Worth the Effort

On page 245 of Stephen King’s Needful Things, we read:

“He had discovered another large fact about possessions and the peculiar psychological state they induce: the more one has to go through because of something one owns, the more one wants to keep that thing.”

I’m not really in the mood right now to provide the context for this passage, but I’ll comment on the passage’s concept. Some possessions may not be worth the effort, if keeping them entails a lot of effort. But there are plenty of things that are worthwhile and do not come cheaply. And I’m not just speaking monetarily. Getting a job can be a difficult process, for God does not always drop a job opportunity into our laps. Then there are other things worth fighting for, such as peace of mind.

Night

At church this morning, the topic was thanksgiving. The pastor preached about Luke 17:11-19, the story of the ten lepers. Incidentally, that was also the text for last week’s sermon, but that was preached by the Pastor Emeritus, who preaches when the pastor is away. Last week, our usual pastor was in Washington D.C.

We were thinking of things that we were thankful for, and the pastor said that he’s thankful for the night—-since it is dark and helps us to fall asleep. I like the night-time, too, but I remember reading Karl Barth say that the Hebrew Bible does not think too highly of the night. Barth noted that the Hebrew Bible does not have the equivalent to English poems about the night being a blanket falling on the earth. Maybe Barth is right. I still like the night-time, however. I’ve liked to sleep at night. I’ve liked to read at night. I’ve liked to eat at night. I’ve liked to watch TV late into the night. There’s something relaxing about night-time.

Empathy for People and Sympathy for Animals

In Stephen King’s Needful Things, a supernatural shopkeeper named Leland Gaunt sells things to people in exchange for a prank. Hugh Priest is the town alcoholic, and Gaunt sells him a fox-tail but requires him to kill Nettie Cobb’s dog and to make it look like Wilma Jerzyck killed him. Nettie and Wilma are feuding, and Gaunt (for some malevolent purpose) is trying to exacerbate that tension. On page 239, we read Hugh’s initial reaction to what he had done:

“Hugh stood up, his heart thumping heavily. He suddenly felt very bad about what he had done—-almost ill. Maybe she was crazy, maybe not, but she was alone in the world, and he had killed what was probably her only…friend.”

Alcoholics are often stereotyped as very selfish, but Hugh manages to have a sense of empathy for Nettie after doing his dastardly deed.

Empathy for people does not always come easy for me, perhaps because I do not feel that many people like me, and so I have a hard time caring for them. Or perhaps my empathy depends on the situation—-if I have experienced something that someone else has experienced, or if I have a fairly decent relationship with that person, or other factors. I think that it’s important for me to cultivate and to encourage empathy within myself—-whether the person suffering likes me or not, or would like me or not. Hugh did not have a good relationship with Nettie, and he did not even particularly like her. But he could imagine how painful it would be to be alone in the world—-without family—-and that led him to empathize and to sympathize with Nettie, and to hate himself for killing her only friend.

This scene also reminds me of how much I hate for people to kill or to hurt animals. This is probably because I like animals better than I like most people (since I find animals more accepting), but I think it’s also because animals strike me as so innocent, and (in many cases) as creatures simply trying to get by in the world. In the scene in Needful Things, the dog that Hugh kills is so trusting.

Psalm 51

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 51 and its interpreters. This week, the format will be different from my usual write-ups on the Psalms, for I will post the Psalm in its entirety in the King James Version, which is in the public domain, and then I will comment on select verses.

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

I listened to J. Vernon McGee’s comments on the superscription, and he said that he wants us to understand that the superscription was not attached to the Psalm at a later date. Most likely, McGee was responding to the scholarly view that Psalm 51 was a generic Psalm of repentance that was not by David, but rather was applied at a later date to an event from David’s life. To be honest, I did not like McGee’s approach to this issue, not so much because of what he said, but because of how he said it. It reminded me of the evangelical authoritarianism that I have encountered over the years, in which a leader tells people to believe something, and they just follow, like sheep. I prefer the times when I have heard evangelical leaders (even McGee) give reasons why they believe as they do, as they seek to convince their audience of their position.

