A Sermon on Drug Addiction!
By Odell Sneeden Hathaway, III.
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A Sermon on Drug Addiction! May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my hart be always acceptable to you oh lord my strength and my redeemer. This is only the second sermon I have ever given. The 1st was on the Sunday after I graduated High School. My subject on that day was the difference between human love for each other and Gods love for us. How rejection by God is simply not a possibility like it is in human relationships. That no matter what God will always love us whether we love him back or not. I was thinking about what to say today and I realized that I could give the shortest sermon in history (all though many have used it before me), DON’T. That is truly the main thrust of my argument to day. Don’t use drugs. No one sitting here and no one taking breath any where on this planet is smart enough to understand what drugs will do. Or how they can with out warning take control of a human life and end it. Yoda from Star Wars said “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny” and more then anything else in life this is true with drugs. When I met my wife she had been clean for several years. While we were married she earned a 1 year coin from AA, 2 6 month coins, and I have no idea how many 3 month, 1 month and 1 day coins but she was never able to run far enough away to escape the humiliating death that her addiction had in store. The biggest problem that drug addicts have is that they start so young. My wife started using drugs in Jr High. That was the moment when she had a choice but she was too young to make that decision. To understand that what she was about to do would affect her for the rest of her life and end it. I have sat in many AA meetings listening to men in there 80’s who have 20 years clean talking about the daily struggle to stay off of drugs. Do not get me wrong I believe in forgiveness and I can for give the person who cuts off there own arm. But I can’t shake there hand. That is the kind of choice that is being made with drugs risk cutting off your own arm. To risk that 20 years form now a monster deep in side of you will awaken and take control of your life. That you two will end up stealing and turning tricks to support a habit. Today addiction has become such a part of daily life that we accept it. Our last 2 presidents have been addicts. In different stages of recovery addicted to different things. People like me fall in love with and marry recovering addicts with out understanding that there is NO SUCH THING as a recovered addict and that when it comes to trusting them you simply can’t. That is a very hard thing to say but it is one of the hardest lessons I had to learn. I learned that as far as my wife was concerned I could trust her. I could trust her addiction to take control that she would lie to me, steal from us, hurt me. I had to make a choice and my choice was one of the hardest that can be made, to love her anyways. I had to trust that I was strong enough to take what ever she dished out. The possibility that she might bring and did bring VD to our bed. That she might bankrupt us. That I might have to deal with her killing someone else (while driving). Or that I might and did have to deal with finding her face down in Kitty litter Dead. That is what it is to trust and addict. I loved my wife dearly and I stood by her through times that most people would have run from. But it did not save her body. I hope I helped to save her soul though. The one lesson that AA has to teach is that we all need to turn our lives over to the control of God what ever we conceive him to be. That as I said all those years ago God is the one place where we can be certain not to be rejected and always find love. It is just so sad that we live in a society where enlarging the ego has become the most important thing and were honesty is ridiculed instead of honored. Where people put so much faith in experts that they have lost touch with each other. I will never forget the day my wife was committed to the psyche hospital and the judge thanked me for coming to the hearing. It was so unusual for someone to care about a person who was being committed that the judge wanted to thank me. Jesus teaches us that the 2nd law is to love your neighbor as your self. But to day many think it is love yourself and forget your neighbor even if that neighbor is the person, who brought you up, or the one you named or the one who shares your bed. That there is always some one better then you to take care of them. All you need do is sometimes give this expert some money and your responsibilities are done. I wish I could tell you that I have some answers to the problem of drug addiction but I do not apart from the naive sounding DON’T. The problem is of course not in the drugs but in our selves. We have become so astringed that People like my Beautiful Cutieful think that love can be found in a pipe. The only real answer is to go back 2000 years and learn what Jesus has been the last 2000 years trying to teach us. To love. In the name of god the Father, Son and Holly Ghost Amen. |
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