Friday, March 28, 2008
Celebrate Recovery
St. Paul, in Romans, has an amazing thing to say about addictions in Chapter 7.
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
If Paul was stuck, maybe it's OK for me, too.Pastor Rick Warren's church, Saddleback, has put this program together. It is similar to 12 step programs like AA, but explicitly puts God and Jesus in instead of a vague "Higher power." Originally it was a series of sermons from the Sermon on the Mount.
It came clear to us all that just stopping the alcohol, drugs, porn, etc is not enough. You're just a "dry drunk." There is a lot of soul work to do to recover your humanity.
One interesting statement that stuck out was Otis' remark that people who "have a lot of crises in their lives" probably have undealt-with stuff. If you are taking care of business in a healthy way, you just don't have many crises.
They also discussed an addiction cycle, starting with obsessive planning and thinking, the act itself, followed by anger and disgust that often spill over into relationships. Then there is a variable latent period, followed by a repeat of the cycle. People become helpless to stop it, and don't even get much pleasure out of the act.
Your patients might need this. Your colleagues might need this. Your family or a friend might need this. Dare I say it, even us docs might need this?