¹Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

²Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

In his Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon quotes Thomas Fuller’s comments on this verse: “Ever before me. Sorrow for sin exceeds sorrow for suffering, in the continuance and durableness thereof: the other, like a landlord, quickly come, quickly gone; this is a continual dropping or running river, keeping a constant stream. My sins, saith David, are ever before me; so also is the sorrow for sin in the soul of a child of God, morning, evening, day, night, when sick, when sound, fasting, at home, abroad, ever within him. This grief begins at his conversion, continues all his life, ends only at his death.”

This is a pretty morose picture of the Christian life—-that I can know that I’m a true child of God if I am continually beating myself up for my flaws. I’m all for being aware of my imperfections and trying to do something about them, but what is the point of me weeping over them, even in times when I do not feel all that sad about having some of them? I’m just tired of Christianity telling me how I am supposed to feel. I feel what I feel, period.

⁴Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

What has baffled exegetes here (at least many of the ones who ascribe the Psalm to David) is that David says that his sin was against God alone, when his sin was also against Uriah and Bathsheba. Patrick Miller may not attribute this Psalm to David, but he states that a sin against other people can also be a sin against the LORD, for David says in II Samuel 12:13 that he has sinned against the LORD, after Nathan has told him a parable illustrating that he sinned against Uriah. The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary handles Psalm 51:4 by saying that the Psalmist wants for God to be the one who will punish him, rather than for a human avenger of blood to go after his life. Consequently, the Psalmist asks God to consider the sin to be against God alone, not the Psalmist’s human victims.

Then there is the rabbinic view, which I found in the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll. It essentially denies that David even sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah. The Artscroll commentary summarizes: “As pointed out by the Sages, David sinned only ethically, not technically, since Bath sheba was legally divorced, and Uriah had forfeited his life by defying the king…” According to this view, David did not technically commit adultery or murder, but, somehow, he sinned against God.

⁵Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

This is a widely-discussed verse. Many Christians have read this verse in light of the Christian doctrine of original sin, which states that humans have inherited guilt and a sinful nature from Adam and Eve. Several Jewish interpretations that I read (from Rashi and others) do not interpret the verse in light of original sin, but they do believe that the verse is saying that human nature is flawed. Other Jewish interpreters maintain that the verse is referring to women’s impurity during conception or menstruation (Babylonian Talmud Niddah 9a, 31b; see Leviticus 15:18; 12:8).

Surprisingly, not all ancient Christian interpreters whom I read related the verse to the original sin doctrine. The fourth century Christian exegete Theodore of Mopsuestia states the following (according to Robert Hill’s translation):

“He finds no fault with offspring on the basis of nature—-perish the thought. [I]t is clear from conceived in iniquities and carried in sin by the mother that he refers to the fault of the parents, not the offspring, criticizing the mind-set of the former, not the nature of the children, as some foolish people would like to hold. David, in fact, is not referring to himself: how could he say this of his own nature, when God had said of him, ‘I found a man after my own heart,’ far from finding fault with his nature but even admiring his use of free will? So David is not saying this of himself; and even if someone mistakenly put a title on the psalm to this effect, it does not bring the drift of the psalm into question.”

So Theodore not only denies that the verse is about original sin, but he also questions the superscription that applies Psalm 51 to David’s sin with Bathsheba. Theodore believes that David is prophesying what sinful Israel will say in the future, as she repents before God. At that time, many Israelites will confess that they are the offspring of adultery, a sin that Jeremiah and Ezekiel criticize (Jeremiah 5:8; Ezekiel 22:11). For Theodore, Psalm 51 is Israel’s confession of sin, and v 5 concerns the sin of adultery within Israel.

