Healing from religious addiction is the detoxification of faith. Through Bible study, church attendance, prayer, communication with other believers, and time, toxic faith can be purified into a healthy faith.
Through recovery, the addict attains a new knowledge of God and develops a strong, healthy faith. When faith is healthy, the individual’s dependency on God becomes a godly dependency. The following discussion provides seventeen key characteristics of a healthy faith. (These characteristics are further developed in our book More Jesus, Less Religion.)
Healthy faith focuses completely on God, not on who we want God to be or what we want God to do. Caricatures of God created by our self-obsessed society are replaced with the real God of the Bible.
The Bible is our best link to knowing God. Men and women through the ages have always dreamed up new concepts of who God is and what he does. Inevitably they become very confused in their “make it up as you go” theology, however, since they have no standard or source of authority. If only they would recognize the Bible as the Word of God and that it can be trusted to reveal to us who God is! Through studying it, we can grow in knowledge of God and in faith.
Throughout the Bible, God is shown seeking after his people, persistent in his desire to fellowship with his creation. God loves us and wants a relationship with us, even if we are guilty of many sins. Some of the great men and women of the Bible did many terrible things, and yet God loved those individuals and didn’t turn his back on them. This fact should reassure us. People may tell us that God has rejected us, but the loving God of the Bible has gone to a great deal of trouble for all of us.
If you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, you must believe that Christ is his Son. Healthy faith must encompass all of who God is, including the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. If people could trust that Jesus died for their sins, it would go a long way toward ridding the world of the shame and guilt of sin. God has taken care of us because he knew we could not be perfect. We feel tremendous relief when we discover that performance can be replaced with the person of Christ.
The common denominator of many popular religions today is a focus on self rather than on God. One man became involved with a Christian cult because of the promises it made, including guarantees of a healthy body, a wonderful family, and enough money to obtain whatever he needed. The man felt complete bliss as long as he focused on what he could obtain to better himself. But eventually he realized how absent God was from his life. He became aware of his constant focus on himself rather than on God. When he discussed this with a church leader, the leader explained it away as a problem with people unwilling to have everything God wanted for them. The man walked away from the church and from his addiction to its false promises. He never returned because his new search focused on God—and he found him.
Healthy faith grows and matures over time. Bible study and prayer assist in the process, but the difficulties of life are the greatest faith growers. It is our nature to seek quick relief from pain. In our fear that we will live in pain forever or that the pain will overwhelm us, we run to the closest form of relief available. This does not allow for growth in faith. When we feel pain and stand firm, trusting that God will see us through, we are rewarded with a strengthening of our faith that will make the same crisis less traumatic.
I have watched hundreds of alcoholics go through the detoxification process. They have spent years trusting in a bottle for relief. Then because the pain of drinking becomes greater than the original pain they sought to squelch, they decide to stop. The first three days of detoxification become the most vulnerable time in their lives. They are physically weak and mentally unstable. At any moment they want to tear away and return to a drink, but they persist and make it through the painful process.
Once they make it through this period and regain their physical strength and their mental capacity, they feel clean and pure. Their faith is often all that brings them through. Their first step into sobriety is a big one because if it is the right step, it is a step toward letting God handle things one day at a time. If their focus is correct, they grow spiritually and emotionally. Sometimes they grow more in the first year than they have in the past twenty.
The toxic faithful go through no less a traumatic and painful time when they remove themselves from the addictive behaviors that have captured them. They are vulnerable, left without the old toxic thoughts that made everything instantly better. When they determine to face the storms with only their faith in God and the support of other nontoxic believers, they set themselves up for growth. God will take that little amount of pure faith and from it grow a deep and abiding faith. To start that process of growth, God does not need a lot of faith. He needs only a little seed of healthy faith. Christ described this small faith as being the size of a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20). From that small speck of faith, the impossible can be accomplished.
As faith grows, respect for others grows with it. Too often religious addicts attack others out of their own insecurities. When security depends on God, addicts lose their need to feel threatened. People can be appreciated for their strengths and their weaknesses. Their differing views can be considered a result of different individuals at different places in their growth of faith. Those from different denominations or even from different factions within a denomination are no longer perceived as the enemy.
