Dr Paul Allen

Addiction vs. Moral Responsibility More often than not, when Christians respond negatively to recent developments in neuroscience, the fear is that by dissecting the organ of all our feelings, thoughts, and decisions, we will somehow lose our belief in moral responsibility. If I come to believe that porn has warped my brain, I can eventually say, “I’m not responsible for this problem. My brain made me do it.” The field of neuroscience is actually bringing a much older conversation to the foreground, a conversation that has been present in addiction recovery circles for the better part of 80 years: Is addiction a disease ? Bill Wilson , the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous , was among the first who likened alcoholism to a disease. He didn’t actually believe alcoholism was a disease, but that it was like a disease. It was a pragmatic description: he felt the disease metaphor helped men and women open up about their problems. Once you were in the doors of many AA meetings, however, it wa...

Worried! (Photo credit: photoloni ) In his book Running Scared , Ed Welch makes 4 fascinating observations about worriers and their brand of vision-casting. Worriers Live in the Future Worriers live in the future. We are all people of the past, present and future, and worry has a way of spanning all three time zones . Fear is often triggered by past events, then reacts to crises in the present, and anticipates their consequences in the future. Fear’s preference, though, is to point you to the future, and to do this it relies upon the power of imagination. We tend to think that imagination is the realm of the child, but it is equally the realm of the worrier . We have imaginations so we can consider things that do not yet exist. We admire people with expansive imaginations as visionaries, people who are able to look ahead and anticipate the trajectory of the nation, of the church, of the business, or of the individual. The worrier is a visionary too, in that he sees, or thinks he ...

Cover via Amazon In 1954, speaking of spiritual depression, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I have no hesitation in asserting that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition."  It's striking to hear of how common the struggle was in his day. Depression is no stranger to the great leaders in church history (in fact, it affected quite a lot of them), but neither is depression uncommon in the church today.  So what do we, as a church, do about it? We recently asked biblical counselor Ed Welch. Here's what he said.  Ed Welch is a speaker at our upcoming National Conference. Visit the   event page   to learn more and register.  For more on the theme of depression see — Ed Welch, book,  Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness Ed Welch, booklet,  Depression: The Way Up When You Are Down John Piper, book,  When the Darkness Will Not Lift John...

Ed Welch is a  biblical counselor  and the author of several books including  Running Scared: Fear, Worry & the God of Rest . He serves on the faculty of the  Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation  (CCEF) in Philadelphia