I’ve referred before on this blog to Erhard Gerstenberger’s views on Psalm 51:5, but they deserve repeating. Gerstenberger states: “There is absolutely nothing here against sexuality or anything in support of original sin in the biological sense…Reference to birth and conception only stress the gravity and totality of wrongness at the given moment of penitential prayer (see Pss 22:11 [RSV 10]; 58:4 [RSV 3]; 88:16 [RSV 15]).” Psalm 22:11 says that God has protected the Psalmist from the time of the womb, Psalm 58:4 affirms that the wicked lie from birth, and Psalm 88:16 states that the Psalmist is afflicted and ready to die from his youth up (to draw from the KJV’s language). Gerstenberger’s point appears to be that the Psalms project current problems onto the time of one’s birth or youth, and that’s what Psalm 51:5 is doing; it’s not making a dogmatic statement about people being born in a state of sinfulness.

I particularly liked what The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary had to say about this verse. For the author(s) of this commentary, Psalm 51:5 is simply the penitent drawing a contrast between his own sinfulness and the perfection of God. The commentary notes a similar phenomenon in the nineteenth dynasty Egyptian prayer to Amon, which “confesses that it is ‘normal’ for humans to do wrong just as it is ‘normal’ for the god to be merciful” (the commentary’s words), as well as an acknowledgment of the universal sinfulness of human beings in Babylonian incantations and the Egyptian teachings of Amenemope. For the commentary, Psalm 51:5 reflects one’s repentant acknowledgement that human nature is flawed as he seeks God’s mercy, not the Christian doctrine of original sin.

I will say one more thing about this verse. Theodore stated that David could not have been speaking about himself here because he was a man after God’s own heart, not a person with a corrupt human nature. John MacArthur, however, said in a sermon that David was saying here that this (a sinner) is who he truly is. How could David be a man after God’s own heart, yet be someone with a corrupt nature? What I have heard in sermons is that David was a man after God’s own heart because he felt sorrow about his own sins: he was repentant.

⁶Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

I have long interpreted this verse to mean that David (or the Psalmist) is acknowledging God’s desire for righteousness and is hoping that God will teach him wisdom, as part of God’s restoration of him from his sin. But I encountered another interpretation in my study: that God placed truth and wisdom inside of the Psalmist when he was in the womb, and so the Psalmist had no excuse for his sin: he should have known better. The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary says that there is a similar theme in the Egyptian Hymn to the Aten: “The writer repeatedly praises the god for supplying all that is necessary for human survival, even within the womb.”

⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

⁸Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

This may contradict what I said in my comments on v 3, but something that has long bothered me about Psalm 51 is that the Psalmist wants for God to make him happy, even though the Psalmist has sinned. If the Psalmist is truly repentant, shouldn’t he accept whatever misery or punishment results from his misdeed, rather than asking God to take them away? At the same time, whom exactly would that help? If God restores the Psalmist, then the Psalmist is in a position to encourage people to turn to God and to follow God’s ways (see vv 13-14). Lasting feelings of guilt, by contrast, would probably help no one.

⁹Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

I heard Christian preachers say that the Psalmist desires a new nature because he realizes that his own human nature is corrupt and sinful, a la v 5. But Augustine (who believes in original sin) says, “By my doing, he says, the uprightness of my spirit has been made old and bowed.” Augustine’s point appears to be (if I’m understanding it correctly) that the Psalmist is saying that his heart was upright but has become crooked on account of his sins and his lusts. Is the Psalmist in v 10 asking God to create a totally new heart, or is he requesting that God renew or repair the heart that he has, since the piel of ch-d-sh most often means “renew” or “repair” (I Samuel 11:14; II Chronicles 15:8; 24:4, 12; Isaiah 61:4; Lamentations 5:21)? Perhaps creation of a new heart entails a renewal or repair of the old one. I’m uncomfortable with how Christianity often presents regeneration as the replacement of our old selves (which die) with new selves, for, to me, that appears to imply that God kills human individuality. I prefer to think that God will take James—-with James’ uniqueness—-and will make a better James, one not as weighed down by sin and selfishness.

(Note: I don't want to imply that Augustine believed that a new nature was unnecessary, for Augustine argued vehemently against Pelagianism, the view that humans in their natural state could be morally good. Augustine believed that supernatural transformation was essential. Augustine may have thought that David in Psalm 51 was asking God to renew his already-new heart, as if David had experienced some degree of regeneration in the past yet had backslidden from that point through his sins. I am just guessing on this, though.)

