Is It Loving to Call Alcoholics Worthless Drunks?

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So part of what we're trying to do as a society is remove all the shameful elements of shameful behavior. But then the

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Bible doesn't really go that route. So I mean, you can look up the word worthless in the Bible and it shows up in 49 different verses.

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And you know, like a good example of this is like Proverbs 28, 19, whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

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All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is it loving to call alcoholics worthless drunks?

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It seems like, yeah, a lot of people, they really recoil at the idea of calling someone a drunk. And then if you add worthless to it, then that seems to be adding insult to injury or insult, insult to insult, insult to insult.

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Yeah. So, so part of it is, is there's two parts of this kind of question in general.

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And that is the question, what should you call the person who is mastered by alcohol? So that's part one. And then, you know, should you add colorful adjectives on it like worthless?

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That's just, that's another part of the discussion. But I think most people are predisposed to basically treat any kind of vice that a person's engaged in right now with sympathetic language in general.

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So we really don't have much of a category for, you know, speaking very harshly against people who are engaged in any of these things at all.

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And when we lean on this kind of quasi -medical, psychological, therapeutic language like alcoholism in general, like we lean on that kind of language even though it's, you know, it's not really very precise as to what we're even talking about.

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So we lean on the stuff and then, I mean, you can kind of imagine a scenario where an individual said, you know, you're at someone's funeral, you know, the dad's dead, you know, the guy who's been drunk his whole life, he's dead.

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But then, you know, you have the pastor, you have all of his kids just basically telling good stories about him and, you know, lionizing him essentially that, you know, he, you know, he suffered from alcoholism for years and years and years and finally got him, right?

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So, it got him, right? And then, you know, that's just their way of kind of not saying the obvious, right?

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That he was just a guy who - Pete Drank himself to death. Jared Drank himself to death, came home every few weeks, beat his wife, you know, yelled at the kids and all that.

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It's just their way of trying to still honor him somehow. But certainly, I think for a lot of people, they lean on that kind of, you know, quasi -medical sounding language, alcoholism kind of language as a way of getting them off the hook from having to actually deal with the nature of what's actually happening in these kind of scenarios.

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Pete Right, well, you know, and we've talked about this before, but isn't it the type of thing where, you know, as Christians, we can read the

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Bible and know that, you know, for someone who is addicted to alcohol, that's a morally negative category that they've put themselves in.

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But then, you know, people who have not subjugated themselves to God and his word, who are, you know, openly rebelling against him, what they're trying to do is they're essentially trying to explain the same kind of phenomenon minus the morality of it, right?

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So, they're trying to explain it as if there was no sort of like spiritual aspect to this in any way whatsoever.

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It must have like a physical explanation, which is why they go to the addiction thing.

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You know, hey, it's just your brain, your brain is telling, you know, your brain's telling you that you need this even though it's harmful for you, right?

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Is that right? Is that right? Jared Yeah, I mean, so when you think about this like word in general, alcoholism, it really is kind of a disputed word in general, meaning that,

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I mean, not even the psychologists agree that it's the best use of the word anymore. So, right now,

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I mean, the predominant DSM diagnosis for this is what's called alcohol use disorder, but that really isn't…

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Pete They actually call it a disorder? Jared Yeah, alcohol use disorder, right?

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So, but, you know, there isn't really broad definition, broad agreement on, you know, this definition or this word in general anymore.

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So, you know, but people still use it and it's still therapeutic kind of language.

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And I mean, functionally, it's doing the same thing as alcohol use disorder. It's basically just kind of defining a… what they're doing, whether you say alcohol use disorder, you say alcoholism, right?

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Whatever you're saying, what it's doing is it's putting the emphasis not on the behavior that the individual is engaged in, but it's putting… it's basically, it's a way of sheltering a person from, like, moral categories and moral thinking as what you've described.

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Pete Yeah, it's blame shifting. It's blame shifting. Jared Right, I mean, it's the same kind of thing that, you know, is happening with, like, a term like kleptomaniac, right?

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I mean, the Bible has a term for that. That's a thief. Pete Yeah. Jared Right? So, but the Bible has a term for, you know, an alcoholic.

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The term for an alcoholic is a drunk. That's what the term is. That's the biblical term. So, the Bible would describe an alcoholic as a drunk, right?

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Pete Sure. Jared That's in the same way that Bible would describe a thief as a thief. But then the issue is that if you use those terms, there's great hope that, like, let the thief no longer steal, but let him work with his hands so he may have something to give.

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Now, when you put it in this, like, therapeutic kind of language, like suffering from alcoholism or suffering from alcohol use disorder or whatever, when you put it in that kind of language, what ends up happening is you have this situation where this person feels like he's afflicted with this thing that's kind of like cancer, like this quasi -medical diagnosis.

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Like, he's afflicted by, right? So, then he's suffering from this thing. And that's the way that everyone talks about it.

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Like, they're suffering from alcoholism as if it's just this thing, right? Pete Yes, an outside thing that's affecting me that I have zero control over.

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Jared Right, right. Pete Other than whatever, you know, fake treatment someone gives me.

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Jared Right, yeah. So, I mean, the first rule of Alcoholics Anonymous is to say, you know, hey, I'm Tim, I'm an alcoholic or whatever, right?

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And so, like, that's the issue there, though, is that, like, that gives rise to the kind of movie where you can imagine the kind of movie where the guy's been like, quote unquote, sober for, you know, a few years, he goes to the hotel room, and, like, all of a sudden, he looks inside the mini fridge or whatever, and it's full of alcohol.

