Queries And Answers
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 ones 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 Gods 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 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.