In the Bible, God instructs us to respect all people. He warns against showing favor to any one group, such as the wealthy. We need to see each person as a wonderful creation of God, with gifts and talents sent directly from God. Faith frees us from the fear of others and allows us to love them. A healthy faith allows us to love them and trust God to work on their problems as we pray for God to do so. First Peter 2:17 tells us to show proper respect for everyone and love all believers alike. When faith grows to reach this level of respect and acceptance of others, we find the freedom to serve God.
First Peter also addresses the need for God’s faithful followers to live in freedom (see chapter 2). This freedom does not allow us to do everything we think is right, but it is a freedom that moves us to serve others. Rather than be locked into a confining role or serve to work our way to heaven, we can be free to serve others as an act of faith to God.
Galatians 5:13 instructs, “You, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” When most people think of liberty or freedom, they think of having permission to do things that please them. Some feel a liberty to drink; others feel free to drive expensive cars. Healthy faith does not focus on these things. It does not free us to participate in or flirt with evil, but rather it frees us to love one another and to show that love by serving one another.
If our society has gone over the edge on any one point, it is the emphasis on our own needs, desires, and demands. For years, people lived in oppressive relationships where their needs went unmet. We have made great progress in identifying those unhealthy situations and motivating people to grow into healthier ones. We have shown individuals who were plagued with undeserved guilt how to rid themselves of those negative feelings. In the process, however, we have gone too far and gotten people to focus on themselves, not on others. We have driven people into such an obsession with their needs that they are reluctant to love their neighbors as themselves.
Healthy faith reverses this trend and brings balance back to relationships. Where healthy faith exists, people are amazed at the service shown to others. Out of a deep faith in God, we are free, not bound, to serve others.
The healthier the faith, the more valuable we can feel. Too often we have based our self-worth on what the world considers valuable. The world thinks money measures value, and if we do not have it in great amounts, we feel bad about ourselves. Physical beauty has become almost a religion unto itself, and those without it feel no value in a society that judges worth by the looks on the outside. In this age of technology, IQ is used to determine who is to be esteemed and who is to be snubbed. It is hard for us to measure up. The more we focus on the world’s standards and values, the more negative we feel about ourselves.
God has a different system, and if our faith is in him, we can feel tremendous relief. Christ talked about the worth of every individual. His words bring good news to all of us who will never be fashion models, members of a society of geniuses, or holders of Swiss bank accounts. Christ told his followers not to be afraid of those who attack a person physically, because they cannot touch the person’s soul. He explained that even though sparrows were sold for about a half-cent apiece, not one sparrow can fall to the ground without God’s knowing it—and because we are more valuable than many sparrows, the Savior of the world told us not to worry. God values us so much that he has numbered the very hairs on our heads (see Matthew 10:28-31).
If God knows and cares for all the sparrows, we can feel wonderful about ourselves, knowing he cares much more for us. If our sense of self-worth comes from God, we don’t have to worry what the world thinks of us or might do to us. The fact that God sent his Son to die for us should overwhelmingly affirm the worth of each individual. The problem comes when we measure ourselves by the world’s standards, take our faith away from God, and place it in our own powers and efforts to measure up. Healthy faith stays focused on God and the value he has given each of us. In this value system of the Creator, no one need feel disappointment over not measuring up to the world. The person with a healthy faith feels valuable to the Creator.
The leader of one of the groups I publish with talks a lot about self-worth. He believes many people make terrible decisions due to low self-worth. I happen to agree. An acquaintance of mine, however, kept bothering me about working with a group that focused on self-esteem. He believed that worth should come from God rather than self. I agreed but explained that many individuals see no worth in people, whether from self or God. Every time we got together, we ended up arguing this point.
Finally I had to confront this man. I told him I had never met anyone with lower self-esteem than him. If his perspective was so great, why did it result in such a negative self-concept?
He reacted as though I had hit him with a pipe. He began to cry and confess that he felt terrible about himself. Though married and a Christian, he masturbated compulsively. He finally admitted that he wanted help.
This man suffered from a common problem. Often those who are most offended about the concept of self-worth are the ones who have the least amount of it.
If we believe the words of Christ who tells us not to fear, we are free to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable means being real. It is the ability to risk rejection by laying before others all that we are and are not. If we put our faith in God, we don’t need to fear being real. The stronger our faith, the more we are driven to be real. God accepts us, and that is much more important than being accepted by others. Because God accepts us, we can face rejection by others.
