Religious addiction is often used as a means to avoid reality. One example is Rick, who entered our sexual-addiction program. Because of a religious experience that had “delivered” him from his sexual compulsivity, however, Rick left before the staff thought he was ready. His pastor had enabled Rick’s toxic faith by repeatedly negating the need for psychological or medical treatment.
Rick was an exhibitionist who every week acted out his compulsion. While in prayer on the unit, he experienced “deliverance” from his sinful behavior. What Rick really experienced—as do most addicts diagnosed with religious addiction—was relief from feeling guilty or responsible for his sexually compulsive behavior.
Rick’s religious addiction allowed him to avoid taking responsibility for working through his exhibitionism. It enabled him to dismiss the truth that his problem was primarily an act of passive aggression. With a means of mood alteration provided by toxic faith and prayer, he distanced himself from the undesirable emotions of anger toward women. Rick used his religious addiction to avoid the reality that exhibitionism is a symbolic act of aggression toward women, a maladaptive way of expressing repressed anger.
Rick’s addiction relieved him from dealing with the brokenness that led to his exhibitionism. Many exhibitionists have repressed anger toward their mothers or female caregivers; their exhibitionism accomplishes two goals: to be seen and to express anger toward females. These are complex, and often painful, issues for the addict to deal with. Compulsive behavior circumvents angry, sad feelings. Rick’s compulsive exhibitionism allowed him to skirt the real issue of his feelings of low self-worth.
For Rick, some very real issues went unaddressed. Most likely he will return to his previous well-established behavior—sexual acting out alternated with religious compulsivity. Like most religious addicts, however, Rick will put the responsibility for his change on God. Rick believes that God delivered him. If he acts out again, he would feel that the reason was sin, not addiction, and that God can and will forgive and deliver him from sin. Once delivered from his “sin,” Rick can continue with his denial intact. When he acts out again, the process repeats itself.
Rick’s behavior is not reality based. The reality is that his “sinful” behavior is rooted in addiction and is something for which he must take personal responsibility.
Individuals become addicted to alcohol and drugs for understandable reasons. The substances contain potent chemicals that lock a person’s psychological desires into a physiological need that must be fulfilled. These days the term addiction has been used to characterize behaviors that go beyond chemicals. Some have criticized a growing trend to label every problem as an addiction. They complain that, rather than accept responsibility for their behaviors, people continue in those behaviors, justified in doing so because they are “helplessly” addicted. Others argue that persons focused on recovering from an addiction are less likely to investigate the issues surrounding the development of the problem and more likely to concentrate on extinguishing the behavior. Instead of fixing a deep inner conflict or admitting a serious spiritual deficiency, they simply try to stop a behavior and miss out on God’s power to completely change them physically, mentally, and emotionally.
But addiction and responsibility never have been mutually exclusive characteristics of a condition. Few people addicted to alcohol would say, “Of course I drink. I’m an alcoholic.” The person is much more likely not to use the label of alcoholic, because once it is admitted, the person must choose whether to accept responsibility to address the addiction. For this reason, alcoholics, drug addicts, and other types of addicts do all kinds of things to get around the label of addict. Their denial becomes complicated and well developed.
To use the term addiction, therefore, is an invitation to accept responsibility for the problem and to determine to do something about it. The challenge is to break through denial and be willing to do whatever it takes to be free.
Sin and addiction are not mutually exclusive in a condition either. All of us, as much as we hate to admit it, sin. Whether we are alcoholic or not, our drinking anything is sinful if it does not honor God or if it leads another person into sinful behavior. A three-hundred-pound man who has never had a drop of alcohol sins when he drives up to a convenience store and orders a “Big Swallow,” which is full of sugar, caffeine, chemicals, and more calories than most people consume in one meal. That is no less sinful than the man who downs pure vodka until he passes out. Whether either fellow is addicted to the substance is irrelevant. Neither behavior honors God, and both negatively influence society and younger, impressionable men and women.
Sin and addiction exist simultaneously. But because of the demeaning manner in which the church has treated addicts, many people have overreacted and attempted to remove the issue of morality and sin entirely from addiction. Talk to recovering people about how they behaved in the midst of their addiction, and most will not deny they were involved in a multitude of sinful acts. The original addiction destroys the relationship with God, and then other areas fall prey to sin and cause further separation from God.
Many individuals feel so guilty about these sins that they don’t do well in treatment. Fleeing the sins of the past had nothing to do with their use of the term addiction. Their recovery isn’t based on the ability to deny their sins. Instead, their recovery begins when they accept that they have been involved in many sins and can feel forgiveness for those wrongs. Without a renewed relationship with the Creator, the feeling of being fully forgiven cannot be achieved and the recovery becomes an act of compensation rather than a process of change. In that case the term addiction is used to avoid responsibility, not to avoid the issue of sin.
