This is part one of what I hope will be a two-part reflection on the efforts the United Church of God is making to increase its focused education efforts with regards to those who are struggling with the aftereffects of addiction and abuse in their lives.  As one of those people, it is a matter about which I am very passionate and have a direct personal stake in, not only for my own personal sake but for those others who suffer in (comparable) silence.

When we read the books of First and Second Corinthians, our first instinct is usually to chide the brethren of that immoral Greek city (similar in reputation to modern cities like Amsterdam, Los Angeles, or Tampa) for their worldly and carnal natures and to feel a bit better about our own superiority to these carnal, immature, schismatic brethren.  Nonetheless, there are a lot of areas in which the much-maligned brethren of Corinth could teach us a few things about how to use our personal narratives, without the fear of stigma from our brethren, to proclaim the Gospel of salvation and healing to a sick world.  Let us examine how today.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 gives one of the most extensive lists of sin in the Bible as well as the cure of that sin in the lives of believers.  It reads as follows:  “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived.  Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor catamites, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”

Let us stop to examine what this means.  First of all, those who practice sins of a wide variety in their lives will not enter God’s kingdom.  The Bible is very clear that unrepented sin of any kind will prevent one from obtaining eternal life.  While we as human beings might have certain sins we wink at or excuse because we struggle against them, but have other sins that we consider particularly “unnatural,” God Himself considers all sin to be a violation of His order, and all sin to be unnatural and worthy of death.  We must see sin as God does, and not excuse our own while condemning the sins of others.  Each society and age has its own “pet” sins that are rampant in society while others are seen as heinous and entirely without excuse, but it is God’s standard and not our own personal or our own society’s standard that matters in the end.

Let us further note that the members of Corinth had not “qualified” for their membership in the body of Christ out of any great virtue of their own.  Some of them were former homosexuals, some of them were former thieves, former fornicators, former idolaters, former adulterers, former revilers and extortioners.  The same is true of people in God’s church today, as almost all of us in this day and age have engaged in at least one (if not more than one) of these activities in our life, and many of us have common struggles against at least some of these sins that would, if not repented of, keep us out of God’s kingdom.  The brethren of Corinth, in other words, were not people who would have been seen as saintly and pious, but were honest strugglers against sin.

What was the result of their struggle?  Paul says that despite the sins that they struggled against, some of which we would find in our age loathsome and unnatural, and would stigmatize people for admitting, such as homosexuality and addictions (like alcoholism), these brethren were washed, sanctified, and justified.  They were cleansed of their sins by the blood of Jesus Christ.  They were set apart and made holy by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit within them, and they were justified by being granted the promise of eternal life.  These people who we might look down upon, or might refuse to sit next to at a pot luck at church because we were afraid that childhood sexual abuse or alcoholism or homosexuality might be contagious, were considered by God to be a part of His own family.

Who are we to condemn those whom God has justifed?  Who are we to taunt others with sins long forgiven and forgotten by God Himself, and with struggles that God Himself allowed [1] so that His character could be developed within them?  Do we want to answer to God in judgment for taking the place of Satan the accuser in the abuse of our fellow brethren?  I don’t.  And yet we do this sort of thing often, to our shame.  We consider ourselves nobler, wiser, mightier, more righteous, than the Corinthians but we fail even to meet their standard of righteousness because at least they could honor the struggles of their fellow brethren against their sinful society while we remain unreflective about our own equal sins and struggles.

Why does this matter to the proclamation of the Gospel?  We live in a very sick world.  According to Diane Langberg, an expert in Christian counseling for survivors of sexual abuse, the following is true:  “estimates suggest that by age eighteen, one in four women and one in six men will have experienced some form of sexual abuse.  Given the tremendous secrecy that still surrounds the subject of sexual abuse, it is certainly likely that such abuse is much more common than is reported [2].”

Think of the staggering numbers–some 20% of all people are the survivors of sexual abuse by the time they reach adulthood, and yet we are afraid to talk about it because it is impolite to talk about it, and yet that numbers over a billion people around the world who are struggling with the same life or death struggle against despair, shame, grief, overwhelming sadness and anger, depression, homosexual longings, and other related problems (including substance abuse) that often result from such a violation of dignity and such a grievous assault.

The numbers on alcoholism are no less astonishing.  Consider some of these grim statistics for alcoholism:  more than half of all adults (myself included) have a family history of alcoholism or problem drinking, one third of all suicides (including that of an uncle of mine), and more than one half of all homicides and incidents of domestic violence (including some within my own family) are alcohol related, one half of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related, and on and on [3].

Given these harrowing statistics, let us examine that “focused” education efforts, especially if they are directed towards preaching the gospel to those who might wish to be cleaned, redeemed, justified, and saved but might not think themselves qualified to ask God for repentance, or might feel themselves too loathsome and too despicable to be numbered among the children of God.  It is such people who are in a struggle against the satanic forces of despair that are the most precious to reach, so that they know the truth of the redemptive power of God to wipe away the effects of generation after generation of sin on the world and on our lives, so that the weaknesses may become strengths.  We must do our part to make sure that the broken and dishonored jars of clay which we inhabit can become precious and fine china in the hands of the master potter.

Let us not forget that it was to the Corinthians, these same brethren who struggled against the effects of so many sins that we struggle with today as a society and as a church, of whom it was said, “for you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.  But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God–and righteousness and sanctification and redemption–that, as it is written, “He who glories, let Him glory in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, quoting as well Jeremiah 9:24).

Cannot the same thing be said about us?  Who is weaker than someone struggling against the grips of an addiction like alcohol or drugs or pornography?  Who is more base than someone struggling against homosexuality?  Who is more despised than the survivor of sexual abuse whose very presence makes the respectable and upright people uncomfortable with his (or her) plaintive and insistent questioning of the workings of divine providence?  And yet God has chosen us to put to shame those who are wise or mighty in their own sight, not because we are anything worth glorying about, but because the working of God within us puts to shame those who cannot see themselves for who they are and who are too proud to submit to God and to welcome into their hearts His children, whom they despise.

And so, let us not forget that to a world that struggles with the effects of thousands of years of human depravity, we offer hope of restoration of peace and innocence, of a sound mind and a body and heart healed of its scars, of a soul wracked by guilt and shame that will be restored to joy and wholeness.  Why not offer such an opportunity to the world so that those whom God calls may enter a loving family which desires to see them whole and well and knows the hard road that they have walked?

It is therefore my hope that the focused education efforts of the United Church of God will serve as part of our preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to a world that really needs the redemption, cleansing, and sanctification provided by our Heavenly Father and our Elder Brother.  Oh, if we only had the hearts to be welcoming to such wounded souls seeking for healing, such as so many of us are ourselves.  Perhaps then we might show the sort of love and care for one another that was to be a sign of the true Church of God (John 13:35).  Perhaps we may yet show such love for our fellow strugglers as God has shown to us, and so show ourselves to be worthy of our calling as firstfruits, qualified to be kings and priests in His Kingdom as a result of our compassion for those who have suffered like ourselves.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/all-that-heaven-allows/

[2] Diane Mandt Langberg, Ph.D, On the Threshold of Hope:  Opening the door to healing for survivors of sexual abuse, (Carol Stream, IL:  Tyndale House Publishers, 1999), 44.

[3] Merna Leisure-Eppick, “Alcoholism–Intervention, Treatment and Recovery” (presentation, Winter Family Weekend, Louisville, KY, December 24-28, 2010).