hindu thought, conformity to Rta (righteousness, correctness, and order found in nature) is human conduct that can be called good. The Chinese of course speak of the Tao, which is the greatest thing; the Way in which the universe goes on; the Way in which every person should walk in imitation of the cosmic order, conforming all activity to that great exemplar. The Navajo spiritual/religious concept of hózhó seems to be their conception of the Tao as a spiritually based, balanced lifestyle. Hózhó means to live in beauty; to observe the Navajo philosophy or religion of living and interacting with the world around you so that your life has beauty, balance, calm, and stability. To be out of hózhó is to be “sinful” to a traditional Navajo.

This Tao is not just one among a series of possible systems of value. “It is the sole source of all value judgments.” If rejected, all value is rejected. Lewis said that in the history of the world, there never has been—nor will there be—a radically new judgment of value. The logic here is that if the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real objective value that proceeds from God’s general revelation, then conjugal fidelity, self control in sobriety and other “objective values” are points on God’s moral compass in his special revelation, the Bible. This sense of a moral compass lies at the heart of the downward spiral of sinful, unmanageable behavior specified in the following passage from Romans:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32)

Once again in Romans 1:28 Paul said: “God gave them up”, using the same Greek verb tense to communicate past completed action as he did in verses 24 and 26. First note the intensification of the repeated judgment by God. Then notice that “impurity, dishonoring their bodies among themselves, dishonorable passions and doing what ought not to be done” are all consequences of failing to acknowledge God (Romans 1:21).

v. 24 God gave them up (in the lusts of their hearts) to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.v. 26 God gave them up to dishonorable passions.v. 28 God gave them up (to a debased mind) to do what ought not to be done.

The passage reiterates the “root and fruit” association of heart (or mind) and behavior evident in verse 24. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Or in this case, they did what ought not to be done. As a result of failing to acknowledge God, and being given over to a debased mind, they were filled with all types of sinful desire. As Robert Mounce said in his commentary on Romans, “When people turn from God, the path leads inevitably downward into degeneracy.”

There is a subtle change in the Greek grammar of the passage that helps to distinguish the wrath of God in giving them up to a debased mind from the sin that came as a result of their debased mind. In essence, the verses say that God gave them up to a debased mind, filling them with unrighteousness, evil, covetousness and malice. As a result, they did what ought not to be done: envy, murder, strife, deceit, and maliciousness. This downward spiral of sin has a root and fruit, heart and behavior pattern: sinful behavior is inescapably influenced by a debased heart and mind.

The unrestrained nature of this downward spiral of sin is illustrated with a further litany of sins from gossiping to ruthlessness. For the most part, they are rarely used terms in Biblical Greek, again intensifying the sense in which it seems that sinful behavior gushes out from a debased heart. The summary here reads like a checklist of character defects for individuals preparing to complete their “searching and fearless moral inventory” in the Fourth Step.

Perhaps the most damning assessment of unrighteous is saved for last. Despite the whirlwind of sin that comes from God giving them up to a debased mind, they still know that these vices are worthy of God’s judgment; they are still capable of recognizing right from wrong. Even in the depths of their depravity, they know their sin and its consequences. What can be known about God is still plain to them (verse 1:19). Yet they encourage others to engage in the same cycle of sin and judgment. They know that by their actions they suppress the truth of God to their eternal damnation; and yet they still encourage others to do the same.

We are not only bent on damning ourselves, but we recruit others to follow in our footsteps. As John Murray said in his commentary on Romans: “Iniquity is most aggravated when it meets with no inhibition from the disapproval of others and where there is collective, undissenting approbation [endorsement].” So the gathering of heavy drinkers to watch a football game and get drunk; the licentiousness of an out-of-control bachelor party; and an opioid addict shooting up a friend for the first time all find their condemnation here.

I’m struck by the strong parallels in this passage of Scripture to the heart attitudes and unmanageable behavior of active addiction. Beginning with verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who deny (suppress) the truth by their unrighteous behavior. The order of the terms ungodliness and unrighteousness has some significance here, as moral decay (in alcoholism and addiction) follows from the rejection (denial) of God. In the chapter “We Agnostics” of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. wrote: “When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. . . . Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?”

God has revealed His divinity in creation. Unrighteous (addictive) behavior suppresses this truth and seeks to be like God. Ernest Kurtz wrote that “the fundamental and first message of Alcoholics Anonymous to its members is that they are not infinite, not absolute, not God.” Every alcoholic’s problem begins with wanting God-like powers, especially the ability to control their drinking. But an alcoholic cannot control their drinking. At some point in their addictive career, they experience a loss of control over thoughts, feelings and behavior when they drink. Eventually they lose control over the act of drinking itself and will deny or minimize their inability to control it.