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And then he goes on a bender all night, right? Because he just can't, like, he's an alcoholic, that's who he is.

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Like, all he can do is just abstain, right? Or remove himself from it. Because the moment he sees it, like, the disease is just going to attack him, and it's going to get him, it's going to take him, right?

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And so, and that's just, you know, that's the way that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches people to think about these things.

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It's just, like, the way people, that's the common way people think about it is that, like, they're an alcoholic, they have some kind of genetic predisposition to alcoholism.

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You know, they just, like, this thing just grabs them and gets them, and they can't do anything about it. It's just a physical problem.

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And, you know, so in the best case scenario, what people do is they'll say, well, hey, isn't there something like addiction that can happen once you're chemically mastered to this substance?

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And it's like, yeah, but, yeah, sure, yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, you can get addicted to caffeine, too, right?

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Pete Yeah, you know, talking about the whole, like, hey, is it some sort of chemical thing?

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And maybe that's what, you know, hey, we can't put all the blame on the person, because, I mean, it's not like they're, you know, trying, it's not like they're consciously regulating all the chemicals in their body, right?

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And it's like, well, I mean, everything that you ever feel is a chemical reaction, you know, but the

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Bible doesn't make distinctions based off of chemical reactions in your brain.

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So, every time you get happy, that's a chemical reaction happening in your brain, right?

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Or every time, you know, like, when a child is born, the mother has, like, a ton of oxytocin dumped into, her brain dumps it into her body, essentially, to, you know, help her, like, essentially ignore all of the trauma that she faced in birthing the baby so that, you know, she loves the baby.

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And you see this, and, you know, in the hospital, if you've ever had kids, like, your wife is just, like,

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I mean, starstruck by the newborn baby that has been destroying her body for nine months.

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That's a chemical reaction, but then that doesn't mean that there's not moral and spiritual consequences for these things still, right?

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Jared Yeah, I mean, yeah. So, I think with any kind of, I mean, there's any number of things that you can get addicted to.

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There's any number of chemicals that you can put in your brain. I mean, like, you can get addicted to caffeine, you can get addicted to alcohol, and yeah,

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I mean, you know, if you get addicted, let's say you get addicted to caffeine, you drink caffeine for a certain period of time, like, high doses of caffeine, then you're not really going to be able to function to the same level while you're addicted to caffeine.

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You're going to get headaches, you're going to have blurred vision, you know, all that's going to happen, but then no one would describe that as, like, a caffeine -holic, right?

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Caffeine -a -holic or something, or caffeine whatever you want to call it. Pete Then just call you an enthusiast.

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Jared Yeah, so they word is a patch. Caffeine -a -holic, you know. No, but that's not even a word.

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I mean, no one's going to describe it in the language of addiction, right? So, I mean, in that way, I mean, most normal people aren't.

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Like, you know, maybe you can find a DSM category or whatever, but, like, the issue, though, is that you can turn from that.

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It's just the path is going to be a little bit more painful, right? So, you can dig yourself out of it and, you know,

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I mean, I've dug myself out of caffeine addiction multiple times, right? To where I'm totally addicted to caffeine.

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You know, I go through a period of intense suffering for a few days, and then I move on, right? So, I mean, obviously, like, you can, like, there are chemical dependencies on certain things, and that's fine.

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But, like, the issue is you don't want to, like, you want to put the emphasis on the behavior because the behavior can change, right?

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Despite how bad you feel, how bad it feels to climb out of it, you can change your behavior, and that's where the Bible puts the emphasis on.

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It doesn't identify you with a particular vice that you're performing. So, part of the question is just, you know, trying to answer the question as it relates to what's the most helpful way to view this?

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And, I mean, the Bible, obviously, describes this as drunk. I mean, that's what the Bible says, like, you're a drunk. Pete Yeah, yeah.

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Jared And so, it's obviously loving to use, like, the issue is it's obviously loving to use the language that the Bible would use there.

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And, like, we used to call, like, so, the other part of the question, though, is it's, like, talking about, like, a worthless drunk.

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And that feels like, you know, as you said, like, adding insult to injury, right? Pete Uh -huh. Jared Yeah, I mean, it feels like adding insult to injury.

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But the issue is that, like, that's how society used to view men who, instead of going to work, they just sat around all day drinking alcohol and then came home and, you know, or they went to work, you know, went out to the bars, came home, beat their wives.

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People would call them worthless drunks, like, particularly with the kind of guy who, like, stopped going to work and just gave himself over to vices.

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And so, I mean, and that feels very mean, but then, like, that was a form of, like, shame, you know? So, part of what we're trying to do as a society is remove all the shameful elements of shameful behavior.

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But then the Bible doesn't really go that route. So, I mean, you can look up the word worthless in the Bible and it shows up at 49 different verses.

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And, you know, like, a good example of this is, like, Proverbs 28, 19. Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

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And that's, like, worthless pursuits there is, like, getting drunk all the time. Pete Uh -huh.

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Jared Not working, getting drunk all the time. That's just what it's talking about. So, I mean, there are, like, in the Bible, worthless fellows are individuals who basically are unemployed young men who get into trouble, right?

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Pete Yeah. Jared And typically pursue, like, women or alcohol or vices and, you know, blow things up and everything else.

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So, I mean, like, these are just typical ways of speaking about certain behavioral patterns that are destructive.

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And we would do well to relearn how to talk about these things, basically. Pete Okay, fair enough.

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