We can't expect people to accept the Love of God when they have no idea what love is.
We cannot impose morality on people, because true Christian morality comes from love.
When people do not know what love is, we cannot expect them to do what is good. We must first teach them about love, and then hope they will embrace Love. Then, this love within them will move them into morality.
A recovery program cannot merely lay out moral rules and expect sick people to follow them. Part of the development of addiction is the 'stepping over' of moral rules. People do know what it is to be moral, but they feel that they must reject morality in order to be happy and escape their sorrow. They see no love in morality.
Recovery means that a person is first introduced to the true meaning of Love, and gradually comes to accept this love. Then, the embrace of love releases the strangle-hold of addiction.
Recovery never ends because love never ends. Its embrace must be continuous and ever-lasting, because the death that addiction brings represents an eternal falling away from love.
Therefore, when the addict comes to believe that God is Love, then he will accept this love, and the love will manifest in his renewed morality not as just obedience, but as an earnest desire for the fruits of morality. After all, morality is nothing more than the adjectives that describe the fullness of life.
Morality is not 'no,' but 'yes.' It is a yes to how things really are, and so living according to moral rules is a rejection of the disorder of death and separation from God. Morality encompasses all things as God created them and intended them to be used.
But, first man must love life and all that is in the world. He cannot do that without loving God, and so loving God is the basis for recovery and sanity.
This is what we must teach.
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