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 Bro.
Turner:
What
is the moral responsibility of the “sick” alcoholic,
homosexual, or the like?
Reply:
God
must answer, with respect to the heart — and He alone knows
the true “ability” by which to measure one’s
responsibility; but I find no scriptural justification for the
current use of “sick” to excuse sin.
Social
science studies human behavior and seeks to explain it in purely
social cause-effect terms. Its morals are purely social mores
— most of its “authorities” reject God. And some Ph. D.
preachers have rejected God’s word to favor such conclusions.
Freud
and his followers did not make human conduct, they only sought
to analyze the mind back of the act. It seems the Freudian
philosophy has fathered a new breed of rationalists, whose
morals are lowered, and who pragmatically reason that the end
justifies any workable means. But even these would agree that
social misfits, with frustrations, broken homes and blighted “psyche”
existed long before our day. For example, did the woman taken in
adultery (Jn. 8:) have no physio-psycho problems that my have
contributed to her profligacy? Who can doubt it? Yet Jesus dealt
with her as a sinner, and his compassionate understanding
did not change this fact.
If
history is even partially correct, the Corinthians engaged in
forms of erotica that equaled or surpassed our most depraved
society. Did they have no feelings of
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insecurity, no loneliness, no
frustrated childhoods, no unfulfilled mother-love to propel them
into such searchings for peace? They did, or the whole
philosophy of psychology breaks down.
Were
they sick products of a sick society? I will not deny it. But
God says they were “unrighteous,” and the remedy for their
condition was to be washed, sanctified, and justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor. 6:
9-11)
We
are born into a world cursed by sin — its influence is all
about us. It enters our homes, affects us physically and
emotionally. Some may be born so “sick” mentally or
otherwise as to be incomplete “souls”, but we have no right
to lower morals to fit such cases. God establishes standards of
“sound doctrine” and it does not accept whoremongers and
homosexuals. (1 Tim. 1: 9-11) God judges ability.
God
warns that we may become bond- servants (slaves) of sin (Jn.
8:34) by “yielding” to sin. (Rom. 6:16-18) When we yield
to fleshly desires, again and again, we may weaken our
resistance and become “sick unto death” but we can not
escape our moral responsibility before God for allowing such a
thing to happen.
The
antidote — or better, the preventive medicine —is to
“retain God” in our hearts. Without this restraining
influence we become victims of our own appetites, we burn in our
own acid. (Rom. 1: 28-f) There is no substitute for God now, nor
in the non- Freudian world to come.
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