Why, then, is it such a desirable term for many current maladies, and what advantage is there in calling something an addiction? First, it is used so frequently today because many people who are doing a great deal with their lives have had addiction problems. Recovered addicts are leading the way toward personal change and growth. While the rest of the world seems satisfied to deny and continue to compensate for their losses and ill feelings, addicts are busy doing an inside job on themselves to “devictimize” themselves from the addiction.
If something can be labeled an addiction, our culture feels more hope for overcoming it; we know how to fight addiction. There are steps to take. God is part of addiction recovery. Families are expected to receive help when a family member is addicted. Groups of addicts band together to help one another with similar addictions. In our society, it seems that addiction problems are the ones to have because help and support are available, there is hope for change, and many other people have had a similar problem. The label of addiction invites others to the point of recovery.
Another advantage of the addiction label is that it identifies a specific condition with a specific set of symptoms. Often people are miserable without knowing the source of the problem. They feel hopeless because no one seems to understand. Others who haven’t been through the same feelings and circumstances don’t have the credibility to help. But when a person can relate to an addiction, that person discovers that others have had the same problem, the problem has many similar characteristics, and others have found relief for their misery. When overeaters find that they don’t just overeat, but they eat addictively like thousands of other food addicts, they have a greater sense of hope. If a driven businessperson discovers that his work habits parallel workaholism, the isolation is over, and a greater tendency to find help motivates the person to find others who have overcome their addiction to work.
Addiction’s biggest benefit is its invitation to stop the denial, accept the full dimension of the problem, and join others in the recovery process. This happens when the person locks in and identifies with the common elements of addiction.
If people could identify their toxic-faith behaviors as an addiction, they would be in a better position to admit that there is a problem rather than to justify what they are doing. Some individuals have spent their whole lives in a world of religious fanaticism and fantasy, hiding in their compulsive behaviors and delusions. They believe they are honoring God, but they are only circumventing reality, easing their pain, and attempting to work their way to heaven.
Some are in dangerous cults, some are in denominational churches, some are attending a local church on the corner in your neighborhood, and others are seeking God in isolation. Some learned their toxic faith from their parents, while others developed theirs on their own. But because there exist so many others like them, they do not believe there is a problem. They are unaware they have completely missed God in their search for him.
Until they look at their lives and see the parallels to a condition common to others, they may have little hope for change. If they can see that their practice of faith is off-center, there may be great hope for change. If they perceive that what they have done with their lives is an addictive process, they may break through their denial and band with others to pursue a pure relationship with God. With the power of God and the support of fellow strugglers, there is great hope for recovery.
When an individual is excessively devoted to something or surrenders compulsively and habitually to something, that pathological devotion becomes an addiction. The presence of psychological and physiological dependency on a substance, relationship, or behavior results in addiction. When a person sacrifices family, job, economic security, and sanity for the sake of a substance, relationship, or behavior, addiction exists. When a destructive relationship to something becomes the central part of a person’s life, when all else is sacrificed for the sake of that sick relationship, the person is said to be addicted.
Addictions develop when individuals seek relief from pain, a quick fix, or an immediate altered mood. When a person develops a pathological relationship to this mood-altering experience or substance, addiction exists. The addict becomes devoted to the source of mood alteration and, by giving up everything for that change in feelings, comes to worship the addictive act with body, mind, and spirit.
Most discussion of addiction focuses on drugs and alcohol. These substances are the most widely known producers of instant mood alteration. More is known about those who enter into a pathological relationship to alcohol and drugs than any other addiction. The life-damaging consequences are easiest to see with these chemical forms of addiction. Even though chemical addictions are common, however, there is great confusion over them, especially when it comes to mood alteration.
Drugs and alcohol are both mood and mind altering, even in small amounts. Many people think of addictions only when connected to a condition of inebriation resulting from extreme overindulgence. This is a gross misconception.
Drugs and alcohol alter the way the mind interprets the perceptions provided by the senses; they alter the mood or one’s feelings and emotions. Even small amounts of a mood-altering chemical allow the user to flee the depths of feelings and pain. The addiction is allowed to flourish because of its ability to alter reality in small or large doses.
The addict, possessing little self-worth, forms faulty perceptions of God and the world in general. The mood- and mind-altering chemicals allow these false perceptions somehow to make sense and feel less burdensome. The more the reward from the chemical, the more likely the person will continue to rely on the chemical as a translator of reality or an insulator from it. If a small dose can provide this insulation, that small dose can become just as psychologically addicting as a large amount is physiologically addicting.
