Though it may be well stated that the title of this reflection sounds like the start of a one-liner, we assure you that that is not the case. Though perhaps, it may be more entertaining to say that the only difference between an alcoholic and a drunkard is that one is on the way to the liquor cabinet, and the other is already passed out on the couch.
However, that is not at all the kind of difference we have in mind. For this subject, we must start with the disease model of addiction. Now, being untrained in the fields of psychology, biology and such other disciplines, this author will try to step lightly, as to not make a fool of himself. A straightforward definition of the disease model of addiction would be this: addiction is best described as a kind of illness, and one with biological, neurological, genetic or environmental sources of origin. To put it even more simply, you could say addiction is a disease that has happened to you, and is now part of who you are.
The last phrase there is very important. Popular approaches to overcoming addictions in today’s culture, such as that of Alcoholics Anonymous, treat the addiction as essential. It is not something that you did, it is not something that merely happened to you, it is who you are. You are not a person struggling with the vices of wine and weed, you are an alcoholic, you are an addict.
This author has firsthand experience with the disaster that occurs when someone essentialises a flaw or fault of their own. A young man in Christian circles became enamoured with the ‘Five Love Languages’, and upon discovering that Physical Touch was his primary love language, insisted that there was nothing he could (or should) do to dial back his displays of physical affection (though those of us witnessing would not have described this as affection, but perhaps lust or insecurity) to his girlfriend at the time.
It is the same as having a friend who is ‘the late friend’. If that is who they are, and if you reinforce that by telling them that that is who they are, why would you expect them to behave otherwise? Now, to the reader who has been scarred by the excesses and imbalances of ‘Word of Faith’ or ‘name it and claim it’ theology, please understand that we are not making the assertions that wolves like Osteen, Hinn or Copeland have made. However, it is common sense that if you only ever tell yourself that you never take opportunities or that you just can’t organise yourself, that you are already lowering the bar in your own mind for what outcomes you expect you can achieve.
Phew. Did we get through that without raising the hackles of the first year Psych students, the love-languages devotees and the AA acolytes? We will have to wait and see.
So, perhaps the language and conceptual background of the term ‘alcoholic’ leaves much to be desired, but what’s the big deal? Aren’t these two words basically the same? Isn’t this like arguing between Thy and Your? Well, no. It’s actually much more like the difference between ‘ethnic vainglory’ and ‘racism’, but we will save that for another day. Dearest reader, the main point that we have been angling on now for seven paragraphs, like a Great White Shark circling an unsuspecting beach-goer in the Aussie summer, is that the difference between the terms ‘drunkard’ and ‘alcoholic’ is that one of them is biblical, and the other one is ‘alcoholic’.
If there are pearls that need clutching, or accusations of pharisaism and legalism that are on standby, this is their cue. Take a breath. If you conduct a simple word search in the Scriptures for the term ‘drunkard’, you will see more than enough data to know (a) what behaviours the term is describing, (b) whether or not these are acceptable behaviours and (c) what the likely outcomes are for a person who meets this description. Calling someone a drunkard is a rebuke and an accusation, and so should it be. It is a word that ascribes fault on the part of the one drinking in excess, and shames them in due course. This is how it ought to be. Shame is not only an appropriate feature of any society, it is an inescapable feature of any society. It is not whether, but which. If you don’t believe this claim, try being a proponent of Young Earth cosmology without apology or qualification in an academic or education setting and see the response. Try speaking about how motherhood is perhaps the most glorious and ineffable calling of women to a group of professionals of both sexes, and see their response. Shame is one of the tools that every society and community uses to police its ranks. In fact, it is being used on you, and that is why you will of necessity find yourself policing your own thoughts or actions from time to time: “It’s not that I really agree with them, but we’ll never manage to be friends if I don’t follow the current rules about preferred names, so I go along with it for the sake of remaining friends. After all, someone needs to witness to them.” Alas, such an attitude witnesses first and foremost to one reality: evangelicals today care far too much for the world’s approval, and are prepared to assume on the charity and longsuffering of their Lord as if it were a light thing. In an effort to stay ‘relevant’ for the sake of the gospel, such approaches only present a gospel that loosely reflects a water balloon. It fits into any other cultural crevice it needs to, and if you coax it just right, and disappears into a shrivelled and damp puddle if approached with so much as a jagged fingernail.
So back to shaming drunkards. The reality that all the writers of Scripture showed us so consistently is that a person may be born into bondage to sin, but their hearty attempts to add more padlocks and chains to their sad state shows that the bondage is one they love, and one they will pursue forever unless Someone does something. But more on that at the end…
All sins committed by women are choices, all the iniquity of men is voluntary. (That is the same statement twice, though in our culture, accusing the women first and the men second is a grave infraction of the social laws).
