The Place Where Addiction and the Word of God Collide
NOTE: This article deals with addiction within the life of a Christian.
For the Christian, is addiction where we lose a piece of our steadfastness in the Word of God?
James 1:12-15 says: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
For some, addiction is a continued pleasure trip that they have no intention of ending. For others, addiction is the reality that the past continues to collide with the present in a painful, undesired way. At some point, curiosity, rebellion, or pain started a process that has moved beyond manageability. I would argue, though, that addiction is about perception. If being addicted to something causes no grievance to your conscience, you probably don’t want to be labeled as an addict; others might beg to differ. But most people who are caught in addiction, understand the feeling of helplessness they are presently experiencing, and desperately wish to find a way to overcome.
Unless you were kidnapped and forced into addiction against your will, somewhere, somehow, for the believer in Christ, addiction collided with the Word of God. It collided with a collusion of temptation and the willingness to reject the balance God’s Word calls for us to have with Him and His ways. It can also be the collusion of temptation and our stubbornness to solve a perceived need by the way we feel is best. For any number of reasons, there was the perfect storm in someone’s life where a wedge was created so as to create a longing for what became unspiritual.
And it’s a long road back. That’s kinda the definition of an addiction. But it’s not an impossible road. In fact, God promises that He will help us when we seek His ways above our own wants and desires.
Here are some observations on that perfect storm of temptation and our willingness to remove God’s plan from a piece of our lives.
(1) Addiction is not the result of being tested.
Duh! But in this statement lies one of the fundamental struggles that Christians have with the Christian life, and that is the question of why God allows temptations, and temptations to flood us to the point of addiction.
The better question is: what is at the end of testing? We will be called blessed. We will get a special insight into the Heavenly things. Our inclination is to focus on the pain and negative so as to remove it, and there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to overcome the negative. God calls us to overcome! But, addiction and the pain it brings can often cloud us from even addressing that refreshing boost that comes from allowing God’s right ways to win in our daily choices.
Addiction is not the result of being tested, but we often half-heartedly come to believe it. It’s a begrudging statement we force ourselves to admit, but is it our heart’s conclusion? Turn that pain over to Christ for the redemption of our stories.
(2) God does not like the outcome of temptation.
God desires death for no person. God does not enjoy temptation that gives way to addiction. He takes no pleasure in our desires getting the better of us.
If God cannot be tempted, He will not tempt. Does that mean that God can be tested? You bet. God invites us to the challenge of seeing if He will bless us. That is a part of what it means to be a member of the family of God. We have special, spiritual privileges that God honors when we confess Him as the One, true God.
The difficulty comes when we think God has made a wrong decision or not followed through on what He promises. God can’t make wrong decisions; the only wrong decisions are the decisions we make based on our perceptions of the decisions that God makes as being wrong: against His revealed will or nature, not honoring our definitions of goodness, not honoring our hedonistic tendencies, not fulfilling the common good, etc. We must measure our expectations against God’s plan and boundaries, not the unlimited vision of our own ideas. We dream big. Sometimes bigger than what God knows is good for us.
Temptation seeks to lead us away from God; testing directs our attention away from the pull of our needs, to the victory that glorifies the way in which Christ overcame for our eternity. Addiction for the Christian is the painful reminder that the flesh is weak and without Christ and His power, we have no true hope of winning.
(3) God values our path to growth.
Our intellect and reason can be our best attributes, but they can also be our downfalls. It was God’s pleasure to give that special gift to humanity over other animals, and so we must treat it with respect and not a careless attitude. With it comes great responsibility. It helps us enjoy the world around us that much more, but it also gives us access to a world that allows for good things to be taken and used in unhealthy ways.
God gave us intellect and reason that we might know Him, follow Him, and grow; grow individually and as a society. Because we have intellect and reason, we can come to the conclusion that we should reject certain good things. It is the hope of God, that our intellect and reason, in conjunction with His Word and His Holy Spirit, would help us see the value in returning to what is good according to God’s plan. God allows these divergences so that we can become wiser in our decision-making process and we can remember the struggle we felt when those divergences caused a disruption in our hearts and lives.
When we wrestle with God’s good ways and how they interact with our lives, we have the ability to grow. God does not enjoy strife and struggle but, because of sin in our world, there is value in comparing and contrasting the pain with pleasant. Sometimes we have to live it to know it; other times it becomes a trust in learning from the experience of others, either by seeing it explicitly, or reading or hearing about it in valued communication. And here we find the value when we make the right choices and put God first. We experience growth.
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Addiction and the Word of God collide in our very real temptations. But the very real Christ collided with the temptations of this world and we have the grace of knowing that God’s wrath has been turned away so that we can work through this life knowing that addictions may win their little victories, but the crown of life keeps addiction in this world and not in the next. May God always remind us that addiction will never be the end of a Christian’s story. Amen.
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