Addiction is not confined to chemicals, whether in large or small quantities. Addiction goes beyond drugs and alcohol and branches into emotional and process addictions. All addictions serve the same purpose: to change reality into a more tolerable form. They all eliminate God or at least distort the relationship with God. Every form is just as destructive as another; all result in disillusionment and isolation.
Some people become addicted to negative emotions. It may seem strange to think a person could become addicted to something painful rather than something that brings instant pleasure, like alcohol or sex. As negative as the emotion might be, however, it becomes addictive because it is easier to manage than another more painful or difficult emotion. If sadness and depression become more tolerable than anger and rage, retreating into depression can become just as addicting as retreating into a drunken stupor.
I know this to be true from my own experience. I had a relationship with a wonderful girl whom I wanted to marry. When I broke off the relationship, I should have grieved and expressed my anger and rage at myself until I rid myself of every ounce of venomous emotion. Instead I lived with self-anger and self-hatred, masking them with depression and long bouts of profound sadness.
People like myself live with their negative feelings rather than express them. They retreat to less negative feelings in an attempt to cope. In our society, men and women differ in what they have been allowed to express and what they have been asked to suppress. For example, it’s not considered ladylike to be angry. Many women were never allowed to show anger as little girls. Getting angry would mean risking the wrath or perceived loss of love and attention of their parents.
To be pleasing to a power greater than themselves (their parents), the women-to-be sacrificed their anger. But without their anger, they could not set boundaries and protect themselves from the violations of life. Without their anger, they become victims to be violated, beaten, battered, and bruised. Without their anger, they cannot muster the courage to address their God. No matter how intense their rage at their plight, they cannot protect themselves or get the victimizers out of their lives. Their role is to be pleasing, and angry people are not pleasing.
These victims’ anger did not just go away; it remained deep and hidden. To compensate for its suppressed presence, some resort to depression, as I did. They exhibit the miserable personality syndrome: Nothing is right, and everything becomes a source of misery and irritation. Instead of expressing deep hurt, the wounded female lives a miserable existence and gripes and complains about everything. She becomes addicted to her misery because it allows her to forget about her anger, or at least postpone dealing with it. Her dependency on misery is just as difficult to break as someone else’s dependency on crack cocaine. Both are means to a different reality that allows for pain to be deferred.
In some expressions of the Christian faith, anger is a no-no for both men and women. Some believe that everyone must be completely loving and forgiving at all times and that anyone showing anger is not a good Christian and should work on the sinful attitude at the heart of the anger. But that belief is a distortion of how Christianity and reality are to be joined. Everyone, Christian or not, is going to get angry. The sooner this anger is expressed and resolved, the better. Yet many angry Christians don’t acknowledge that they are angry, even while they seethe with bitterness and resentment. And their denial of their feelings is ineffective and unnecessary.
Christ became angry, expressed it, and did something about it. His anger led him to cleanse the temple of moneychangers. These were toxic believers who exchanged animals for money. Their interest was not in God but in the money that could be made from buying livestock low and selling it high. Christ knew their hearts and was hurt and angry over their toxic-faith activities. Without his anger, he never would have removed those violators of the temple’s sanctity.
Mrs. Jones is addicted to her depression. She uses religion to medicate her misery, much like the alcoholic or compulsive overeater uses compulsive behavior to medicate and reinforce depression to avoid having to acknowledge repressed rage.
Mrs. Jones sent a good portion of her retirement money to the church, which used it to buy a fancy sound system. She had given the money at her pastor’s urging to help pay the church’s rent. When she realized that she had been used, she was unable to express her anger. She saw the situation as just another bad decision. God will judge him, she reasoned, as if the fact that God will judge means she ought to let herself be used time and time again.
Unable to show anger at those who used her, Mrs. Jones became more depressed, bitter, and resentful. To get angry with those in authority was a no-no, a lesson she learned early in life. She never learned that it is human to be angry with those who misuse and abuse authority and who take advantage of others.
Whether it was her church, children, friends, or family members who used or abused her, she would “put it in God’s hands” rather than confront the abuser or set some boundaries. What she was really doing was making God responsible for her inability to use her anger in a healthy way, to be assertive, to set boundaries, and to say no.
Mrs. Jones’s use of Scripture to justify her position helped her to avoid having to set and maintain boundaries. She operated under the principle that if all persecution is ordained by God, there is no need to say no. Without a healthy sense of anger, she wasn’t able to be assertive and protect herself from being violated. Without her anger, she didn’t have the capacity to defend herself in a world that is often quite unsafe.
If Mrs. Jones became angry, she would have to take responsibility for the toxic shame connected with an angry child of God. Her shame is toxically bound with her anger. She learned early in life that if she were angry she would experience the shame of being unacceptable. This connection, which is not reality based, causes problems in her relationship with God, herself, and others.