¹¹Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

The best explanation for this verse that I encountered was in The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary, which states: “For a reigning monarch, who is God’s representative, being cut off from Yahweh’s voice or presence would be the signal that his dynasty has been rejected and will come to an end…” As the commentary notes, this is what happened to Saul (see I Samuel 16:14; 28:6).

¹²Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

The debate on this verse concerns whether “uphold me with thy free spirit” means that the Psalmist is hoping that God will uphold him with God’s generous spirit, or the Psalmist wants for God to give him (the Psalmist) a spirit that is humble and willing to do God’s will, upholding him that way.

¹³Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

One Christian preacher I heard said that a problem in today’s churches is that people who have not experienced God’s forgiveness are trying to exhort sinners to receive forgiveness from God, making it a second-hand doctrine. I will admit that listening to someone who has found redemption after a life of selfishness, brokenness, or depravity is a powerful experience. But I’m also against the legalistic view that God can only use me if I was (say) strung out on heroin (or something like that) before I became a Christian. I suppose that where I stand on this issue is that I am learning and growing in areas, and I will share with others where I am learning and growing, and, if they find that to be beneficial to them, fine. If not, fine. My experience, strength, and hope do not speak to everybody, for they come from my specific situation. But God does not love me less if I am regressing, or if my weaknesses are a present reality and not just a past one. I can better help others to overcome their problems if I have overcome my own, but I can also minister to people even if I am far from perfect. I can listen to them, I can point them to somebody else who can help them, etc.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

¹⁵O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

¹⁶For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Most commentaries I read interpreted vv 16-17 to mean that God wants repentance and not just sacrifice, and The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary mentioned a similar sentiment in the Egyptian Instruction of Merikare and Babylonian wisdom literature. But Theodore of Mopsuestia offers an interpretation I never encountered before: “…you saw us depressed in thought, suffering from discouragement, and incapable of coming to any logical or healthy thinking on account of the great number of troubles besetting us; so you stipulated no sacrifices nor required them of us when you freed us from the misfortune.” The idea here seems to be that God did not want to give the Jews more than they could handle when they were in a state of despair, and so God refrained from commanding them to sacrifice, until they arrived at a state of greater healing.

¹⁸Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

¹⁹Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Many say that vv 18-19 were added later because they are pro-sacrifice, whereas vv 16-17 are anti-sacrifice. Others disagree, however, maintaining that vv 16-17 oppose sacrifices without repentance, not sacrifices themselves. Vv 18-19 appear to concern the desire that God restore Israel from exile by rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and many interpreters place vv 18-19 in that context. Some evangelical pastors I heard, however, relate vv 18-19 to the time of David, saying that God was allowing Israel’s enemies to tear down pieces of the walls of Jerusalem as punishment for David’s sin, and David wanted God to reverse that. Theodore of Mopsuestia, however, did not believe that God would punish Israel for David’s sin (even though God seems to do precisely that in II Samuel 24).

Perhaps my favorite interpretation of this verse was that of the Jewish exegete Radak, which I read in the Artscroll commentary. In vv 11-12, David prays that God not remove God’s Holy Spirit from him. Well, in vv 18-19, we see an answer to that prayer, Radak contends, for David through God’s prophetic spirit is foreseeing the destruction of the two temples, and David prays for God to restore them in the future. God’s Holy Spirit is still with David, the argument runs, for David continues to have the spirit of prophecy. God has answered David’s prayer for forgiveness.

Polly's Lessons

For my write-up today on Stephen King’s Needful Things, I will focus on Polly Chalmer’s background.

