Obsession

Today’s Page focuses on addiction for this date in our four years of discussion about the practical and educational Christian life to application.  The plan has been to provide a personal discussion about living in an imperfect world with a concept of God as a friendly and authoritative participant in the lives of those who invite him into their lives, based on Christian principles as revealed in Scripture.  This applies to all of life in a sense of wholeness, found in a context of righteousness, perceived in biblical principles that offer a meaning of life unity and spiritual identity – wholeness to the person living in a complex context of nature that admits of good and evil, of sublimity and despair.  It takes more than an unaided human being can offer in self and effort to meet challenges that are inescapable – if life is to gain its full meaning.

Addiction is just one of the enemies of victorious life – the winning of the invisible spiritual warfare which is vital if we are to gain the Kingdom of God for the lives of the winners.  The world tends to treat the symptoms of the problems, and that is good for the best outcome if it also addresses the causes which relate to spiritual life.  Why do people actually choose the depreciating influences knowing the consequences even for human survival, less difficult to perceive than the hope of spiritual survival?  The problems and the solutions are related.  We rely on the belief that the two, natural and supernatural, are related.

In this we want to address something of addiction that aids our understanding.  Any preoccupation or habit that is beyond the boundaries of a balanced (moderation) life is an addiction.  We rightly deplore the person taken with substance abuse, so easily identified because there is something that we can see that is the ammunition for wounding, even killing, users.  Death may even come early in a drug overdose, which is often touted in the publicity of the tragic death as an accident.  Who knows, for a private experience, if the overdose was an accident?  Perhaps it is declared so to give some comfort to the bereaved.  The point, however, is that we recognize these events which take so many lives, either literally or in reducing life for the living.  The addictions, sometimes preoccupying Christians, which we here term obsessions are evil and belong to life distractions hated by God.  We find them in obsessions to money (greed), to acclaim (celebrity), to food (gluttony), to self (pride), to intellectualism (exclusiveness), and the list grows long.  Variety may do for us what drug abuse does for persons out of control with chemical substances.

It all begins early in our lives.  We find selfishness in children – that needs to be addressed by parents or it will become destructive, to the selfish person and others.  The young driver who is taken by speed so races through traffic, and onward to the highway is feeding an addiction that will cost the lives of others. To permit the driver to continue in his/her context not only makes a poor driver, but may introduce a kind of surliness that carries over into other contexts that are destructive.  To speak in larger context, the same thing happens to societies that are jealous to the point of warfare, are prideful to force the actions of others, and so that story proceeds.  The obsessions of nations and potentates of history offer a sad story of mankind.  One author, Robert Asprey, put it as related to Europe three centuries ago: The world belonged largely to emperors, kings, nobles, and priests.  They made war as they made love: Scarcely one affair ended before another began.  The author proceeded for paragraph after paragraph, to describe the obsessions, both personal and social, that were ruinous, even deathly, for masses of human beings. Religion can become a deadly obsession.  Currently a distortion creates a worldwide movement of terrorism.  It is not marked by love, by concern for others, by obedience to God, who can, if he were so inclined, send legions of angels to battle for the right.  Guess who would lose.  There was a period in which even persons claiming faith in Jesus Christ were so obsessed with orthodoxy that they arranged to cruel death those that violated what they believed to be God’s truth at the time.  It is little wonder that God offered Scripture, by which if persons form their beliefs there is love/acceptance, prayer/confidence, truth/solutions, and moderation/trust.  That story can also be extended.  God is our father in heaven. He loves his children, even when they are prodigal.  He invites us to self-control and a heavenly home.