5: Complicated Stuff
You, Addiction, and God: Been There. Done That.
COMPLICATED STUFF 5
What’s wrong with us? What’s goes on inside us that leaves us so bro- ken and conflicted, so at war with ourselves, and so seemingly unable to change? The more we wrestle with that question, the more we search in- side ourselves, the more we get to know others, the more we listen deeply to God’s word, the more we think the answer is that we’re addicted. We’re not just “trespassers,” line-crossers who cross over and then back again. We’re addicts. We’re fallen. Stuck. Broken. Enslaved. To use the Bible’s language for it, we have demons we can’t get rid of. We’re afflicted and torn and broken. We’re in bondage and in deep need of deliverance. The Bible doesn’t use the word addiction . But when it talks about sin, the Bible is talking about the very same awful reality. Replace the word “sin” with “addiction” in the Bible, and often you’ll wind up with es- sentially the same result: “If we claim to have no sin [or “addiction”], we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). What does it mean to say we’re all addicted? What is addiction, anyway? Let’s just start with a quick definition we ran across: Addiction is any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human desire. It is caused by the attachment, or nail- ing, of desire to specific objects. Addiction is a behavior, something we do, actions we take. Thinking included. Addiction is what happens when our God-given, in-built de- sires—our capacity for joy, for loving God and loving others—gets attached to other things. Interestingly, the word attached literally means “nailed to.” So, instead of our desires being met by God, they get diverted, hijacked and nailed to something else—all kinds of something else. Things, people,
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