Craig Nakken, in The Addictive Personality, suggested that much of an addict’s mental obsession resulted from refusing to recognize the loss of control they experience. Denial, suppressing the truth of the addict’s inability to control their drug or alcohol use, is thus a fundamental part of addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous saw denial as the fundamental symptom and deep core of alcoholism. It is the initial issue addressed by the First Step: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol [addiction]-that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Recognizing this denial is then an essential part of recovery; failure to do so means that the addict becomes futile in their belief that they can control their drug use. Their foolish hearts are darkened to the reality of addiction. Alcohol or drugs become their God. The basic text of N.A., Narcotics Anonymous, simply says: “Isolation and denial of our addiction kept us moving along this downhill path. Any hope of getting better disappeared.”

God gives him what he wants; He gives the addict up to the lust of his heart and to a debased mind; to do what ought not to be done; to pursue the false god of his addiction. He is filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness and malice. He is and does everything noted in verses 1:29-31. This litany of consequences provides a summary of the unmanageability present in the life of the addict and alcoholic. He becomes hopeless and helpless as a result of his rejection of God (ungodliness) and the addictive behavior that results. His only hope is in the God he rejected from the beginning.

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally written. This article is “05,” the fifth one in the series. Enjoy.

11/13/15

From Darkness to Light

Douglas Moo said Romans 1:21 was the “missing link” for Paul’s argument in Romans 1:20, where he said those who suppress the truth God reveals about himself in creation have no excuse for their actions. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). In other words, if you deny or suppress what creation reveals about God, you will never truly understand it. What’s more, your failure to understand is inexcusable because it should have been quite plain to you.

According to Robert Mounce, we can reasonably expect that knowing God should lead us to honor him as God, since He plainly gives all people the basic requirements for life, regardless of their relationship to him. Their response should be gratitude, “But people choose to ignore God and come up with their own version of reality. By rejecting the knowledge of the true God, religion is born.” Mounce’s sense of religion here seems to be a revision of Edmund/Edward Tylor’s definition of religion as follows: “the belief in spiritual beings” other than the true God. This turning from the revealed truth of God to a personal interpretation of that revealed truth has been described as “the triumph of gods over God.”

The sense of “God as you understand him” in Twelve Step recovery strikes off in two separate directions when the truth about God in creation is encountered. One is compatible with the Romans Road, and one is not. God as you understand Him is essentially “God as I am willing to accept” or “God as I am able to comprehend” Him. This first sense can be portrayed by the word “god” within a circle representing the person’s understanding. This sense of “god” becomes a projection or manifestation of a purely human attempt to explain reality.

The alternate sense, and one that is compatible with the Romans Road, is a circle of understanding that is infinitesimally smaller than God Himself. Something that looks like what follows: the representation of our understanding as a circle barely discernable with the “O” of God.

The distinction between these two “understandings” of God is illustrated in Anselm’s Ontological Argument for God’s Existence. Anselm said that even a fool can conceive of the idea of “god” as an absolutely perfect being; a being greater than anything we can imagine or conceive. But if this idea exists in our understanding, “then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.” So if someone accepts that God is greater than our ability to imagine Him, He must exist in reality because existing in reality is greater than merely existing in the imagination. “Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.” Brian Davies and G. R. Evans noted in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works that Anselm believed:

God cannot be thought of simply as a concept people have. He [Anselm] thinks people who deny God’s existence can nevertheless be thought of as having some concept of God, for so he says, they have some idea of what it is whose existence they deny.

If reflecting on the meaning of the word ‘God’ shows that God necessarily exists in reality and not just in the mind as an idea of him, then someone who denies there is a God is ultimately proposing what must necessarily be false. Anselm saw his argument for the existence of God as paving the way for serious reflection on what we mean when we use the word ‘God.’ He also believed his ‘proof’ showed that God was what Christians believed God to be. But according to Romans, if this knowledge doesn’t lead the individual to honor and give thanks to God, it is not saving knowledge of God (Romans 1:16, 21).

So if this knowledge does not lead to reverence and gratitude towards God, then it “falls far short of what is necessary to establish a relationship” with God. In Romans 1:21 Paul points to what will happen with an understanding of God based solely on the knowledge of God revealed in creation—your thinking becomes futile; and your foolish heart becomes darkened. Whatever your initial capacity to reason about God may have been, whatever initial knowledge of creation you might have had, failing to acknowledge God’s hand in it means your thinking about it will ultimately be in vain; futile.