Mrs. Jones’s toxic faith has nothing to do with God. Her religious addiction provides her only with an illusory relationship to God. Her god of religion provides her with a false sense of acceptance for playing the role of the miserable martyr. Mrs. Jones needs to take responsibility for her own life.
Without our anger, we are unable to cleanse the temple of God and maintain its sanctity. Without our anger, we cannot get those people who violate the sanctity of our beings out of our lives. Without our anger, we are relegated to playing the role of enabler and victim.
Without anger, people must allow themselves to be defiled and victimized without objection. Anger can be a mechanism for self-defense; those who deny its presence are vulnerable to manipulation and all forms of exploitation. People who don’t have the right to be angry become powerless, unable to stand for what is right.
Men are supposed to deny a different set of emotions. In our society, big boys don’t cry. But without our grief and sadness, we can’t release our sense of violation. The pain and shame that come from abuse have no way of being processed. It is well said, “That which cannot be processed is repressed.” We stumble through life without understanding our feelings, completely out of touch with our emotions. We are deeply grieved by our lost expectations and sense of inadequacy, but we don’t feel safe acknowledging our sadness.
We show our anger, but never the deep hurt and sadness beneath it. When we feel sad, anger becomes a safe retreat. It causes the adrenaline to rush through us so the payoff is not just that we avoid looking weak, but we also feel differently because of the chemicals coursing through our bodies. The more adrenaline we pump through anger, the less sadness we are forced to feel.
This lack of grieving is a poison to our existence. There is no biblical precedent for men not expressing openly their deepest hurts and sorrows. The Old Testament depicts many real men showing their real emotions. The men of the nation of Israel would rip their clothes, sprinkle themselves with ashes, wear black armbands, and spend time in public mourning and grief. They would wail before the Lord to process their sense of shame and pain. That extremely freeing experience allowed them to express their emotions to the full degree and then move on without the needless baggage of building negative emotions. Without the ability to “wail before the Lord,” we are forced to repress our disappointments and sadness and find ways to compensate for these emotions by replacing them with others less threatening to express.
The aggressively virile American male is the unfortunate result of a man’s unwillingness to grieve. The macho image is a defense against life and the possible situations of vulnerability that would leave him open to be controlled or ridiculed by others. Macho men, without their grief, must find a way to gain power and control over their environment. They have a unique way of rationalizing and justifying their behavior and violations of others, and they are driven to perform to gain the prestige needed to command the respect of others. Many times what is seen from the outside as giftedness or “anointing” is simply an overcompensation to defend against a position of vulnerability. Many men, driven to power by their anger, are full of grief and sadness that remain unfelt until a crisis or breakdown brings all of these emotions to the surface.
It is incredible that so many men in our churches today are out of touch with their emotions, when the Christ they say they follow was so in touch with his. From Scripture we can see that Christ did not deny the depths of what he felt. In the Garden of Gethsemane, with his soul “exceedingly sorrowful, even to death,” as “His sweat became like great drops of blood” (Matthew 26:38; Luke 22:44), Christ was able to grieve the unfairness of his impending persecution. He did not withhold the expression of those emotions out of fear that others would no longer follow him. He honestly expressed the full degree of what he felt as he was feeling it. Many emotionless followers are not using Christ as a model.
If Christ walked the earth today, some people in our churches would be uncomfortable with his open display of emotion. There is a good chance they would shame him for that conduct. “Where is your faith?” they would say. “Rejoice always, … in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God,” they would admonish (see Luke 8:25; 1 Thessalonians 5:16,18). I can just hear some religious addict saying, “Come on, Jesus. You need to have real peace about this.” They would shame his feelings because such raw emotions don’t live up to their image of a man of God or how easy faith in God is supposed to make life.
Church people are not the only ones who would struggle with Christ’s honest and open display of emotion. Many in the mental health profession would be just as likely to respond poorly to his grief. They would perhaps say he was having a nervous breakdown or an anxiety attack. They would perhaps suggest he be involuntarily restrained until the crisis passed. His open and honest display of emotion would be too much for them, too threatening to their inner worlds of hidden feelings.
When Christ walked the earth, he set a great example for us to follow. He didn’t leave out the emotional side of life. It’s too bad so few choose to live after his example and instead deny their emotions and the need to express them.
Rather than accept their negative feelings and resolve them, emotional addicts become addicted to the emotions that make life bearable, the familiar emotions that seem easier—the emotions the toxic family tolerated. To be accepted, the addicts were forced to find or create a delusional world that allowed them to avoid what they never learned to handle. That way, they could hide or kill the feelings of shame of being unacceptable. They became addicted to the pretense and the emotions they relied on to survive.
