Victory, Part Two

A professor once told me that when you give a test, if 10% of the class flunks, it's their fault. If 90% of the class flunks, it's the teacher's fault.

Yesterday's blog post is definitely my fault. See, I wasn't making fun of the hymn "Victory in Jesus." I was making fun of people like me who used to be too "sophisticated" for a joyful hymn about Christ's transforming power.

(In the '60s, Narragansett Beer had a TV commercial where this guy walks into a bar and talks to the nasal-voiced bartender lady in a nasal voice. Then a woman with a sultry voice slinks in and the man talks to her in Charlton Heston sonority. The bartender lady is indignant: "Hey, you were making fun of me!" He replies, "No, I was making fun of her.")

Second misunderstanding: You're right that America's Keswick's Colony of Mercy isn't a "step program." Or rather, it is a one-step program. There's one problem, the addiction. And there's one solution, Jesus.

But Jesus has to be laid hold of every minute of every day. So in a sense, it's a thousand-step program. Or, in more conventional terms-a process. (This is no "instant perfectionist" theology.) The process is learning to trust and obey Jesus, and all that that entails: prayer, worship, repentance, forgiveness, and hard work, and learning new habits.

That's what they do at America's Keswick, where the thinking is that all addictions are a worship disorder, not a disease (a much more hopeful diagnosis)-and that all of us have a bit of a worship disorder.