You can understand God to be greater than your ability to imagine Him, but still not have that knowledge lead you to worship Him. It requires the light of the gospel. Knowledge of God that does not lead you to honor and give thanks to Him leads to futile thinking and darkened, foolish hearts. Douglas Moo commented that at the very center of every person where the knowledge of God must be embraced is darkness. If the knowledge of God is to have any positive effects, then only the light of the gospel can penetrate that darkness.

As Paul has already said in verse 1:18 of Romans, the wrath of God is revealed against individuals who suppress the truth of what God has revealed. You need more than just an understanding of God as a being greater than anything we can imagine or conceive to have a relationship with “the God of the preachers.” John Calvin said of the individuals Paul described in Romans 1:21, “They quickly choked by their own depravity the seed of right knowledge, before it grew up to ripeness.” Robert Mounce put it this way:

To turn from the light of revelation is to head into darkness. Sin inevitably results in a darkening of some aspect of human existence. In a moral universe it is impossible to turn from the truth of God and not suffer the consequences. Ignorance is the result of a choice. People who do not “know” God are those who have made that choice. Understanding God requires a moral decision, not additional information.

According to the Reformation Study Bible, God will not allow human beings to entirely suppress their sense of God. Even in a fallen world people have a conscience; they have some sense of right and wrong. “When conscience speaks in these terms it speaks with the voice of God.” And I think this is true for the Twelve Steps. By meditating on what ‘God as I understand Him’ means, perhaps someone will have a deeper appreciation of what Christians believe God to be.

08/14/15

The Imprints of His Glory

“I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.” (My Utmost for His Highest, June 17th)

Before venturing onto the main highway of the Romans Road of Recovery, we should start our journey by looking at chapter one of Romans and what it says about general revelation, the certainty of God and how it can be applied to addiction. Since belief in Jesus Christ is optional for Twelve Step spirituality, there will be a divergence between the Romans Road and the path of recovery. Yet for an extended part of their journey, Christians along the Romans Road and sojourners along the path of recovery travel in the same direction. The theological explanation for how this is possible is found in Romans 1:20: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” God has made it possible for all people to have some general knowledge of who He is and what He requires of us to live life—including how to live a sober life.

Romans 1:20 sets this ‘general revelation’ of God within an oxymoron: the invisible attributes of God are clearly perceived in the created order. Commenting on this verse, John Murray said: “God has left the imprints of his glory upon his handiwork.” No one who truly looks at the created order around them can deny the reality of God. The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, seems to echo this thought: “He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us.” It is in this sense, and this sense only that the path of recovery embodied in the Twelve Steps and the fellowship of self-help groups exists. From a biblical perspective, it is the path to a life aligned with the general revelation of God in the created universe. It provides the way out of the active enslavement for all human beings to drugs and alcohol.

“The Way Out” was originally proposed as the title for the first edition of the Big Book. A search of the Library of Congress showed 25 previously published books titled “The Way Out,” so Alcoholics Anonymous was chosen instead.

Discovering your place in the natural order is a common theme in many non-Christian philosophies and religions. And this idea exists within the recovery literature. Bill Wilson wrote in the “We Agnostics” chapter of the Big Book: “As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe, underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction.” Within Came to Believe, a collection of the diversity of opinions on God as we understood Him, “I believe that the A.A. program is simply the will of God being put to practical, everyday use.” And from the AA Grapevine, the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, “I like to think that putting myself in harmony with what seems to be the spirit of the universe is in actuality ‘turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.’”

The Introduction to the “Blue Book” of Narcotics Anonymous, a fellowship for drug addicts adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous, states that: “We believe that as a fellowship, we have been guided by a Greater Consciousness, and are grateful for the direction that has enabled us to build upon a proven program of recovery.” In dedicating their book, the writers of the Blue Book said:

God grant us knowledge that we may write according to Your Divine precepts. Instill in us a sense of Your purpose. Make us servants of Your will and grant us a bond of selflessness, that this may truly be your work, not ours–in order that no addict, anywhere need die from the horrors of addiction.

As humans we straddle the border between health and sickness, good and evil, happiness and sadness. We are always trying to gain harmony in life; to preserve beauty and to find order again after balance has been disturbed. All these beliefs have similarities to Stoic philosophy, which was popular during the time when Paul wrote the book of Romans.

Stoicism was founded in the third century BC and remained popular though 529 AD. More than just a philosophical system, it was a way of life. The theologian Paul Tillich said it was “the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world.” Stoic philosophers said that happiness did not come from the accrual of goods or success, but from virtue. Echoing Twelve Step recovery, they emphasized self-control as the path out of destructive emotions. This self-control was established and maintained through meditation, training, and self-vigilance.