We have become an emotionally addicted society. We are walking paradoxes of what we are willing to show and what we are actually feeling. We are in a constant state of denial when it comes to our emotions. Women, though angry on the inside, feel safe only if they show their misery and depression. Men, feeling sad and depressed, will not risk being labeled weak by expressing their sadness. They push people around through their anger, thus masking their depression. An angry female without her depression could not exist. A depressed man without his anger could not cope. Both become addicted to the emotion that appears to be more tolerable and acceptable. Fortunately, many are breaking through the denial and beginning to live comfortably and honestly with their emotions.
In addition to chemical addictions and emotional addictions, there exist process addictions. Process addictions, such as work and religion, are more pervasive in our society than the more commonly recognized chemical addictions. Work becomes the means by which individuals establish a sense of self and acceptability. Process addicts focused on work believe that they are valued only for what they can accomplish rather than for who they are.
Behind every workaholic is a person who feels inadequate and is driven to compensate for a lack of self-worth. Compulsive achievers defend against the day when they might be forced to admit inadequacy or inferiority. Workaholics are actually quite spiritually focused persons. They attempt to find God through work. If god is money, the work is intended to bring them closer to that god. If they have a relationship with God the Creator, they work to gain favor and be pronounced good.
Workaholics follow after a fabrication of the true God. They become addicted to the sense of power attained from the work and the striving to excel. People addicted to a process such as work become addicted to pursuit of a god of their own making. They lose the real God and worship the fruit of their labor, be it money, fame, or whatever earthly pursuit they most value.
All addictions have at least one element in common: worship of the process and worship of the outcome. The worship aspect of addiction is easily seen in the lives of most addicts. An extremely overweight friend of mine would not stop eating excessively, even for the sake of his family. He loved food and had some with him most of the time. He could go hours during the day without touching food, but when he was home in the evenings, he spent most of his time eating—a reward for his hard work. It compensated for his deprivation as a child. He lived to eat.
It didn’t matter that he embarrassed his children. It was insignificant that his cholesterol level shot up into dangerous levels. He didn’t react when his wife threatened to leave if he refused to lose weight. Food was too much a portion of his life to do without. He was always thinking about what to eat next. While he was eating, nothing mattered but how good he felt. No follower of any religion had a more devoted member than this man who served the god of food.
Worship is built into addiction. The addict serves the act of addiction with every element of his or her being. Initially, a drink alters the person’s mind, bringing a brief, temporary change. As the problem progresses, however, the person becomes a slave to drink and gives up everything for it. Family, friends, work, and self-respect are all placed upon the altar of alcohol. Everything is offered up as sacrifice for what was once a drink but has now become an idol of worship. In the end, all addictions become a form of idolatry—that is, the worship of a relationship, substance, or behavior instead of God. The object of idolatry stands in place of and in the way of God.
It may be drink, sexual encounters, or work, but all addicts find a means to make life tolerable. These objects of addiction allow the addict to avoid pain and manage his or her internal conflict. It may kill the person in the long run or destroy all relationships, but the object of addiction must be maintained for survival. The addict will live for the addiction and die for it in the ultimate act of worship and devotion.
A person with toxic faith can worship a false god just as easily as an alcoholic can worship a bottle of booze. The person with toxic faith is just as likely to be willing to die out of devotion to that false god as a drug addict is willing to die out of devotion to drugs.
The toxic faithful adhere to a toxic religion in order to dodge the emotional turmoil that comes with facing the reality of their circumstances. Their lives focus on the religion and not on God. The religion engulfs them, and they lose themselves to its practice.
Van grew up in an abusive home. His father was an alcoholic who became belligerent when he drank. Van remembers vividly the fighting between his mom and dad. And he remembers his older sister secreting him and his two brothers in the closet until all was clear. It was not unusual for Van’s mother to wake the children in the middle of the night and go into a tirade about his father. Other times the children would be wakened by their dad coming home drunk, yelling, screaming, breaking things, and beating his mom. Van and his brothers and sister would go to bed each night in fear of what might happen.
If Van’s father wasn’t venting his anger on his mother, he was venting it on the children. When the father came home, the mother often greeted him by relating how rotten the kids—especially Van—had been that day. Van’s father would stop the kids in the middle of what they were doing, or drag all the children out of bed, and beat them. Many times, at his mom’s insistence, he would line up the kids, tell them to drop their drawers, and spank and humiliate them. Van remembers the pain and the shame inflicted on him and his brothers and sister. The siblings reported the fear and terror they felt being forced to watch the beatings. The threat, “This is what is going to happen to you if you kids don’t straighten up,” has an all-too-familiar ring for Van and his siblings.