So often the toxic-faith system breeds the desire to hide and cover up, as Adam and Eve were driven to do. Healthy faith frees us to come out of hiding and share our imperfect selves with others.
Ephesians 6:16 tells us that we can use our faith as a shield. We don’t have to stand behind a facade of materialism or any other earthly creation. We can hold firm to our shield of faith and be vulnerable to others. A true test of faith is how much a person is willing to risk rejection by the world. The mark of the faithful is vulnerability with others due to a complete focus on God.
Healthy faith grows trust in three areas.
First, trust in God grows the more we give to him. As we give our time, money, and hearts, he rewards us with comfort and peace, and then we trust him with more of what we have and who we are. Every day the recovering religious addict must turn over more and more to God and trust him with greater things. This relieves the addict from the burden of control. As the addict allows God to be in control and trusts his control, the addict is freed to live without being driven.
Some people have lived such terrible lives that they fear God and don’t totally trust him. Colossians 1:20-23 addresses this issue. In that passage God speaks to us, telling us that through Christ, he has cleared a path to him. The price Christ paid on the cross has made peace with God possible for the one who trusts in him. He says that many were far away from him, to the point of being his enemy. Evil thoughts and actions separated them from him, but God has brought them back as friends. Through the death of Christ, we are able to stand in the presence of God with nothing held against us. The only requirement is that we fully believe that Christ died to save us; then we can place our total trust in God. If we believe these things, we have no reason not to trust God with all that we have.
Second, we grow to trust others. Although many have deceived us, as we heal we can learn from our mistakes. Eventually, we will be able to trust others again. Placing our trust in God allows us to trust others, because we know that we do not have to allow ourselves to be victimized again.
Third, growing faith helps us trust ourselves. Without a faith anchored in God, we trust in the most convenient object available. As each new object of faith fails, we lose faith in our ability to make good judgments. As our faith in God grows—as we trust him more and rely on him to help us—we find ourselves respecting our judgments because they are anchored in God. We do not trust ourselves more because we have become smarter, but because we have placed our focus more securely on God.
The religious addict has been functioning by trusting in his or her efforts to win favor with God. This futile existence must be forsaken. From Hebrews 4 we learn that all may enter the kingdom of heaven if faith in God is real. Complete trust in him must replace effort and works.
As our faith matures, trust in God will grow with it. We no longer sway with the whims of the day or run from fear of others. Knowing that God will not betray us allows us to trust him, others, and ourselves.
While many have no trouble understanding trust, others find it almost impossible to grasp. One broken woman had been abused sexually by her father. After years of meeting his addictive sexual needs, she lost her ability to trust God or any other human being. People would ask her to trust in Christ, but she could not allow herself to trust any male figure. Finally she began counseling sessions with a gentle man of integrity who had her best interests at heart. He guided her through her fears and showed her that not all men are untrustworthy. He also demonstrated that some are capable of caring with no strings attached. Finally he led her to trust in the God who loved her. An abusive man poisoned her faith, but another man who could be trusted helped her rediscover the joy and fulfillment of trusting fully in God.
Religious addiction takes away a person’s identity. Where religious addiction abounds, conformity is the order of the day. Rules and roles take priority over the worth and development of each individual. Recovery helps to repair self-identity. Healthy faith allows a person to express faith as an individual, not merely as a conformist to a system.
God has created each person individually in his own image. He does not want to waste the uniqueness of any of us. He has given us many unique gifts that he wants us to develop in service to him. The church is one body of many members. We must continue to come together as a group so that God can use our individual gifts for the benefit of all. As healthy faith grows, shame diminishes, and we delight in finding that we do not have to live in the image of another person—only in the image of God.
Ephesians 4:11 tells us that some individuals have been gifted to preach. Others are better at serving and caring for members of the church. God has made us uniquely for service to one another. When we abandon that uniqueness, we abandon God’s will for our lives.
Most toxic-faith systems focus on what people do and how well they conform to the rules of the group. In healthy faith, the focus shifts from rules to relationships. Frequently, the religious addict has abandoned relationships, believing that God is all that matters. But God has shown us that the more we love him, the more we will seek out others and manifest his love through relationships with them. Instead of obeying another’s rules, the person with healthy faith strives to develop intimacy. Sharing the faith and loving another in faith build the individual’s relationship with God.
