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When the Church Becomes an Addict

Jim Moody

Jim Moody, brother to Stan, is a former psychologist at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Walpole, Massachusetts, one of the tougher penal institutions in the country.  A Christian, he has studied the addictive tendencies prevalent in the Christian community and has noted the similarities of substance use disorder to personal image and group-think. Jim is a professional percussionist, having played with the Coast Guard Command Band.

 

When the Church Becomes an Addict

James H. Moody

Stan Moody: My brother, Jim, wrote these words back in the late 1980s as a resource for Barbara and me in our efforts to help professing Christians like ourselves recover from relationship addiction and divorce. While Jim now suffers from mental acuity problems, he has left behind some critical thoughts that I have committed to share with you, my fellow-believers in Jesus Christ as Lord.


Addiction and Sin, the Twins of “Addictsin”:

My experience with addiction therapy has led me to the conclusion that addictions are profoundly spiritual – that they share a common ground with Christians and non-Christians alike.  I have concluded that addiction and sin are so similar in process that one could successfully combine the two into a common word, "addictsin." 


We know that we are born into sin, but do we realize that sin is addictive?  We think of "sins" as one-time occasions or mistakes or repeated deliberate disobedience.  Yet, even we as professing Christians have become comfortably addicted to the non-believing world and everything that that world has to offer.  At times we may have to recover from this addiction when we get blown out of our comfort zones, as in the case of divorce.  Because of our inherent addictive natures, however, we usually fall back into some variation of those false allegiances that got us into trouble in the first place. 


Please understand that I am not trying to minimize the miraculous effect of the Christian conversion experience.  What I am trying to do here is to make a case for Christ as an ongoing and growing relationship that eventually leads to a change of allegiances.  I am attempting to put into language an explanation for what the Scriptures have been telling us throughout redemptive history.


The Pursuit of Pleasure:


The brain is a computer.  Once it learns a habit, it never forgets.  That habit is etched in the memory bank for life, leaving the individual scarred and struggling to maintain equilibrium.  An addict can identify with what Paul said in Romans 7:24, "Oh, what a wretched man that I am; who will deliver me from this body of death?" His remedy, of course, was, “I thank God through Jesus Christ that it already has been done.” Is that all that is required, or is there more at stake here?


As I have taken a look at recovery programs with a spiritual base, I have noticed they have experienced a high success rate.  Be it Christian, non-Christian, or cultish, when the basis for treatment is spiritual, things begin to happen to the addict that lead to the road of recovery.  When contact with the program is maintained over a long period of time, successful recovery is almost assured. 


From the Christian believer, the argument comes loud and clear that it does little good to recover from addiction in this life if there is no hope for eternity.  I agree, but the fact that this phenomenon does happen through a variety of religious convictions became intriguing to me.


The Pursuit of Pleasure and the Avoidance of Pain:


There is a basic drive that is in all of us to one degree or another.  It involves two very powerful dynamics – the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.  In my experience in counseling, I find that all of my clients have one thing in common – they come to me looking for something that will help them feel better.


This pain/pleasure dynamic can be seen in our marriages and in the increased divorce rate.  People going into marriages, especially Christian marriages, are unaware that the pain of confrontation is a necessary ingredient to the health of the marriage and to their own growth. 


The belief that a fun-filled, pain-free life equals happiness actually diminishes our chances of ever attaining real happiness.  If fun and pleasure are equated with happiness, then pain must be equated with unhappiness.  In fact, the opposite is true: More times than not, things that lead to happiness involve some pain.  Certainly, I don't mean physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, but there is pain that comes naturally when building relationships that really works to the benefit of both parties.  That pain comes from just plain day-to-day hard living.  To avoid that pain, the next expensive car, fancier home, livelier dinner party, and the most exorbitant vacation seem like roads to happiness and the good life.  


