AA, Psychiatry, Psychology -- All Get an F

Here is the crux of the matter for people who are in bondage to substances.

They feel guilty and ashamed. Guilt and shame are two very powerful forces in this world. Sadly, they drive too much of our learning and our growth in this life.

Shame and guilt focus us on ourselves. The problem for all of us is "self", but more specifically, this "self" that is saddled with shame and sin. The "sin conscience" which indicts us often as orphans, unwanted, unacceptable in a fallen world.

The last thing that people in bondage to shame need is a program which tells them that they are sick alcoholics who are not normal people, but are like men who have "lost their legs."

Since when do we ever set people free from sin and shame by attaching the whole mess to people in order to define them as such? What a travesty!

What's worse, many AA programs connect with professionals -- psychologists, psychiatrists, and even social workers -- who cannot do anything about the guilt and the shame which men and women have endured in their lives, or the shame of abusing alcohol and committing crimes are hurting loved ones afterwards.

No wonder people who abuse substances never break free. They have done so much wrong in part because they abuse alcohol or some other drug, then they try harder to break free, only to end up in greater bondage. The answer to condemnation is righteousness, not working "Twelve Steps".

No matter what I do, what I have done cannot be undone by anything that I say, think, or do. I can sit in a professional's office and talk about my feelings, talk about my shame, my fears, but all of that talk cannot get me to escape. In every person's mind, especially for the wrongs which we have done in the past which has caused great harm to others, the guilt and condemnation, our conscience, will not be satisfied. Something inside of us demands: "Someone has to pay!"

Only the blood of Jesus Christ provides us the peace and the appeasement of our conscience, for in dying for all the sins of the world, Jesus Christ solved the "sin and death" problem which afflicts every human being.

One huge problem with AA, and all other forms of secular "counseling" is that fixing a man's thinking is simply not enough. Telling a person that he or she is OK just does not do enough for a man. To tell someone that his feelings are OK, that everything in his life is bad because of his bad upbringing, simply does not supply a man with life and that more abundantly.

We need more than a sense of well-being. We need life, and that more abundantly. We need righteousness and grace supplied to us in full measure, and this life is offered in full through Jesus Christ, whose death paid the sin debt of every man in full forever!