David Davidson said that in meditation the Stoics would visualize their futures. They would imagine the worst possible outcomes as present sufferings—not as distant, unlikely events. “They sought to realize that even the worst misfortunes can be survived and are not worth fearing.” In their training they practiced various physical disciplines from sexual abstinence and vigorous exercise to the avoidance of tempting foods. Their self-vigilance meant they monitored their thoughts and emotions, “seeking to avoid lust, greed, and ambition in favor of reason.” This contemplation, discipline and vigilance have similarities to both Twelve Step recovery and Christian thought.

Stoics applied the imagery of head and body to God and the universe respectively. The universe was the body, and God’s logos or reason was the mind or head that directed it. Stoic ‘salvation’ was then to seek to align your will with the inherent Reason or Logos of the universe. A person was happy when he did not want things to be other than the way they were. He was to strive to know the system of nature and then cultivate an acceptance of it. He was to search for and discover his place within the natural order; and then consciously seek out the things in life that suited his place in that order. It was best to see this life of service as the ‘natural’ life, a life aligned with the logos of the universe.

Although a Christian prayer a written by Reinhold Neibhur, The Serenity Prayer seems to capture this Stoic alignment with logos of the universe. Not surprisingly, the Serenity Prayer holds a special place in A.A. history and Twelve Step Recovery.

The correspondence noted here between Christianity, Stocism and Twelve Step recovery is a product of the general revelation spoken of in Romans 1:20. “God has left the imprints of his glory upon his handiwork.” Part of that handiwork lies within the system of meditation, self-vigilance and training embodied in the Twelve Steps as a way out of the thralldom of active addiction.

For Christians, there is a biblical concern in how we understand general revelation. The theologian G. C. Berkouwer cautioned that while Romans 1 was “good material” for the confession of general revelation, we must be careful of how we apply it. The knowledge of general revelation should never be isolated from the prevailing theme of Romans 1—the wrath of God. Berkouwer said: “The history of theology parades before us numerous attempts to isolate it from the context.” Perhaps the greatest objection of some Christians with Twelve Step recovery lies at this point. If by applying the general revelation of the Twelve Steps, an individual is able to stop the unmanageability in his or her life because of drug or alcohol abuse, they may be aligned with the Logos of the universe in a broad sense, but they will not have reckoned with the wrath of God for their unmanageable, ungodly behavior. They may be sober, but they are not saved from the just spiritual consequences of their unrighteousness.

08/7/15

The Romans Road of Recovery

The Church ceases to be a spiritual society when it is on the look-out for the development of its own organization. The rehabilitation of the human race on Jesus Christ’s plan means the realization of Jesus Christ in corporate life as well as in individual life. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, July 12)

I made a public profession of faith in Christ about 1 1/2 years after I first began working as a drug and alcohol counselor. So my personal faith journey has essentially paralleled my experiences as an addictions counselor. In the late 1980s when I read Pass It On, the story of the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and one of its co-founders, Bill Wilson, I was struck by the description of his encounter with the “great beyond.” Bill reported that when he cried out to God in his hospital room, he became aware of a Presence, which seemed like “a veritable sea of living spirit.” He thought it must be the great reality, the God of the Preachers. He felt that God had given him a glimpse of His absolute self. He never again doubted the existence of God. He also never drank again.

At first Bill wasn’t sure what to make of his spiritual experience. He thought he might have been hallucinating. A friend, who was then sober through his own participation in a Christian fellowship movement called the Oxford Group, didn’t know what to think of Bill’s experience. After asking the advice of others, the friend brought Bill a copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James. “James gave Bill the material he needed to understand what had just happened to him.” (Pass it On, pp. 120-125) I wondered as I read this, what would have been different if the friend had brought Bill a copy of the Bible instead. That was the beginning of my own journey along the intersecting paths of Scripture and Twelve Step spirituality.

Regularly in the Bible drunkenness is associated literally and metaphorically with the progressive unmanageability of sin and rebellion that ultimately leads to God’s judgment. Within a judgment oracle, Ezekiel (23:25) said of Judah, “you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.” Jeremiah (13:13) said that the Lord will “fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land: the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” Isaiah is especially fond of these associations with drunkenness. Addressing the irresponsibility of Israel’s leaders, he said: “‘Come,’ they say, ‘let me get wine; let us fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow will be like this day, great beyond measure.’” (Is 56:12) Within a judgment oracle against the earth, Isaiah (24:20) said, “The earth staggers like a drunken man; it sways like a hut; Òits transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again.” Egypt will stagger like a drunkard in all its deeds: “And there will be nothing for Egypt that head or tail, palm branch or reed, may do.” (Is 19:15).

