I’m currently reading a book in which an adult woman with bipolar disorder who also has alcohol use disorder (more commonly known as alcoholism) has cirrhosis of the liver. Her doctor informs her that if she would like to live, she will need to make lifestyle changes. Moreover, so long as she is an active drinker, he will be unable to place her on the transplant list, if it comes to that.
The calm, matter of fact way in which the doctor delivered this news reminded me of the many times over the course of Deuteronomy in which God begs us to make choices “so that you may live.”
And this made me realize something.
If you believe on a deep, deep level that God designed you…
then you also believe that God understands the operating system of the creature He designed.
What this means is that if God tells you NOT to do something, He tells you not to do it because it truly is something that will not be good for you. It could not be good for you in a physical way, or it could not be good for you in a spiritual way. We only have surface level vision, but if we were able to X-ray our bodies and see into our souls, we might see the layers of dirt and dust we’ve accumulated because of our choices.
But here’s what this also means- every being that is engaging in a maladaptive choice is doing so because it is doing something for them. The alcoholic who cannot stop drinking is still gaining something by drinking alcohol. Maybe it relaxes them, or is a form of self-medicating, but they cannot abide the loss of it. The person with bipolar disorder who refuses to take their medicine may not want to go through life feeling numb and dulled. There is a reason people make what some of us would call “wrong choices.”
This means that when we sin, it is doing something for us.
Now, sometimes that’s obvious. If I murder someone I am very angry at, murdering them enables me to eliminate them as a problem. I will never have to deal with them again. This obviously does something for me in a practical way.
And if I engage in a forbidden relationship (say I’m a kohen who marries a convert), this relationship also does something for me. I believe this is the person who is my soulmate, whom I’m meant to be with, whom I love. Of course I want to be with them. I can even twist everything to say that marrying this person will lift me up and make it so that I can serve God better. It will seem true to me. I will believe it.
But sometimes the benefit is less obvious. And people become frustrated. They don’t understand why someone would choose to live in a way that they find so…wrong.
Once you understand sin actually does something for a person, you no longer find it threatening. Because you recognize everyone committing a sin does so because they believe, however erroneously, that it is helping them even though in truth it may be destroying them.
You don’t need to be angry and you don’t need to be threatened. You just need to recognize that you see something the person currently does not see.
You can, of course, try to wake the person up to witness the reality you see. This is unlikely to work. It is unlikely that your efforts alone will convince someone who is an alcoholic to leave alcohol behind and go to rehab. They have to want to do it. They have to want to make the change. They have to realize alcohol is no longer serving them.
So what can you do?
You can be a loving presence. An open door. Someone who welcomes humans. Always. Unconditionally. And not because you’re sly, secretly waiting for them to leave behind everything they’ve known and embrace the reality that has worked for you. I think that approach is distasteful and manipulative.
You should be a loving presence because you truly see the person they are, the individual created b’tzelem Elokim. An alcoholic is a person who is abusing alcohol. They are more than their worst choices. The same applies to anyone who has committed any sin.
You don’t need to approve people’s choices. You never have to approve anyone’s choices. To understand another person isn’t to condone the decisions they make or the way they choose to live.
You can earnestly desire what is good for that person. And the person may believe they have found what is good for them while living in a way that goes completely against what their Creator wills for them. This makes sense. Many people who choose a coping mechanism that is inherently wrong believe their coping mechanism is actually right.
So if you were going to pray, I think the prayer should be
not that the person wakes up and embraces the reality of the way you think they should live
but rather, that the person ends up doing what is ultimately good for them and for their soul.
Only God can judge them because only God knows the life they have led and the steps they have walked that have led them to where they are today.
If we deeply desire what is good for other people,
if we wish to treat others the way we would want to be treated,
if we are open to the different, complicated paths that each individual walks,
then we would always see the person first, and not their sin. Or their addiction. Or their illness.
We would always see the person first.
The person who was created in the image of God.
And when we pray, we would say,
“God, may you bless him/her to live in a way that is the absolute best for them- physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Give them healing, give them hope, and give them the strength to make the choices that ultimately help them rather than hurt them. And God, may they come to experience Your presence as kind and light-filled rather than painful and abrasive. May they live their way into a time where You are the solution rather than the problem.”
I loved this! Two thoughts:
(1) If you're not familiar with IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy, it is based on exactly the paradigm you write about here - even (and especially) with regards to things like alcoholism. Worth looking into if you're interested. The best book on it is "No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model" by Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS.
(2) Chazal advise us: וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְנֶגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ. People focus a lot on the הפסד עבירה, but it's equally important to focus on the שכר עבירה. If we don't bother to understand what is rewarding about the עבירות we are drawn to do - whether rewarding in actually or just in our minds - then I don't see how we can engage in substantive, lasting תשובה.