You can not understand the junction of faith and recovery without coming to grips with the deep-seated bias of many members of each group.
I got sober in the seventies. I came to Jesus in the born-again sense in the seventies. My Dad was a pastor of the conservative wing of a liberal denomination. I defined God as I chose. I loved AA. I could be spiritual without boundaries. It was the wild west of spiritual stuff. Early in my sobriety Star wars hit the scene. I loved it. It was spiritual and made some sense: good guys and bad guys. I was free to call the shots.
I chased a girl into a prayer meeting and got saved! I didn’t get the girl. A rodeo rider got the girl. But I got Jesus in a big way. and to my dad’s quiet horror, I got a severe case of bible-thumping pentecostal conservative practice. So I understand that world.
My dad was a liberal with a conservative bent. At the end of his life, he wrote a book about his theological journey, My Journey into the Trinity. I go back to it because I see my Dad’s dilemma. He struggled with orthodoxy and his liberal heart. I am my father’s son. I have a liberal heart living with a biblical reality, I am a bleeding-heart liberal. And I am a persuaded believer in the authentic authority of the bible to communicate God’s nature and opinion about us and our actions.
So as I call the balls and strikes as does an umpire I call by the rule book. But I will try to flesh out the human challenge of this struggle.
My first podcast in this series will be ‘when the heart hurts and destroys.’
I ran a sober house for 5 1/2 years. I came in contact with the parents of guys on the journey of addiction and efforts of recovery. I will talk about heartbreaking stories. The paradox of how caring kills and in the end breaks our hearts.
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