The biblical definition is that pleasure is God-given for life's enjoyment to bring glory to God, which is the chief end of man.  On the other hand, pleasure can be harmful to the mind, body, and religious life. Sorting out the difference between the two can be very tricky, especially because our society offers more and more pleasure traps that can lead Christians away from fellowship with God. 


The Needs Chain:


Abraham Maslow, a well-known 20th century psychologist, offered a humanistic model of five basic needs that human beings are motivated to fulfill that are common to all people, beginning with physiological needs such as food, water, and shelter.  He arranged those needs in a hierarchical system.  In order to move from one hierarchy to the next, the individual must satisfy the previous need. 


Christ knew about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs even before Maslow did. He instructed us not to worry about those needs. He promises to take care of them under certain conditions, “...but seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things (needs) will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33).  I would suggest that this Scripture is virtually meaningless in our Christian experience today in America.  For the most part, we have moved far beyond this level of needs fulfillment.  Why?  Because few of us have to think about what we will eat, what we will wear, and where we will sleep.  So, it's impossible to understand how we can seek the Kingdom of God first in order to receive that which we already enjoy.


God’s Expectations:


When you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it is just the reverse of what Christ would have for us.  With Maslow’s self-actualization formula, we tend to say to ourselves, "Is that all there is to life?".  Christ, however, offers that we may become enabled to develop characteristics of Kingdom citizens through divine transformation. Meanwhile, in conflict, our addictive personalities scream out at us to become self-actualized.


We learn these characteristics of Kingdom citizens in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-11.  Christ delivers the Beatitudes to his disciples by saying that the very bottom level of the Kingdom precepts is humility.  Once this is practiced, the next step toward the Kingdom is penitence.  The ladder goes ironically higher through surrender of self – from meekness, up to spiritual hunger, mercifulness, inward purity, peacemaking, and finally sacrificial suffering.  The question then becomes, "How many self-actualized people are also practicing sacrificial suffering?"  I'll leave that for you to answer. 


The pull from the pleasures of life has become so strong that we have become addicted and helplessly locked into the conflict between what is pleasurable to us and what is spiritually good for us.


The Church and Pain:


The Christian tends to dismiss theories by secularists, which accounts for the degree to which the Church lags behind the rest of society in its understanding of the addictive process and addictive systems, such as marriage and church itself.


As Christians, we are vulnerable to the very addictsin that we think we are avoiding through our religious behaviors and select moral codes.  That's a tragedy that takes a long time and a lot of hard knocks to overcome, but that is the area in which God will chastise His beloved through suffering.


The contrast between Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Christ's Characteristics of Kingdom Citizens is so great that it presents a clear-cut difference between human personality and spirituality.  It is also this contrast that offers a picture of the addictive personality.  There is no better biblical reference to this contrast than in 1 Cor. 1:27. Paul, well aware of the pleasures of the world, says, "…but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong."


Dying in the Middle of Our Free Wills:


The battle, then, has become the battle between pain and the pursuit of pleasure.  The battle is not new but is an ongoing conflict between two kingdoms diametrically opposed.  On the one side, we are programmed to pay attention to what feels good now; on the other side, we have God with His still, small voice offering us hope only if we face our sin.  We are in the middle with our free wills, knowing in our heads what God wants for us but also paying attention to what feels good.  It is perhaps for this reason that Kingdom living has been maligned by the humanists, secular as well as Christian, as it contradicts a world void of pain, as we would like it to be.


Where are we in this world today?  Where indeed is the Confessing Church?  Are we as Christians so bent on what is rightfully our "piece of the rock" that we are sacrificing our very lives in the pursuit of pleasure?  Are our marriages and our churches merely vehicles for that good feeling, or are they the places where we become broken in order to find communion with God? 


The answers to those questions will not be found in the pop-Christianity of which we are all so much a part.  The answers will be found within the covers of God's Word by broken people who have reached the end of their ability to find their "fix" in the little pleasures of their lives and their institutions.


“Do not love the world nor the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). 

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