Polly Chalmers had a baby out of wedlock, whom she named Kelton, and she became alienated from her parents on account of that. As the book narrates, her parents said things that tore away the “last tenuous bridge” between them and their daughter. But Polly still communicated with her parents via mail, for she felt that this interaction was less acrimonious than in-person interaction. Right when Polly had finally qualified to receive state assistance, Polly’s child died in a fire while Polly was away at work, and that is a secret that Polly has been keeping from others (including her significant other, Alan, who knows that she is keeping a secret but is giving her the time and the space to reveal that secret to him in her good time). But Polly’s parents also pass on—-her father due to cancer, and her mother due to a heart attack. At her parents’ funeral, Polly’s eighty-eight year-old Aunt Evvie tells Polly: “Baby Kelton’s dead…but you’re not…So what are you going to do about it?” Aunt Evvie exhorts Polly to let go of the ghosts of the past and to make a life for herself. At the same time, while Aunt Evvie encourages Polly to feel free to go to new places, Aunt Evvie thinks that Polly will ultimately return to her hometown of Castle Rock and settle there, for Aunt Evvie feels that Polly was made for Castle Rock.

There’s a lot there—-about communicating and keeping in touch with people in a manner in which one is most comfortable, of being thankful to be alive and taking advantage of the life that one has, and of being made for a specific place, but returning there after seeing the world. For the first issue, I like to communicate online, since I feel rather awkward in person. At the same time, it’s not always easy for me to come up with things to say online. I can’t just let the other person talk, as I can in person. For the second issue, I should definitely enjoy the life that I have rather than beating myself up over anything that happened in the past. I should learn from the past, but I shouldn’t allow the past to hinder my enjoyment of my life today. For the third issue, I’ve lived in different places. I can’t say that I was “made” for a specific place, though, including my hometown in Indiana. Actually, I’d prefer not to live in the town where I grew up—-though, of course, it’s nice to visit my family there.

Das: From Weber to the New Perspective, and Beyond

I started A. Andrew Das' Paul and the Jews.

In what I read yesterday, Das narrated the history of scholarship concerning Paul and the Jews. According to Das, Ferdinand Weber in 1880 presented rabbinic Judaism as a religion that focused on works----a religion in which God gave people a place in the World to Come only if their good deeds outweighed their bad deeds. According to Das, Weber acknowledged that rabbinic Judaism held that Jews "might benefit from the treasury of merits earned long ago by the patriarchal ancestors of Israel", but he still maintained that "the accounting of individual deeds remained strict" (Das' words on page 4). The result, for Weber, was twofold: some Jews were self-righteous about their deeds, whereas other Jews were insecure about whether or not they attained enough good works to be saved, and they also viewed God as "remote and inaccessible" (Das' words).

According to Das, Weber had his critics, such as George Foot Moore and many Jewish scholars. But Das states that "The dissent was drowned out by a chorus of voices from within the ranks of Christian biblical scholars, especially German Lutherans, who were drawing upon Weber's work as the standard for good scholarship on Judaism" (page 5).

Das narrates that the situation began to change in 1977, with E.P. Sanders' scholarship. Sanders highlighted Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1's statement that all Israel has a place in the World to Come, maintaining that rabbinic Judaism held that "only those who had deliberately acted in defiance of the God of Israel were excluded from a place in the world to come" (Das' words on page 7). That meant that only the most unrepentant Jews would be barred from the good afterlife, contra Weber's claim that Jews needed more good deeds than bad to make the cut. Sanders also noted that Judaism had provisions for atonement, which meant that even the bad deeds could be removed from people's records. (I have not read Weber, but I wouldn't be surprised if he, too, was aware of that point and mentioned it in his book.) I appreciated Das' definition of covenantal nomism, which is an essential feature of Sanders' characterization of Judaism: "God's gracious election and covenant relationship with the people, along with the merciful provision of sacrifice and atonement for failure, enveloped and formed a framework around the Jews' observance of the Law's requirement, the embedded 'nomism'" (page 8). This reminds me of Lloyd Gaston's view that Paul thought Jews observed the law within the context of God's gracious covenant with Israel.

