Clearance: Restocking Your Emotional Inventory – Addiction
Sycamore Creek Church
October 2, 2011
Tom Arthur
Proverbs 23:29-35
Peace, Friends!
Do you have any emotions you’d like to run a clearance sale on? Today we wrap up a series where we’ve been restocking our emotional inventory. Addiction isn’t exactly an emotion, but it does have a lot of emotions surrounding it, and emotions tend to keep us in our addictions. So today I’d like to explore the world of emotions and addiction.
Addiction Is…
Let’s start out with a definition. It’s not a definition I got from someone else. Rather it’s my own definition for today’s message. An addiction is a habit of loving the wrong things too much and the right things too little. Let’s unpack that definition beginning with “habit.”
When I was in college studying psychology I learned about a little contraption called a Skinner box. A Skinner box is named after B.F. Skinner, the founder of behavioral psychology. For Skinner all behavior could be boiled down to punishment and reward. A Skinner box is a box that trains a rat to push a lever by way of punishment and reward. It has a light, a lever, and a floor that can deliver an electric shock. Using a Skinner box, you can quite easily train a rat to push the lever when the light is on by giving a reward for doing so (food or water) at the right time (when the light is on) and an electric shock when the rat pushes the lever at the wrong time (when the light is off). Essentially you are creating in the rat a habit of pushing the lever when you want through punishment and reward. The key is giving a reward or punishment at random intervals. By the end of the rat’s training in a Skinner box, the rat has the habit that you want.
Addictions are like that. They work toward creating within you a habit for doing something. A habit can be good or bad, but an addiction is a bad habit of loving the wrong things too much and the right things too little. An addiction can be “soft” or “hard.” The level of addiction has to do with how destructive the habit is. The more destructive the habit, or the more “wrong the love”, the “harder” the addiction. This is usually the case for substance abuse addictions. But I think it would be unfortunate for those of us who don’t struggle with substance abuse addictions to disregard the issue of addiction. That’s why I’ve decided to define an addiction as a habit of loving the wrong things too much and the right things too little. All of us have at least some “soft” addictions according to this definition.
I have never had a real hard addiction, but I have had several soft addictions. When I was growing up I had a soft addiction to porn. I looked at porn almost every day throughout high school. I had a habit of loving the wrong thing, an objectification of women for sexual gratification and lust. I had a habit of loving the right thing too little, holiness and purity in God’s eyes and viewing women as a whole person made in the image of God.
Having an addiction to porn is a soft addiction, but an addiction nonetheless. Still, porn is somewhat obvious. As I have prepared for this message and searched my own heart and life, I’ve come to notice another addiction I have. I am addicted to success, achievement, or getting A’s. When I was in seminary, I got a B- on a Methodism midterm, and I fell apart. I had the habit of loving the wrong thing too much, an identity wrapped up in performance, and the right things too little, an identity wrapped up in who I was as a child of God. This addiction continues to plague me in many ways even today. As I have been reading through the book of Proverbs, God’s wisdom book of the Bible, I came across this proverb that spoke to me about this addiction:
Proverbs 25:27 NLT
Just as it is not good to eat too much honey, it is not good for people to think about all the honors they deserve.
Our Addictions
If an addiction is a habit of loving the wrong thing too much and the right thing to little, then there are as many addictions as there are things.
A USA Today poll gives us a list of some things we are addicted to. Apparently we struggle with very different things depending on whether we are a man or woman. Here are the results of their survey:
Sex: Men (50%), Women (22%)
Food: Men (29%), Women (56%)
Money: Men (14%), Women (15%)
Alcohol: Men (7%), Women (2%)
Power: Men (2%), Women (7%)
(USA Today quoted in Leadership Magazine, Summer 2010).
It’s interesting to note that the percentages are almost opposite of each other across sex.
While gambling is not on this list, gambling can be something that many people struggle with as an addiction. When I first moved to Michigan, I was traveling through the Upper Peninsula. Growing up in Indiana there were no casinos, so I was intrigued to see a casino up in the U.P. On the way back home I decided to stop in and see what was going on. I felt a little awkward walking in, because I expected that I would be underdressed. In my mind, I was going to walk in and find good looking men in tuxes surrounded by gorgeous women in evening gowns standing around card, roulette, and craps tables laughing and having a grand ole time. What I found instead was a bunch of senior citizens sitting passively at slot machines pulling on levers with glazed over eyes. My mind immediately went back to a Skinner box. Lights? Check. Lever? Check. Random reward? Check. Here was a voluntary Skinner box where people trained themselves to have the habit of loving the wrong thing too much, throwing away their money, and the right thing too little, being a good steward of the resources that God has given them.
