Thursday, March 6, 2014

Twins holding hands: Denial and Enabling

"Denial" is when people fail to accept or believe truth.

"Enabling" is when others with good intentions hurt or abet others.

I have a close relative who is in denial. After using marijuana for nearly thirty years he fails to see any negative repercussions from it. That in itself is a symptom of aggravated marijuana use. I've had some tell me that their driving alertness is not impeded by marijuana usage, but enhanced. Evidence shows that to be symptomatic of regular use of marijuana.

Examining the life of the marijuana user: he's very intelligent, otherwise healthy, strong, a hard-worker, friendly and personable. No one would dream he's a regular user and has been for years except for those closest to him: 

1) He's never wrong and never has to apologize.
2) It's always the fault of another.
3) Although a hard worker, he can't maintain a job, because he can't submit to the boss's  authority.
4) He believes laws are for others.
5) He hates the success of those close to him.
6) He has stolen to support his habit.
7) He borrows without any thought of repaying.
8) He "uses" people through manipulation.
9) He lies without blushing.
10) His conversation is boisterous, erratic and non-serious.
11) His thought processes are defective and immature.
12) He has no respect for women. They are tools for entertainment.
13) He has a shell which he hides behind. He claims to need no one, but uses anyone who allows themselves to become a victim.
14) He has threatened those who love him and try to help him.
15) He's irrational in thought, even magical in thinking.
16) Although a failure, he sees himself as a success in spite of having little material or many friends.
17) He accepts those who use him for getting high to be his friends.
18) His level of maturity is about fifteen to eighteen and he's a middle-aged adult.
19) He reads and listens only to that which enables his lifestyle. He blocks out sane arguments.
20) He seems to have no feelings of guilt.
21) He sells marijuana to children, thus corrupting them as well.
22) He's never sober enough to consider others, his life, or his eternal destiny.

As a marijuana user he would deny that any of the twenty-two is a serious dysfunction on his part. In his eyes, it's others who have the problem! When he's sober his entire personality changes. He's considerate, kind, understanding, has contiguous thought and seems to be a mature person. On a marijuana scale he's a Jeckel and Hyde. I tell those who love him that it's not him behaving badly, it's the Mary Jane within him! He's in denial! He's not sober and he thinks he is! He claims to soar with eagles, but flies with the turkeys!

1 Peter 5:8 "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour..."

Sobriety is abstaining from or moderation in the use of mind-altering substances.  It's corollary is having serious and rational thought. Those who're incapable of maintaining sobriety fail to think rationally! Their lack of sobriety even causes them to be in denial. The user fails to see any error in their thoughts or resultant behavior!

The example is for a person who "just uses marijuana". Society has accepted marijuana usage as inevitable and common because so many people flaunt the laws and do whatever they desire:

Jude 1:10 (ESV) "But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively."

People are destroyed by pleasure. Everyone instinctively knows what "turns them on". People live for pleasure. In doing so, they "blaspheme" (irreverence) or deny the truth in what they can't seem to comprehend. They aren't vigilant because they see no reason to be so!  They don't avoid the danger in what they're doing because they don't see any harm in doing it. They are in denial because Satan has deceived them!


Colossians 2:8 (ESV)  "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ."

Users deny truth. They act "not according to Christ". They have been taken captive by the empty philosophy of the world and deceit, of whom Satan is the author. Deniers are deadly weapons of the devil, seeking to kill the body and spirit of themselves, in exchange for pleasure. How pitiful that people will trade their soul for an hookla aroma and chemically induced apathy.

"Taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit" describes the enabler! A dysfunctional family has a person with a disorder disrupting the entire family system. The disorder is marijuana use. The source of disruption is the user and those who encourage the user by inappropriate behavior are the enablers. Users manipulate. Enablers allow themselves to be manipulated. My close relative won't have anything to do with me. Why? I won't allow myself to be manipulated. He travels in circles of enablers; people he can manipulate.

The enabler becomes part of the cause. Dysfunction is the symptom of the imbalance. The enabler can be the family, a spouse,  a friend, a philosophy, an authority figure or even laws! The government capitulation to alcohol consumption enables people to be drunks! "It's legal isn't it?" Legality doesn't make something palatable.  To the people who say that prohibition didn't work, I ask "And this is working?" 

While nearly everyone is against limiting personal liberty with the prohibition and regulation of tobacco use, many of those  illogical people are now encouraging legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana. Their thinking isn't logical: replacing a dangerous, but non-cognition altering drug with a more dangerous and unhealthy mind-altering drug! The costs to society is already massive, but with the legalization, the costs will become staggering! Whereas, today nobody protects me from the short term effects of alcohol users, who will protect me from the long-term effects of marijuana usage? Nobody again!

Even our president is an enabler:

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” (Barak Obama in an interview with David Remnick).

The president is suppose to be the prime example to our youth. What a president  does and says has always been a pattern for desired behavior for the nation. Most past presidents have kept their personal bad habits and destructive ideas to themselves for the "good of the children". Obama flaunted his flaws and the resultant message makes him and enabler. The message he sent to our children is that living a life of apathy is okay. He doesn't care that he encourages dysfunction. He looks for the votes, power and tax revenue that will result from it's legalization and has little rational thought on the cost of legalization. His own medical care system will likely be further destroyed!

Obama is taking young people captive by empty philosophy and deceit and it doesn't stop there. In bed with those who desire regulation, such as Obama, are the libertarians who present the same danger!  People doing what's right in their own eyes is as destructive as regulating the weaknesses of the populace. Libertarian thought is a false philosophy just as Obama's Marxism! Both are destructive to our nation and our disrespectful to the teachings of God!

Propagating the legalization of marijuana is enabling the nation to be deceived into national dysfunction. What shall happen with an apathetic society? It will go the way of Rome, Judah and all other societies which put pleasure ahead of pragmatism.

Jeremiah 32:30 "For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the Lord."

Get off the marijuana bandwagon. Get some Godly principle. Get some Christian backbone. Let the Cross replace your spinelessness! Don't vote for politicians or laws that propagate the legalization of marijuana or reducing penalties for its use (whether Republican or Democrat). Ask yourself the question "Do I want my son of daughter to become apathetic zombies and with the government's permission?" No responsible adult would wish that their own offspring become drug dependent. Why would they care not that others children become so?



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