The Greatest Miracle
One of my writing gigs is working for the content team of a behavioral health company. This company has a national network of drug rehabs, so I, a church kid from birth, spend half my weekdays writing about illicit drugs.
Just today I was reading up on phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) methamphetamine. For those who don’t know, P2P meth was cooked and peddled by biker gangs back in the seventies. But the recipe was volatile, and the cookers were not skilled enough chemists to separate and remove l-methamphetamine (the compound that generates side-effects like high heart rate) from d-methamphetamine (the compound that gives you the high).
Part of the reason for the rise of meth in the eighties is because some clever deviant rediscovered the way to make meth from ephedrine (a key ingredient in what was formerly an over-the-counter decongestant).
This meant payday for meth makers and drug cartels until various state and federal entities as well as the Mexican government restricted the purchase of the decongestant pseudoephedrine, dramatically hampering the production of meth in the early 2000’s.
Which put an end to the drug, right? Because all we need to do is legislate, educate, and medicate and people will do what’s right. Right?
Wrong. Not to be outmaneuvered, those enterprising chemists of the criminal world refined the old P2P meth recipe. Except this time someone figured out how to dramatically reduce l-methamphetamine. And since the chemical components for the P2P meth are readily available in a variety of highly toxic but legal substances (which are the backbones of too many industries to restrict), relatively small organizations could manufacture and sell the drug cheaper than before. Even cheaper than cocaine.
In fact, according to the New York Times in 2018, Portland, Oregon drug dealers had so much of the drug in supply that they were selling it on credit. Reporter Sam Quinones, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, believes that this version of meth (and its attendant damage to the brain that, according to anecdotal evidence at least, can create psychotic breaks faster than ephedrine meth) is responsible for the deepening homeless crisis on the west coast.
So why bring this up in the church bulletin?
As American Christians, we can sometimes balk at the Biblical notion that the heart of man is desperately wicked. That sounds harsh. People don’t like to hear it. In fact, we don’t like to hear it.
But ask yourself: do basically good people find ways to make a bad drug worse so they can sell it again? Do basically good people trade a cocaine addiction for a meth addiction so they can save money?
But before we get high and mighty, we must point those questions in the other direction. Do basically good people talk about human beings using the same terms that describe the squalor in which they live? Do basically good people hate others for being sinners yet refuse to confront the sin in their own hearts?
In Matthew chapter 9, the Pharisees think Jesus is blaspheming for forgiving the paralytic’s sin because they know only God can forgive sin.
To prove that he has that kind of authority, Jesus heals the man so profoundly and thoroughly that the man gets up and walks home. But we also see something else. Forgiveness is the basis for a changed heart. Faith that Jesus is the only one with the credentials to forgive us and restore us to God signals a change in the heart so thorough that it marks the day we get up and go another direction.
He shows us that it is easy for us to say, “I forgive you,” but impossible for us to accomplish it. Just as impossible as it is for us to heal our own wounds or change our own hearts.
Looking at the brief history of methamphetamine and the consequences of it that we see today should show us only one thing. We, all of us, were born with desperately wicked hearts. That desperation, that depravity has locked us into a spiral of evil deeds and self-righteous judgement that only has one direction: down.
When we see how desperate our need is, we realize that the greatest miracle we can ask for is not physical healing. It is that Jesus would look into our hearts, forgive us of the evil we have done, and wash out the blackness with his blood.
