Prescription Drugs and the Fruitage of the Spirit?

Luther bertrand

Does anyone have a meaningful response to the following question/points: The fruitage of the spirit found at Gal. 5:22: Love, Joy, Peace, Long-Suffering, Mildness, Kindness. Goodness, Faith and Self-Control, in many way for many people can be increased through the use of anti-anxiety, Anti-depressants, and a host of other Pharma's. Question: Does this punch a hole in the hypothesis that these qualities are indeed the result of having Gods spirit or does this fact lend it self to a more physicalist/Materialist worldview? Is a physicalist/materialist worldview incompatible with a theistic worldview? Please as a favor to me, keep the responses focused on the drug to fruitage part of my discussion, I can already see I am opening a can of worms and I would just prefer the worms to go in a specific direction.

little_Socrates

The way I see it, at most those drugs help some people function in more socially acceptable ways. I don't think they are capable of giving people real feelings of Love joy peace ext.

blondie

I see the drugs bringing down the physical barriers people have that are helped by certain drugs. Not necessarily sad because something sad happened but that they are sad even though something bad hasn't happened. Chemical in their body that are not being secreted etc properly.

Clinical depression is not people who have a reason to be sad, severe chronic illiness, death of a friend for family member, loss of a job and no job in sight.

sowhatnow

Id assume that when those passages were written no one was aware of any outside influences that would persuade a person to behave in a way against their normal will. [other than drunk on alcohol, which obviously keeps one from doing anything useful, lol]

prescription drugs are enhancers, they manipulate the body,to influence a change. be it for mental or physical benefit [or not] ,.

the fruits of the spirit , [who ever they mean by the spirit in this case] , cannot be acted out by a person against their will [since when does someone who is drunk or high, or on cocaine, being helpful and kind to someone lol.] you have to be of a sound mind to practice these, its a choice to be loving of kind of faithful, to someone else, for the benefit of the good.

Galatians here is , in my opinion, recommending that people be decent human beings towards each other.

however reading that Galatians 5 , raised and interesting question in my mind.... so Ill post a question about that myself..

LisaRose

I don't think I buy the premise that you can express the fruitage of the spirit by taking drugs, it's far more complicated than that. If someone has a deficiency in brain chemistry, then possibly certain drugs can help them be more normal and then express love, joy, peace, etc., but they have to be capable of feeling such emotions in the first place. If they have normal brain chemistry then the drugs will not do anything for them, and if they are a rotten person with bad brain chemistry, then all the drugs in the world will not make them loving.