Proverbs 23:29-35 so aptly pictures the downward spiral of sorrow, strife, and “wounds without cause” associated with drunkenness, that it sounds like one of the personal stories in the A.A. Big Book: “‘They struck me,’ you will say, ‘but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink.’” And so it is true that “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” (Pr 20:1) There is very little, if any, mention of mind-altering drugs in Scripture. But what is said of drunkenness can be readily applied to drug intoxication. It’s not wise to be led astray by drug intoxication either.

Despite the clear, obvious understanding in Scripture of the progressive unmanageability that comes from alcohol abuse, many members of the self-help groups of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.) remain ignorant of the similarities Twelve Step recovery has with what the Bible says about how to live life on life’s terms. Conversely, there are some within Christian circles who almost instinctively recoil from A.A. and N.A. as “unclean” because they permit and at times advocate for their members to formulate a god of their personal understanding; even if that god is a rock, a flagpole, or the fellowship of A.A. or N.A. itself.

Prejudicial wariness on both sides keeps the recovering alcoholic or addict at arms length from the “recovering” sinner who surrenders his or her life to the care of Jesus Christ. I have spent most of my adult life counseling within the Twelve Step recovery model and worshiping within Bible-believing churches, and I have long ago seen how each can learn from the other; how each has similar wisdom to offer us on living life if we are willing to listen.

Twelve Step recovery originated with A.A., and its cofounders readily acknowledged their debt to the Bible and its ministers. In an article published in the AA Grapevine, “After Twenty Five Years,” Bill Wilson said that Sam Shoemaker (an Episcopal minister) was responsible for ten of the Twelve Steps, “the basic ideas on which our recovery program is founded.”

Speaking in 1948 on where A.A. got the ideas for the Twelve Steps, Doctor Bob Smith, the cofounder of A.A. said, “We already had the basic ideas, though not in terse and tangible form. We got them, as I said, as a result of our study of the Good Book.” (“Dr. Bob’s Last Major Talk,” AA Grapevine). Within that “Good Book,” there is no better exposition on living the Christian life than Paul’s epistle to the Romans.

The book of Romans was the first well-developed theology of the Christian faith and it arguably remains the single most important work of Christian theology ever written. It has had an inestimable influence on the formation of Christian theology. One of the many examples of this lies within a selection of verses from the epistle referred to as “The Romans Road,” which is used to present the way to salvation in Jesus Christ. This “road” covers our need for salvation, God’s plan for salvation, how we obtain salvation, and the results of salvation. Typically, the verses addressing each section of the Romans Road for salvation include the following.

Our need for salvation: Romans 3:23: (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God).
God’s plan for salvation: Romans 6:23 (For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord).
How we obtain salvation: Romans 10:9, 10; (if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved).
The results of salvation: Romans 5:1 (Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ).

In a similar manner, we can look for how these verses and others in Romans apply to a lesser route, the path to recovery; the way out of an active addiction to drugs and alcohol. So in imitation of the Romans Road, we can search for the need for recovery, the plan for recovery, how to obtain recovery and the results of recovery.

Let me be clear from the beginning. I am not equating recovery from drug or alcohol addiction (or working the Twelve Steps) with salvation in Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, it is striking how rich the parallels are between God’s call to the Christian life in the book of Romans and the program for recovery embodied in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In addition to seeing how the Romans Road of salvation corresponds to the path of recovery in Romans, we can find insight into recovery concepts such as, “surrender,” the “we” of a recovery program (fellowship), walking the talk, and keeping spirituality simple through love, service and tolerance. So we will have to “step” off that Road periodically and walk along the side trails in Romans where these aspects of Twelve Step recovery crisscross Paul’s discussion of the Christian life.

C.S. Lewis famously commented in The Great Divorce that he did not think that all those who chose wrong spiritual roads would perish. But, he added, their rescue consisted in being put back on the right road. It is my hope that it in reading this series, you will discover how to get from the path of recovery to Augustine’s City of God, since the path of recovery veers off in another direction, away from the City of God. If you already walk along the Romans Road of Christian faith, I pray that by reading what follows, when anyone on the path of recovery asks you for directions to the City of God, you will be better equipped to help them find their way. Shall we begin our stroll along the Romans Road?

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally written. This article is “02,” the second one. Enjoy.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: Romans Road