All Van knew was that he wanted to escape the pain and shame of his family. He wanted someone to care for him and not hurt him. He needed someone to be nice and protect him. He needed someone or something to make his life safe and worth living. One of Van’s friends introduced him to a church where he heard how God loves him, how the fruit of the Spirit could be his, and how, upon his acceptance of Jesus Christ, God would fill him with the Holy Spirit.
Van became a Christian. He spent all his time in Bible studies, worship services, ministry outreaches, home fellowships, and other work of the Lord. Van found his escape from the pain of the past. Van became more dependent on religion than on his God.
Van found the affirmation he always wanted in church, unaware that his teaching the Word of God had more to do with his need to be affirmed and accepted than with his love of God. Van relished the mood alteration he experienced when those around him esteemed his ability to teach. But Van was unable to generate self-esteem for himself or to feel worthy of God. He valued and was valued for what he could do rather than for who he was. All Van knew was that he had found a way to experience the joy of being valued. He was hooked.
Van began to find himself at odds with the sister who once protected him and the brothers who had shared his pain and shame. He began to berate his siblings for their rebelliousness toward God. He preached and “Bible-bullied” and shamed them. They just didn’t measure up to Van’s expectations. Just as his father had berated them because of his alcohol, Van began to berate and shame those around him because of his religion.
It became clear to Van that he had the answer and that he needed to abandon those who loved him the most; they just didn’t measure up. Van dove into the only thing that seemed to bring him a sense of relief and comfort: religion. Religion made him feel like he was somebody. He had found a way to hide those feelings he desperately needed to rid himself of.
Van got married and things went well—at first. After a while, however, he began to notice his wife’s shortcomings. He would constantly condemn and demean her for her lack of commitment. Altering his mood with his sense of righteousness, he would constantly throw the scriptures on submission in her face anytime she complained about his insensitivity and her need for a caring husband. His father’s abuse to his mom lay in the abuse of alcohol; Van’s constant belittling and badgering of his wife lay in the abuse of religion.
His wife finally had enough. No longer able to endure his sense of self-righteousness and his religious abuse, she filed for divorce.
Forced to endure the loss of marriage, Van dove further into his toxic faith for relief. He would do anything to be involved with religion if it allowed him to keep his focus off his own problems. He would stay up all night with street people and not be able to show up for work the next day. His employers became more and more irate with his tardiness and absenteeism and gave him an ultimatum: If he continued to be late or absent, then he would have to find employment elsewhere. Van responded indignantly and continued to preach the “godly” lifestyle to his fellow workers and to show up late, if at all. Fed up with his behavior, his employers fired him. Nevertheless, Van deluded himself into believing that there wasn’t anything wrong with his behavior and that his employers were persecuting him for his faith.
Divorced, unemployed, and feeling abandoned by the “god” he tried so hard to please, Van came to us depressed, lonely, and suicidal. We talked about how many times the children of alcoholics become obsessive-compulsive, and we looked at the characteristics of toxic faith. Van began to realize how he had used religion like a drug to alter his mood and justify his behavior. He identified how much of his behavior was like his dad’s. He was as insensitive, demeaning, abusive, and irresponsible as his father had been, except Van had used religion instead of alcohol.
Van was able to talk about his abuse as well as his abusive behavior with a group of caring people who understood what he had gone through. He is now in the process of healing his own wounds, making amends, and working with a twelve-step program that allows him to adopt a healthier faith.
Like any other addiction, the practice of religion becomes central to every other aspect of life. All relationships evolve from the religion. Like an alcoholic entering a favorite bar, the religious addict feels total acceptance in the company of other like-minded believers. They offer support and encouragement. They permit a diversion from responsibilities and growth. Any sign of pain or conflict becomes an excuse to retreat into the assembly of other deluded followers who reassure the addict that everything will work out.
The religious addiction becomes tied to these people who support the addiction. The addict depends on the rituals and the others who go through those rituals. Dependency on the religious practice and its members removes the need for dependency on God. The believer becomes hooked on a substitute with others who will not let go. The religion and those who practice it become the central power for the addict who no longer is in touch with God.
While I attended seminary, I worked in a counseling center on campus that allowed all of the rookie counselors to practice counseling skills. One evening I met a couple who had been having difficulty with their daughter. She had gotten pregnant at age sixteen and moved in with the baby’s father. The parents were respectable members of the local church, and the experience had humiliated them. The incident radically changed their relationship. They grew apart and existed without intimacy. They rarely talked when they were together, and the times they were together became less frequent. They came to counseling because the wife wanted the relationship to change.
