We are concerned here with negative addictions. Addiction is a repetitive drive that clings to a person so tightly that it seems to be a part of that person. The addiction generally has its connection to one or more of the sensory mechanisms of the human being, and carries strong appeal to the emotional nature of the victim. When a desired physical experience is tied closely to some emotional ecstasy, it requires more than ordinary power to break that clasp tightening on an individual. There is risk in any society that an addiction may become so strong to a sufficient number of citizens that it can characterize the society. It becomes larger than individuals, although it resides in their separate lives. When an addiction is embraced in a society, freedom and righteousness are distorted. Social and personal problems become larger, more complex.
Some analysts of Rome’s ancient culture suggest that the addictions of the Romans, both in the gentry and peasants, caused the empire’s decline. There were sexual addictions creating distractions that contributed to the collapse of families; addictions to the circuses (which included the murder of persons by lions or gladiators in the Coliseum); addictions to subjugation of peoples (that included slavery); and, so the story goes. Because addictions become more and more intensive the addict seeks more bizarre conducts of depravity that can dilute a culture. Despair or malaise may become a norm. That despair may become so great that states approve programs to feed addictions. Persons, including some Christians, are sometimes caught in webs of addictions. These include sex, alcoholism, drugs, greed, entertainments, and one may add just about anything one does when he does it to excess – good and ill. Persons may become addicted to food, even to religion. Each has its own characteristics, to decline or uplift – at a cost. As I edit this, the addiction to a religion has meant hatreds and death to Americans in several nations of the world because of the addiction of some terrorists relating to what is seen by society as religious excesses.
Addictions to sex create exotic problems for the individual and society – from pornography to disease, perhaps to death. One of the negative consequences is that the time taken by the addiction robs us of legitimate experience – spiritually, mentally, physically and socially. The evil of addiction is not only what it brings negatively to the individual, but lost benefits that are displaced. Sexual addiction plays off the prurient interests in a person, related to physical and spiritual distortion. Several eminent physicians have said that if all intimate sexual participation were found only in legitimate contact between married persons, AIDS would be stamped out. (This does not deny that AIDS has now poured over sexual boundaries to affect others, especially to infants born to AIDS infected parents. Death dealing disease continues.)
The American way of life, accenting a moral/spiritual base by its founders, may invite decline by addictive infections. These include entertainment addictions, style preoccupations, and the like. The individual begins with self so to learn how to control urges even for constructive meaning. God addresses the problems to be solved through humble disciplines. So we may throw off the clinging (addictive) thing which becomes sin, and cultivate life balance. To know self is, in part, to know what is personally addictive. Mankind is adept in finding ways to create new addictions. Texting and gadgetry become addictive so to find another way to lose life when legitimacy for purpose is overdone. Even Jesus drew disciples from ministry for balance. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020