The Secret of Addiction on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

Several weeks ago, Christians were concerned as they learned again of the fall of another pastor.

In this particular case, a influential pastor of a large megachurch was revealed to be engaging in an abuse of alcohol, as well as some other

problems, as reported by various outlets, and he was relieved of his responsibilities of

pastoral leadership at his church. These kinds of issues, when they happen, raise all sorts

of questions for Christians who want to learn the lessons of these kinds

of mistakes and sins on the part of leadership. But the issue that we're going to address today

on the podcast is the issue of addiction. This pastor again confessed in a written statement

to letting himself slip into an overuse of alcohol.

And that gets Christians thinking about addiction.

And so that's what we're going to talk about on the podcast this week, right, Amy?

Right.

So, Heath, I think the best way to start this conversation about addiction is just to ask the basic question.

What is addiction?

What is addiction is an important question to answer?

Because the word is not really a biblical term. That doesn't mean the idea is not in the Bible.

It just means that the language we use to describe the problem today in our contemporary culture is a little bit

different than what God uses to describe the problem in his word. I think one way to capture a

biblical reality of addiction is the biblical image of slavery. In the Bible throughout the pages, there is this

understanding of slavery that human beings can be enslaved to sin. Now, that concept of slavery

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