The woman had fled to a new church when she became too embarrassed to attend her old one. The pastor incited the congregation to screams and howls every time he preached—quite a change from her staid pastor of twenty years. Everyone welcomed her, and she felt as if she had found a new home. That her husband was not with her made it even better for her; at least for a little while she could forget about her responsibilities and struggles at home. Everyone threw her a lot of attention because they wanted her to become a member of the church.
The wife’s dedication grew more and more intense. She attended on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday evenings. On Tuesday mornings she baby-sat for the young mothers’ class, and on Thursday afternoons she attended a women’s Bible study. Almost every day she showed up at the church. She started doing volunteer work around the church office, and that was when the pastor noticed her and began to develop a relationship with her. When he suggested that each Friday afternoon they have a counseling session, she was thrilled to be able to spend the time with him. She thought of it as a totally innocent involvement.
Her first uneasy feelings occurred when he suggested that she leave her husband. She was angry with her husband, but she had no intention of leaving him. A bolt of reality struck her, and in a moment she realized that the minister was unhealthy, the church was unhealthy, and her involvement was unhealthy. She had become fanatical in her church activity. God had nothing to do with it. It was all out of a motivation to relieve the pain from the situation with her daughter. She was able to admit in our session that her involvement had become an addiction.
Many others have become trapped in an unhealthy involvement with a church. Conviction turns to addiction, and excess activity eases the pain. Most are not able to see for themselves the unhealthiness of the involvement. If someone is not able to point out what they are doing, they continue in their compulsive actions, believing God is honored. Like this woman, they allow intimacy to fall from their relationships, and they become vulnerable to other unhealthy relationships. The warmth of the other followers melts away the individual’s ability to evaluate the experience objectively. Before the experience is over, the addict is lost inside the organization—an organization that looks good to most but actually erects a wall between the follower and God.
In the case of the bereaved woman who lost her unwed daughter to pregnancy and an undesirable boyfriend, religious addiction took the form of activity, much like workaholism. A compulsive churchaholic accurately describes a person obsessed with the need to do more and more through church work. Like the workaholic who invests everything in work, avoiding the responsibilities that come with relationships, the religious addict creates an atmosphere that revolves around church work. Any interpersonal relationships are developed as a result of or a part of service to the organization. At any sign of conflict, the churchaholic retreats into more church work. All intimacy can be avoided by spending increasing amounts of time doing what appears to be dedicated service. In times of great pain and disappointment, the religious addict has church work for protection from the rejections and abandonments of life. The addict does not depend on God, but on the work and comfort that comes from being too involved to cope with problems.
A certain kind of peace is found in activity. Just as alcoholics drink to find relief, religious addicts find relief in work. What is labeled as peace, however, is actually avoidance. Hard work is the enabler for avoidance. Essentially, they work hard in an attempt to outrun the pain. Real people are lost and replaced with those who will assist in the charade. Busyness becomes the goal, and religious compulsivity provides a false presence of God. The compulsive working out of their religion gives the mood alteration necessary for the illusion of being okay. Though those feelings of being okay may be fleeting, it is still better than living without a moment of rest or relief from the conflicts of life.
Churchaholics have embraced a counterfeit religion. God is not honored, and the relationship with him is not furthered. Work is the focus of everything. It—and not God—allows the individuals to feel safe. Rather than retreat to the loving arms of God, they literally bury themselves in their compulsive acts. The harder they work, the better they feel because they convince one another that God applauds their efforts. They have grown so entangled in the world of the church that they no longer have time for the family. They are trying to work their way to heaven or pay the price for their guilt. Without intervention, they lose all sense of reality and rarely come to understand God as he really is.
Anyone can become addicted to just about anything. Whatever hides or kills the pain of being unable to process the conflicts of life will serve well as an addiction. The practice of faith and involvement in religion offer many potentially addictive components. One can become addicted to feelings of righteousness or feelings that come with finally being right about something; one can become obsessed with prayer; one can become addicted to the emotional highs resulting from worship and praise; one can become addicted to feelings of being a part of something exciting; one can become addicted to feelings of belonging to something big. Being a part of a group of other believers produces wonderful feelings. Those feelings of relationship should be enjoyed. They are addictive only when they become the purpose of the endeavor rather than a wonderful by-product of worshiping God.
Worship provides an example of how an unbalanced practice of faith can cause problems. Many people who worship God in song and praise achieve emotional highs. In God’s presence they feel better about themselves and their future as they focus on the wonder of God. If they lose focus—if the feelings, rather than God, become the central part of the worship experience—the worship is toxic and addictive.
Many retreat into a religious group in times of stress or disappointment. They seek the safety of God’s church when their powers are exhausted and they continue to feel lonely, abandoned, and scared. Security is found with other believers focused on God. Often the individuals feel so welcomed and safe that they desire to continue in the faith, yet God is not the primary factor. Feelings of acceptance and warmth become addictive. Toxic believers think they are growing in faith, but they closely resemble the businessmen who go to church just to make contacts. Sometimes, though, the involvement will continue until reliance is placed on God and not on feelings of belonging.