In today’s day and age I think it is also appropriate to consider the digital addictions we have. Do you know that Facebook by its very nature is addictive? Those little rewards it gives you—a comment from a friend, the next level of a game, a new picture of a family member—all work to produce a habit in you of loving the wrong thing too much, constantly checking for updates, and the right thing too little, staying focused at work or being present to those around you at home.
I haven’t named every single addiction that is out there. We’d be here all day. But you get the idea. Today I’d like to run a clearance sale on addiction and replace it with something better. Let’s do so by looking at God’s wisdom about addictions in the book of Proverbs.
God’s Wisdom on Addiction
The Bible has a lot to say about our habits and what’s right to love and what’s wrong to love. Let’s take a look at one particular example.
Proverbs 23:29-35 NLT
Who has anguish? Who has sorrow? Who is always fighting? Who is always complaining? Who has unnecessary bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? It is the one who spends long hours in the taverns, trying out new drinks. Don’t let the sparkle and smooth taste of wine deceive you. For in the end it bites like a poisonous serpent; it stings like a viper. You will see hallucinations, and you will say crazy things. You will stagger like a sailor tossed at sea, clinging to a swaying mast. And you will say, “They hit me, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t even know it when they beat me up. When will I wake up so I can have another drink?”
In this description of alcoholism, we see all kinds of habits piling up on top of each other, which add up to loving the wrong things. There’s the habit of spending a long time in the wrong place. There’s the habit of continually seeking a new drink, a new high. There’s the habit of being deceived by the immediate gratification of the taste and buzz of alcohol while being drunk. All these habits lead to certain ends: anguish, sorrow, fighting, complaining, bruises, and bloodshot eyes. The chemical dependence sets in and the addiction grabs hold of you through these harmful and destructive habits.
It should be noted that not everyone experiences this kind of addiction with alcohol. The issue here isn’t the alcohol. It’s the habits around alcohol. Some of us can drink responsibly without forming these habits. Some of us cannot. Some of you aren’t addicted to achievement the way I am. Some of you are. Remember that addictions are very particular to each person. So the problem here with alcohol isn’t alcohol but the habit of drunkenness.
When an addiction grabs hold of us in this way, all kinds of wrong loves set in. I’d like to illustrate those wrong loves with quotes taken from addicts themselves. While the quotes are all from hard addictions, I think they just as easily apply to soft addictions too.
(Most of the following quotes come from the book Addiction and Virtue by Kent Dunnington.)
Friendship
“When you’re drinking, liquor occupies the role of a lover or a constant companion.”
Addiction is the habit of loving the wrong kind of friend. We turn the thing itself into a friend, lover, or companion, but alcohol, porn, gambling, sex, or overeating are all poor substitutes for real human friendship. We love the wrong thing, friendship with a substance, over the right thing, real people.
Unifying Principle for Life
“I vividly remember what it was like to organize my whole life around smoking. When things went well, I reached for a cigarette. When things went badly, I did the same…Smoking became a ritual that served to highlight salient aspects of experience and to impose structure on what would otherwise have been a confusing morass of events.”
Wow! What does it mean to organize one’s whole life around something? How many things are really worthy of that kind of devotion? I know something of this myself when it comes to achievement. I structure most every day around achieving more and more. How can I get the most bang out of this day? This is not necessarily bad, and some of you would do well to move more in this direction, but when your entire life becomes unified around achieving this particular end, you have to ask yourself, is this an end worthy of that kind of commitment?
A Way of Life
“I became reliant on alcohol to enjoy stuff.”
I found this quote by Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played Harry Potter, in a Newsweek issue. It is sad that Radcliffe has achieved an amazing amount of success beyond most of our grasps, but is unable to enjoy it without the use of alcohol. In fact, he says that he had to use alcohol to enjoy pretty much everything. His addiction became a way of life for him.
An Idol
“Before A.A. we were trying to drink God out of a bottle.”
Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, said this. I think Wilson gets at the core of what an addiction is about. It is ultimately an idol. We love this substance or experience, the wrong thing, more than God, the right thing. We seek friendship and love from our addiction. We unify our lives around it so that it becomes a way of life. Our addiction becomes our god. It competes with the true living God, the only “thing” worthy of all this time, energy, devotion, and love. An addiction is a habit of loving an idol over the true God.
Restock with New Habits
So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to replace the habits of addiction (loving the wrong things) with habits of God (loving the right things). Here are three new habits to put on your emotional shelves:
1. Put God First.
Proverbs 1:7 NLT
Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Whenever you read “fear of the Lord” it is easy to make the mistake that this means an angry god who we most obey or else. That’s not primarily what “the fear of the Lord” means. First and foremost it means love, respect, and reverence for God. So there are certain ways that we do that. The primary way is that we spend time with God. We put God first in our lives by cultivating the habits of staying in love with God.
I like to use H.A.B.I.T.S. as an acronym:
Hang out with God (prayer)
Accountability (giving a true and transparent account of yourself to others)
Bible reading (daily reading your Bible)
Involvement with the Church (connecting, encouraging, and supporting people)
Tithing (living simply and giving generously)
Serving (the church, community, and world).
The habit of putting God first means cultivating a fear, respect, reverence, and love for God by practicing these specific H.A.B.I.T.S.
2. Develop habits of self-control.
Proverbs 25:28 NLT
A person without self-control is as defenseless as a city with broken-down walls.
Often our addictions flow out of a lack of the habit of self-control. This is not always true as is the case for some eating disorders like anorexia, which is characterized by an over-control of one’s eating behaviors. But anorexia is an exception to the rule. Most of us would do well to cultivate more self-control over our desires, passions, and the things our bodies love.
A key practice for nurturing self-control is fasting. Fasting is giving up something good to attain something better. When we regularly fast we are practicing not giving into our desires in an area where we are not struggling with an addiction so that when we find ourselves tempted with the addiction itself, we have new strengths of self-control to resist the addiction’s habits. In this way we attack the addiction indirectly.
3. Seek outside help.
Third, replace the isolating habits of addiction with the habit of seeking outside help. By outside help I mean addiction groups, therapy, friends, books, or support groups. Don’t walk this journey alone. A team is always stronger at practicing new habits than an individual. You will learn new things, be encouraged, and find role-models and coaches when you seek outside help.
Several outside helps have guided me in preparing today’s sermon, and I think some of them might be helpful to you. Addiction and Virtue by Kent Dunnington is a somewhat academic book, but several of the quotes from addicts in today’s sermon come from this book. A more accessible book is Thirty Days to Hope and Freedom from Sexual Addiction by Milton S. Magness. Magness has created a smart phone app for helping overcome any addiction (www.recoveryapp.com). Barb Flory, the founding pastor of SCC, found www.settingcaptivesfree.com very helpful in overcoming an overeating addiction. Another helpful website for overcoming an addiction to pornography is www.xxxchurch.com which offers free accountability software called X3. I have X3 loaded on all of my computers and meet regularly with an accountability partner who reviews my internet browsing habits. Also, SCC holds an umbrella support group on Wednesday evenings at the office run by Pat Orme. Each of these can be a good way to create a habit of seeking outside help.
New Loves
Proverbs 21:21 NLT
Whoever pursues godliness and unfailing love will find life, godliness, and honor.
What would life be like if you replaced the habits of loving the wrong things too much with habits of loving the right things? Imagine your priorities, passions, and loves all prioritized in the right order. Instead of warring against each other, your time and behaviors would be driving you more toward God. You don’t have to wait to die to experience heaven or hell. An addiction is hell or at least a taste of hell right here. It’s all your priorities in the wrong order. Freedom from addiction, habits of loving the right things, can be heaven right here too. Consider what it would be like being able to take all that time you’re using to feed your addiction and put it toward loving the right people in the right way! Wow! That would be an awesome life. That’s the kind of life I want to live. And ultimately godly habits end in delight and joy. Virtue or loving the right things is formed in us when practices lead to new habits and new habits lead to a new nature and eventually we begin to delight in those new habits.
So put your addiction on clearance today. Restock it with habits of loving the right things. Let me pray for you.
God, it’s hard to let go of some of these habits of addiction. Some of them have a destructive grasp upon us. I confess that these addictions are really idols. They compete with our love for you. Break the habits of addiction in each of us today and give to us a desire to love you through new godly habits.
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