Addiction II: Addicted to God?

Aren't you going a little overboard, Tracie, in saying that everyone is addicted? Is there really a harmful thing about too much chocolate, or too much humor... I mean you are saying these things (insert your own) could be harming my relationship with God?

Chocolate and laughter are good! But only you can answer if your activities, attitudes, and relationships are freely chosen, or are compelled. In the first, the motivation is love. In the second, slavery.

PAUSE. The following section will be lost on you if you really don't feel you have any addictions... so it would be helpful if you could reflect, before proceeding, about those things that kill your desires... anesthetize your heart... keep you from connecting deeply with God.

The following quotes come from May's chapter on The Theological Nature of Addiction. Fascinating!

"The spiritual significance of addiction is not just that we lose freedom through attachment to things, nor even that things so easily become our ultimate concerns. Of much more importance is that we try to fulfill our longing for God through objects of attachment."

"The more we become accustomed to seeking spiritual satisfaction through things other than God, the more abnormal and stressful it becomes to look for God directly."

These means can be so subtle...
Going to church can be more about appearances, or getting a feel good fix from serving, than connecting with a Person.

Reading your Bible can be more about feeling spiritual because you did your duty, or the satisfaction of fulfilling routine, or making you feel smart, than spending time with a Person.

Prayer can be more about the cathartic experience of processing your burdens, or feeling good about your spirituality, than talking and listening to a Person.

So does God just want us to become addicted to Him?

"I think God refuses to be an object for attachment because God desires full love, not addiction. Love born of true freedom, love free from attachment, requires that we search for a deepening awareness of God, just as God freely reaches out to us.

In addition, full love for God means we must turn to God over and against other things. If our choice of God is to be made with integrity, we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods. True love, then is not only born of freedom it is also born of difficult choice. A mature and meaningful love must say something like, "I have experienced other goodnesses, and they are beautiful, but it is You, my true heart's desire, whom I choose above all."

...more tomorrow