Psychiatry, Professionals Cannot Fix the Flesh

I am learning now more than ever that the pathway to peace is a Person, not a process. Life itself, not a program of living.

Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. -- Men and women on this earth, we are dead in our trespasses.

AA insists on seeing alcohol as the symptom of living problems. Frankly, the biggest problem that we have is that we are dead, spiritually dead, cut off from the eternal loving relationship of God in us.

All the counseling, social work, psychiatry, and therapy cannot set us free from ourselves. In fact, all of the talking and crying and sharing which goes on in AA meetings and in counseling offices exacerbates the very problem which they claim to have the answer.

We do not need to make ourselves better, we need a new live, a new person. This person must provide for us the eternal sense of acceptance that man longs before, but can never find in himself, in others, or in a world which would just as soon walk over us as walk with us, or let us walk in this world.

AA causes people to look at themselves even more. When we see ourselves, we go blind, but not because we cannot see ourselves, but rather because we do not want to see ourselves. Who can blame us, I say.

We just love ourselves too much. For this reason, we engage in every perversion or distraction or distortion of the truth. AA is not the truth, but just one of many lies based on the pernicious ultimate of "I can live this life if I do certain things." Paul the apostle slams such hopeful and vain arrogance:

"14For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." (Romans 7: 14-20)

This classic litany of "I, I, I" pops up time and again in the meetings and on the psychiatrist's couch. This fascination with ourselves is precisely the problem, a scourge to any recovery, any release from the hurt and pain in our lives.

Paul shouts the answer:

"24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Romans 7: 24-26)

We are not reborn when we take Twelve Steps. We are reborn when we receive the Life of Christ Jesus by grace through faith in His Finished Work on the Cross.

We cannot ever hope of fixing our flesh, our feelings, or remaking the facts of our past to fit in with the proper present or the feigned future that we wish. Let us rest and receive His righteousness and life, and He will take us to places we have never dreamed of, grant us beyond what we can ask or think (Ephesians 3: 20)