So, let’s see how far we’ve come. If indeed these tangents are burning to the ground, it may be past time to get to the point.
The reality is that we ought to use biblical language, because we do not get to define the words with which we build our sentences. They are bricks, some made less scrupulously than others, some of made of unseemly mixtures of sand and pebbles, yet some others of good clay, fired thoroughly, and exhibiting that wonderful red hue that says ‘this brick would make the kind of house that a Big Bad Wolf could not huff and puff and blow down’. We ought to use biblical language because the Bible has done an excellent job of defining for us a very broad palette of words that should cover us for many and sundry purposes, whilst our society has also embarked on the mission of creating its own words, and they’re currently stuck with figuring out what ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and ‘baby’ refer to, so it is fair to say that they don’t have a great track record.
Why would you choose words from the same people who define racism as prejudice + power, or who put that immaterial and all-corruption qualifier ‘your’ before ‘truth’, rendering the latter utterly meaningless? You would not try to redeem ‘hate crimes’ into being some kind of culturally engaging way to talk about evangelism, and so esteemed reader, especially if you are trusting in Christ, we exhort you to cast aside the worthless double-speak forged by the enemies of the cross. Are we to believe that you would run into battle with rusted weapons and cardboard armour? Are we to take your word that you would write an important job application or resume in Comic Sans, with vocabulary sourced primary from the sexually explicit corners of the Urban Dictionary?
We are well aware that it may seem we labour this point. However, it is crucial. You will not see why it is crucial until you have lost, or until having watched another lose, you choose to take heed. You cannot imagine how important language is. You are letting other people reformat your thoughts.A person who has become fluent in the categories of ‘privilege’ and ‘power-politics’ and ‘racial justice’ is a person who has torn semi-trailer sized holes in the fences between their paddocks and then scowled with naive dismay as their livestock abscond for a frolic through the other fields, trampling a harvest’s worth of thus and such. Oh my, haven’t these analogies gotten out of hand?
So, be it resolved that words have meanings, and that those meanings do not change fast, and certainly do not change just because you say they do. You will find some more novel examples of this if you have the distinct pleasure (as this author has had now for a number of years) of sustaining cross-cultural discussion where you use the same words as your interlocutor, but when those same words come from her mouth they mysteriously mean something else altogether. Something about the scandal of wearing asserts thongs to a BBQ…
So it is the case, as we have mentioned now several times over, that Christ is the Lord of the Dictionary. As such, if you are trusting in Christ, you do not get to exercise autonomy over your choice of words. No, that is yet another domain encapsulated by the ‘all things’ that are being put into submission under the Son, that he might be over all. It is Christ’s lordship over our tongues that prevents us from calling ‘adultery’ an ‘open relationship’, regardless of how winsome our adulterous friends might find it, and regardless of how many nuance-points we might win with those Christians who are Christian in name only, and are only a few years away from ‘contextualising’ or ‘decolonising’ or ‘deconstructing’ their faith.
So, the reality is drunkard, not alcoholic. It is effeminate, not ‘LGBT allies’. It is apostasy, not deconstruction, and it is eunuch, not transwoman.
This, this is what all of these words have been leading up to. This author will not mince his words for the sake of pulling punches or making it go down easier. True deconstruction is apostasy. If someone’s deconstruction leads them to a more biblical, historical, presentation of the Gospel, what they are describing is not deconstruction, but sanctification. Words like ‘exvangelical’ make for useful shorthand, and quickly refer to a particular movement and socio-historical context, but at the end of the day, a spade is a spade, and those who have departed from among us have done so to show that they were never of us. If you bristle at that, at least have the temerity to learn that those words are Scripture.
So, let me wrap this section up with an alternative. Far be it from us to cut off a word that seems to be building a head of steam and not offer a positive and truthful alternative. If you, dear Christian, are in the process of carefully inspecting the beliefs you were raised in, and doing the hard work of reading the Bible to see if those beliefs have any substance, because you want to honour God and his word, then you are growing, reforming (not in the sense of identifying necessarily with Calvin, but in the plain sense of going back to the roots), refining, reassessing, or even being a Berean about your faith. These are positive terms, and not ones filled with the slimy excesses of Derrida and Foucault.
It is a shame that culture has gone so deep that the ordinary task of comparing what you believe against God’s authoritative revelation is so unforseen that it has caused cultural upheaval. Let’s support Christians who want to refine their doctrine for the sake of fidelity and orthodoxy, but let’s call a spade a spade, and not give apostasy a new name.
Distilled Orthopraxy 