Professionals

Addiction as Besetting Sin

by Franklin E. Payne, Jr., M.D., author of several books, is Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia, in Augusta, Georgia.

Addictive disorders and alcoholism cost $165 billion a year in the United States alone!1 The addict screams, "I can’t help myself! I’m addicted." In response, "experts"2 and society feel compassion with ever increasing programs for them.

However, I want to substitute "besetting sin" for "addiction." The primary problem is moral and spiritual,3 not medical, and cannot be addressed without that perspective.

What is Addiction?

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Confidentiality and the Christian Health Care Worker

The principle of confidentiality is necessary to protect information essential for intimate relationships. However, carefully timed and chosen speech used to breach a confidence may protect a neighbor’s life. Therefore the difficult choice of whether to remain “silent” in maintaining a confidence or to “speak” and in so doing justly decide the appropriate person, place and time of speech, demands the wisdom of Solomon.

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Doctrine & Ethics

Every movement that has ever competed for the loyalty of human beings has done so on the basis of a set of beliefs. Whether the movement is religious or political, philosophical or artistic, the same pattern emerges: A group of ideas, of beliefs, is affirmed to be in the first place true and in the second important. It is impossible to live life to its fullness and avoid encountering claims for our loyalty of one kind or another.

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Your Doctor is Not God

Once we are admittedly sick it is easy to set up the physician as god. Surrounded by his pills, surgical instruments, or other medical technology surely he has the power to make us well. Admittedly it is tempting for the physician to assume the role of deity. This is a false assumption.

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