But, on pages 11-12, Das describes issues that traditional and subsequent scholarship have had with the New Perspective, which Sanders held. First of all, there were passages in Paul that present humans as unable to accomplish the demands of the Torah. Many advocates of the New Perspective have said that Judaism did not require perfect obedience to the Torah, and Paul realized that, so Paul was not countering Jewish legalism but rather was elevating Christ (not the Torah) as the only path to righteousness for Jews and Gentiles as well as seeking to include Gentiles into God's people. (Of course, scholars who believe in the two-covenants----that Paul wanted Jews to observe the Torah while not requiring Gentiles to do so----divert somewhat from this view, though they, too, may be considered part of the New Perspective.) But more traditional scholars do not think that makes sense of passages in which Paul criticizes boasting in one's observance of the law, or despairs over the human inability to keep the law.

Second, Das states that subsequent scholarship views Judaism as more complex than Sanders thought. On page 11, Das states:

"Sanders grossly generalized the complexities of Second Temple Judaism. The Jews held God's grace, God's mercy, and repentance in a lively tension alongside the necessity for people to do God's law. The shape of this tension varies from writing to writing and from genre to genre. The emphasis may fall toward one extreme or the other."

The debate over the Old and New Perspectives on Paul and Judaism highlight to me how hard it is to generalize religions as religions of grace or works, for Judaism and Christianity have both, and different adherents emphasize different facets of the religions.

Danforth Keeton's Addiction

For my write-up today on Stephen King’s Needful Things, I will talk about Danforth “Buster” Keeton. Danforth is a town selectman who has developed a gambling problem, and he’s getting on the radar of the authorities because he has been embezzling money on account of his gambling problem. Danforth does not appear to acknowledge his own role in his difficulties, however, for he blames his “persecutors” rather than himself. Danforth did not always have a gambling problem. He was student council President in high school, and he made straight A’s at a business college. He was responsible, he was organized, and he was going somewhere. But when the head selectman, Steve Frazier, invited him to the race-track, Danforth went and got caught up in the excitement of the game and his surroundings, and he was also happy to have won some money. Danforth rarely felt as if he were a part of anything, but he now felt included in something.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff there. The narrative that I have heard from twelfth-step recoverers is that sobriety can help a person to go places—-that alcoholism is an elevator that only goes down. In a sense, that is true. Granted, as far as I know (and that is a key phrase, for there is a lot that I do not know, and I could be wrong even on this), studies do not indicate that people who don’t drink make more money than those who do drink. Some have even referred to studies in which the opposite is shown to be the case. But I do believe that alcoholics do better—-financially, socially, etc.—-when they do not drink, for drinking often does cost them relationships, money, and (in some cases) even their freedom.

The problem is that many with alcoholism or addictions feel as if they are outsiders. I’ve heard stories from real-live people about this, but, to return to the imaginary world of our novel (or, actually, Stephen King’s novel), Danforth felt empty, even though he was going somewhere professionally. Danforth was a part of things, for he was on the Board of Selectmen, and he had a wife. But he only felt like he was a part of something at the track—-and the track also appears to be the only place where he experienced excitement.

I think that recovery includes a variety of elements. A significant part of it is to try to help people with addictions to feel less like outsiders. This is attempted through recovery groups, and also through the twelve steps, which help people to identify how they have wrecked their relationships. Rather than blaming other people (as Danforth did), people with addictions take a good hard look at themselves to identify where they were at fault (which is not to say that they were necessarily the only ones at fault in their situations). People have told me that they experience happiness when they become a part of a community and deal with their personal baggage, and they gain hope when they get advice on how to deal and to cope with the challenges of life.

One factor in the lives of many addicts is a craving for drama and excitement (which was what Danforth sought at the race track). I do not know how that problem is addressed in every case, but I do know that many recovering addicts get to the point where they are tired of drama: they simply want for life to run smoothly, and, for them, that is more likely to happen when they are sober.

On a related note, I really liked the latest episode of Desperate Housewives. Carlos is developing a drinking problem, and that is causing him to miss meetings at work. When a rich client learns that Carlos has a drinking problem, he demands to see Carlos right away. Right when we think that the client is about to chew Carlos out, the client shows Carlos his sobriety chip and tells Carlos his story about his own recovery. The client is there to help Carlos, not to chew him out.