True addiction always results in separation from God. It starts as a substitution for God and eventually becomes a wedge between the person and God. The alcoholic feels unloved and rejected by God. The booze efficiently destroys the presence of God and blocks a person’s knowledge of God, and the person becomes overwhelmed without tapping into the power and strength of the Creator. Where God could be found becomes off-limits for the alcoholic. A religious addict replaces God with a caricature of God. The addict sees God with a scorecard, writing down every wrong thing that has happened. To the addict, the only way to erase sins from the scorecard is hard work. Hard work and the feelings derived from it replace God completely.
Some addicts replace God with a caricature through their use of Scripture. This comment seems strange because most people use the Word of God to grow closer to him; meditation on God’s Word and memorization of God’s Word normally align believers with God. But for some people the Word can become a god unto itself. Memorization can become an addiction rather than an act of devotion. Individuals become obsessed with verses and, in the process, forget that the verses are about a God who communicated his love to his people.
The churchaholic obsessed with Scripture stops communicating because he or she fills every conversation with verses and sermonettes. No one wants to listen to or even be around the person. Such pseudo-speech becomes a form of religious intellectualism; someone becomes so immersed in an aspect of faith that real faith gets lost. The comfort of God is pushed aside by the self-induced comfort of superiority that comes from being able to rattle off a verse rather than connect with another human being as Christ did.
A family member abuses Scripture in this way. Every relationship turns into a student-teacher dynamic. She holds herself above the others, ready to set them on course with a helpful scripture. She has alienated everyone in the process. If her faith were pure, it would attract others. Instead it repulses them and drives people from her and from wanting to pursue a relationship with God. As she builds up her image with this “admirable” form of communication, she puts God down in the eyes of those who see her faith. Her position as “teacher” brings her a sense of power, prestige, and control, while it alienates all others. She uses her sermons of superiority to gratify her need for security. She feels safe because people don’t dare come too close, lest they be chewed up by her Scripture-quoting tongue. The Word of God has become her god.
Adrian Van Kaam states that “addiction is a perverted religious presence that has lost its true object.”1 All addicts in all forms of addiction seek something spiritual when they first begin to tangle with the addiction. They seek relief or, to use a more spiritual term, peace. The interaction with the addiction actually becomes a religious experience with its own rituals and rules. The less relief the addiction provides over time, the more intricate the rituals become. As the rituals and rules increase, God is left further behind, and the true object is lost.
Van Kaam further describes addiction:
The object … of my striving will be a situation, object, or experience which promises me the deepest and most lasting experience of wholeness and fulfillment with the least possible responsibility, mastery, decision, or commitment.… I am addicted only when one or the other type of addiction becomes a central mode of life for me around which my personality organizes itself and when every other mode of life becomes subservient to this addiction.2
Alcoholics and drug addicts are not the only ones who reach a point where the personality organizes itself around the addiction and every other mode of life becomes subservient to it. Religious addicts do exactly the same thing. Rather than become more filled with the Spirit of God, they become filled with the activities of the church. Rather than become more like Christ, the individuals become more like the church wants them to be or more like they want to be perceived. The personality changes as it revolves around the compulsive behaviors of religiosity. Nothing is more important than the distorted practice of faith, and nothing must deter the addicts from practicing faith in this driven manner. It becomes everything; God and others come in second.
All addicts crave something that will grant them the experience of wholeness; the experience of being significant, of having meaning and purpose; the experience that offers fulfillment for an ever-more-fleeting moment. Those who refuse to risk throwing themselves wholly in the arms of God find it safer to pursue religious activity. The activity of religion becomes a drug, the quick fix of choice. It appears to be so admirable that it makes the addiction more deceptive than most. The ones who rise to the top of the organization are provided with meaning and purpose, or at least the feelings of meaning and purpose for which they long. The ones who cannot find fulfillment at home with their families attain it at the church every time the doors are open.
The true presence of God in one’s life doesn’t provide an escape from reality and personal responsibility. The presence of God provides a firmer grip on reality and a hope that reality can be faced with all of its pain and sorrow. A caring God provides comfort and offers an interlude for refreshment, restoration, and recreation. These interludes never replace God or others, but are intimately involved with God and his creation.
True faith enriches the believer and those who know that believer; it doesn’t form a wall between the believer and God and others. Faith is never an excuse to escape, pack the bags, and head for the hills. Faith without addiction is an invitation to develop a relationship with God and enrich the lives of others through that relationship. But when the practice of faith becomes an addiction, all of this is quickly destroyed.