[Spiritual Alert - skip if you can't stand this stuff - or not; it's up to you]
Nicely done Jeff. I have Hamilton's autobiography on my shelf (yes I did read it). Using the word "autobiography" on someone so young seems kind of ironic, considering his biography is by no means complete. For his family's sake, I hope it is incomplete for many more years to come.
I've dealt with addiction in my family too. As you know, I share your worldview, but also respect the secular attempts to deal with this type of issue.
Addiction is usually a private sin that becomes public at some point. Although the "disease" aspect has some merit - especially dealing with how the psyche is involved, the decisions to go down that path in the first place are still ours to make. With alcoholism on both sides of my family, decisions that I make to "have a few drinks" are my decisions alone. They come with some cost. But the same thing applies to decisions we make regarding anything else that would be considered sinful (i.e. our decision to explore a relationship with another woman while we are married, etc.). When someone needs to recover from decisions like that, repentance is the best road. The "fact" that more people who "repent" tend to stay clean makes sense, if there is a God to answer to. Whether it's addiciton or adultery, owning your decisions go a long way toward healing broken things. Strangely enough, even non-believers who "repent" (turn away from their bad choices) do better. If there is a God, it would stand to reason that turning away from things that don't lift Him up would fit how the world really is. If there is not, making the choice to repent still works.
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