Charlie Sheen Syndrome
I’ve been watching the Charlie Sheen saga with a great deal of horror and interest. My horror stems from the fact that I actually kinda like Charlie Sheen. I mean, c’mon, The Rookie, Hot Shots, and other famous roles- he’s had a good run. It’s sad to see him falling apart and being led down the primrose path the way he is.
But my interest is due to his being a case study in the results of living a life of excess and self-indulgence. Drugs, alcohol, sex, money, fame, success, power. Who hasn’t desired more of at least a few of these things? Charlie (or Carlos as it where) has all of these in vast quantities, but his life is a train wreck and his body looks like it’s been through a train wreck. 45 years old? He looks 55 if you ask me. Charlie has two live-in “Goddesses” as he calls them, who are there to service him sexually (and his ego I’m sure) at any time. He was making $2 MIL per episode of Two and a Half Men. He has been in and out of rehab for years with drug problems.
Charlie- and all of us for that matter- would do well to read these verses from Romans 16:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans 6:12-23
Sin carries with it a heavy price. Charlie is denying it, but he is paying that price and ultimately that price is spiritual death. Conversely, eternal life is free. It was paid for by Christ in his death and it’s ultimate reward is eternity with God. Which will you choose? Buy now, pay later? Or receive Christ now, and have the price paid for you?
Doesn’t seem like a difficult choice to me….