Too often people see faith as a hot line to heaven without regard for earthly struggles. Once I discussed toxic faith with a minister. He told me that, three years prior to our conversation, he had been a full-fledged religious addict, obsessed with himself and his knowledge of God. The more his addiction grew, the more isolated he became. He had no time for people, spoke curtly, and most people hated to be around him.
One day a woman who had supported the church for some time came to see him, declaring that she wanted to say only two words to him: “Forget yourself.” He asked what she meant, but she said no more. This man thought and thought about this odd message. He became obsessed with learning what she meant. He called her and heard that she was coming for another visit the following week. At that time she would give him another two words.
When she arrived, she looked him in the eye and said two more words: “Serve others.” The minister said the woman’s words revolutionized his faith. He realized that he had been serving himself and had forgotten the importance of relationships. He began to rebuild what he had torn down, and in so doing his faith became real.
Religious addicts think of faith as impersonal. They are mere members of the group, not individuals loved and cherished by God. Toxic-faith systems are based on the absence of personal convictions and the acceptance of someone else’s definition of faith.
Healthy faith is a personal experience generated internally through trust in God. The Holy Spirit personally leads each individual. Each person can read God’s Word individually and hear God speak through his Word. Christ died for each individual.
The healthier one’s faith becomes, the more personal it becomes. A personal relationship forms between the believer and God. That relationship becomes so strong that no criticism or system can break the personal bonds formed between God and the believer.
Healthy faith is balanced. It does not become so preoccupied with work that it destroys family. It is not so intent on witnessing to people that it fails to meet their needs. It does not become so involved with memorizing Scripture that it forgets the Author of Scripture. Obedience to rules is balanced with freedom to serve others in ways that reflect each person’s individuality.
Toxic faith depends on “either/or,” “black or white,” “us versus them,” and “all-or-nothing” thinking. It leaves no room for compromise, no middle ground for others outside the system. Healthy faith accepts that life is not black or white and allows the believer to feel okay about struggling with the gray areas of life. It rejects the us-versus-them mentality. The person with healthy faith sees himself or herself as a part of a greater community, all of whom struggle with their relationships with themselves, their God, and their fellow human beings.
Where healthy faith grows, every area of the believer’s life improves. In the balanced practice of faith, families grow closer, friends become stronger, and conflicts get resolved more easily. Believers focus on God, and each individual is seen as a valuable creation of God, worthy of God’s attention. Understanding replaces rigidity. Those who grow in the faith find comfort as they regain perspective. They find wholeness in their balanced faith.
Healthy faith takes a nondefensive position against those who would challenge their beliefs and faith. Healthy faith welcomes critical evaluation and tough questions as opportunities to learn and relate. Those in a healthy system refrain from defining the truth for others and welcome the chance to share what they believe about the truth. Those who question their faith are not considered disobedient but rather are encouraged to explore their doubts.
Those in a toxic-faith system are afraid of every threat to the system. They feel personally threatened because much of their faith developed from their rules rather than by the Word of God. When God is in charge, we have no reason to feel threatened. He is in control and he will champion the faith.
Healthy faith attracts people to it rather than repels them. Those who become defensive repel other people—they forget how attractive Christ was as he drew people to himself. What a relief it is not to have to defend every criticism made by everyone outside the faith!
In the beautiful Sermon on the Mount, Christ gives us specific instructions about judging others. In Matthew 7:1-2 he instructs us not to judge others or we will be judged in the same way.
All too often we are guilty of the very things we point out as wrong in others. Recovering religious addicts stop judging people and start listening to them. When this occurs, compassion and empathy develop. This overcomes a major flaw of the toxic-faith system, which so heavily focuses on the system that it forgets the needs of people.
Healthy believers don’t judge what people say; they listen to what others have to offer. They evaluate it; they do not judge it. When we judge people, we accept them only under certain conditions. Healthy faith removes the conditions and the need to judge. Healthy believers look for similarities of experience to establish a relationship. They see each person as a fellow struggler in different stages of the struggle. Healthy believers are so busy developing a personal relationship with God, they have no time to judge where others might be in developing their own relationship.
The toxic believer denies reality. His or her faith is not based on a belief in the supernatural power of God but rather on a desire to see magical solutions that stop pain. Toxic hope is found in a servant-God intent on making life easy.
