Substance Abuse: How Can I Help My Friends? / Israel Still a Nation?

Good morning! Vicki and I are in (Old) York, taking a break. I’m also here to meet a fellow apologist (one who presents evidences for the faith) here in the UK, David Hutchings. What I wasn’t counting on doing was slipping on the ice Sunday morning!

Perhaps times are tough. Or the unexpected takes place. Accidents happen, and it’s not our fault. Maybe our best intentions have been derailed. Don’t we all relate? I sure do! We may be tempted to overthink it, or to get bogged down in self-recrimination. Jeremiah 8:4 comes to mind: “… When people fall down, do they not get up?…” Hardship is part of life, and it’s the only way to build resilience. So keep going! Live in the peace of Christ (John 14:27), and we can roll with it. He has overcome the world (John 16.33)!

The way is long, and sometimes hard, but we’re not alone. We benefit from the blessings of Christian fellowship, and the greatest blessing of all, our loving Father in heaven, who has touched our lives through his Son Jesus Christ, and moves in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

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This afternoon Vicki are with the family of a physicist and physics teacher I met in October at the Christians in Science conference in Birmingham. David Hutchings is a fellow of Durham University (England), and a scientist with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. He’s also a writer, and gifted me one of his books (see below). I am always eager to learn new material—but equally interested in how new ideas are presented. (In this case David’s exposé of the false contradiction between science and religion, which one often hears on the lips of non-believers.) In April I will drive to Durham to meet another CiS / Faraday scientist, astrophysicist and apologist David Wilkinson.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE: HOW CAN I HELP MY FRIENDS?

Q: I have many friends who struggle with addiction/substance abuse issues, including alcohol, crack cocaine and methadone. Can you please direct me towards your [AIM] course content that focuses on counseling these kinds of people? —A.S.

A: Certainly this is an important topic, as drug abuse and the proliferation of "recreational drugs" is affecting more and more people in our society. Our Counseling & Psychology course introduces some of the issues, but little of the 15 hours is focused on addiction. The curriculum of AIM [the Athens Institute] is primarily biblical, not professional.

Mike Shapiro’s reply:

Counseling addicts is very nuanced and not an easy thing to learn! Getting trained as a professional addiction counselor takes lots of extra schooling (at least a master's degree), plus many hours of supervision and testing to obtain certification.

Instead, you might want to help your friends by providing support, rather than counseling them. Specifically, encourage them to seek treatment, then help them remain consistent in treatment (which is notoriously difficult for addicts), perhaps by reminding them of appointments, driving them to appointments, and visiting them regularly to help them be accountable.

Once again, if you want formal training in addiction counseling, I can help you get pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's best to find ways to simply provide social, emotional, and spiritual support.

Michael S. Shapiro, PhD
Child and Adult Neuropsychology
Director of Behavioral Medicine
Duke/Southern Regional Area Health Education Center

This article is also Q&A 1680.
[Also check out Al-Anon and Celebrate Recovery.]

IS ISRAEL STILL A NATION (JER 31:36)?

Q: Jeremiah 31:36 seems to support the notion that modern Israel is still a nation in God’s sight—and perhaps still in a covenant relationship with him. But this seems to conflict with the teaching of the New Testament and the early Christian writers. How should I understand this passage? – Douglas Jacoby

Yes, you read right. This was my own question, and something I’ve thought about deeply in the past few years. But for some reason things really came into focus a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned.

A: The best known “new covenant” passage in the Old Testament is Jer 31:31-34, which is quoted starting in Hebrews 8:8. (See also Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25; 2 Cor 3:6; also Heb 8:13; 9:15; 12:24.) It reads:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer 31:31-34).

But then comes the problematic continuation of this prophecy:

^“This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord Almighty is his name: Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will Israel ever cease being a nation before me” (Jer 31:35-36).

In O.T. times Israel was both a political nation and a community of faith. In our N.T. times, the church is a community of faith but definitely not a political entity. So, what kind of nation is referred to in this prophecy?

The apostle Paul, after reasoning in Galatians the Christians are not justified by the Law of Moses. When he speaks of “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), he is referring to the entire church, whether from a Gentile or a Jewish background. (Not all commentators agree.) Consider also Peter’s words, which are even less ambiguous:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Pet 2:9-10).

This is not a passage referring to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Peter is referring to all followers of Christ. We are “a holy nation.” Not a political body, but a spiritual “nation.” It follows then that political Israel / Palestine is not a nation in God’s sight—no longer a covenanted people. Not to say the Lord does not yearn for us to reach the members of all world religions. In this respect the modern Jews are certainly loved by God, even if they are no longer God’s nation.

For further consideration:

• Q&A 1499: Israel or Palestine? Being clear on terms.

• Messianic Judaism (book): Explores the question of to what extent Christians should observe Torah.

• Messianic Judaism audio—12 talks, with notes, on which the book was based.

This article is Q&A 1681. These should all also provide good preparation for Saturday’s webinar—the final item in today’s bulletin.

AN ALTERNATIVE VISION FOR ISRAEL & PALESTINE?
WEBINAR WITH AZIZ ABU SARAH — THIS SATURDAY!

• For 100s of previous newsletters, click here.

• For the audiovisual version of previous newsletters (YouTube, about 3 minutes), click here.