The healthy believer embraces reality. Healthy faith acknowledges the supernatural power of God and does not need miraculous intervention to believe God is real. The healthy believer does not look for God to change circumstances magically but looks to him in the midst of trials.
When faith grows strong, there is no need to deny reality. Believing that God is faithful to help them through their trials and tribulations, healthy believers have no need to walk away from reality. They see the problems before them, do what they can to resolve them, and trust God to do the rest.
The Nature of Mature Faith
A study researching faith came up with eight core dimensions that indicate the maturity of one’s faith. A mature believer:
PETER L. BENSON AND CAROLYN H. EKLIN1
Healthy faith gives a person the ability to embrace his or her emotions. The Christian must recognize that Christ did not deny his emotions; he embraced them. As he walked the earth, he revealed his love, anger, sorrow, and many other emotions. His grief became so great that he admitted his soul was full of sorrow unto death (see Mark 14:34). What depths of emotion he felt!
Healthy faith has no need to hide its feelings. We should rejoice that God has given us emotions to experience the extremes of life. We must acknowledge them, confess them when they are self-centered, and express them as they develop. Too many religious addicts are filled with hidden anger and fear. As they find healthy faith, they feel the freedom to release those emotions bound by the religious addiction.
Healthy faith allows us to embrace humanity. It acknowledges the capacity to sin and make mistakes. It gives no illusion of perfection and has no driven need to be perfect (or hide when we are not). Healthy faith allows us to experience God’s mercy and grace.
The toxic believer obeys God out of a fear of divine anger or a terror of rejection by the system. The mercy and grace of God are lost to a superficial existence of living up to another’s standards. Performance for acceptance overpowers the knowledge that no one can act good enough to get to God.
Healthy faith knows that mercy and grace are gifts, freely given. If they were to be earned, they would not be gifts. Healthy believers follow God out of gratitude for mercy and grace, accepting that everyone will fail and that God’s infinite wisdom has already made a provision for that failure. We do not need to deny who we are to be acceptable to God. He made us and loves us anyway.
Healthy faith and the healthy believer are able to love and be loved. Healthy faith allows a person to love self, God, and others. The healthy believer is able to extend to God and others the characteristics outlined in 1 Corinthians 13. The exercise of healthy faith allows a person to be patient with God, to trust that God will never abandon or reject his beloved children.
Healthy believers are patient with others and themselves as they allow God to correct their character defects. Such patience is seen only in the hearts of the healthy faithful. If faith does not move persons to love more, it is not healthy.
As believers mature in love, they grow in kindness toward others. Healthy believers are also kind to themselves and find no need to punish themselves when they miss the mark. This kindness is so attractive that others come into the faith because of it.
The love of healthy faith is also humble. Pride vanishes where believers focus totally on God. The healthy believer turns away from rejection, rudeness, and self-seeking. He or she forgives freely; grudges and healthy faith cannot coexist. Healthy believers rejoice in truth and grieve over evil.
Healthy believers grow full of love. In fact, love is the predominant characteristic of those with a healthy faith. Their love heals and helps them bear up under every trial. It provides the foundation for a future with God and growing relationships with others. If believers have all the talents in the world but do not have a deep and abiding love, their faith is worthless. But where love is present, faith grows, and people are attracted to God.
Developing a healthy faith in God is the achievement of a lifetime. It is a never-ending process with seasons of tremendous growth and times of near stagnation. At times God seems to direct every step we take; at other times he feels as distant as another solar system.
God wants us to seek him as he seeks us. As we trust him more, we find him more loving and accepting of who we are. He desires that we grow and remains patient with us even when we stubbornly refuse to do so. He is always there for us, and those with a healthy faith return to him quickly after each relapse into sin.
I pray that you will grow strong in your faith. I hope that your search for profit, power, pleasure, and/or prestige will end as you find God to be your source of fulfillment. The wounds of addiction do not heal quickly. Be patient with yourself and give yourself time to heal through God’s love. As you heal, remember that you are still susceptible to falling back into your addiction. You are vulnerable to false teachers and false teachings. I encourage you to consider the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” As you grow in faith, test the faith and teachings of others so you will no longer be led astray.
God loves you and wants you for his own. The more you give of yourself to him, the more joy you will have. God bless you on your journey of faith as you seek to find God as he is.