Avoiding Pain isn’t Enough
Jerry (fake name) has been battling a porn addiction his entire life. Even though he has been going to therapy, small group, and learning about it for the past four months, Jerry continues to relapse to porn twice a week. In this session, Jerry aired out his frustrations, "Look! I know it hurts my wife, God, and myself. I know it affects my relationships with others. I have grown in confession with you and we have come up with a plan of action. I have been on preventative software since we have been meeting, but I keep struggling. What is wrong with me?" How would you counsel Jerry? Would you suggest that he doesn't truly understand the cost associated with addiction since he keeps doing it? Would you want him to focus more on the pain it is causing him because he hasn't truly felt his pain? What if focusing too much on the pain is entirely the problem?
Pain Avoidance
Most strugglers of addiction (unless they are in denial) truly understands the cost of their addiction. For most strugglers, I rarely have to spend time convincing them about all the costs associated with their addiction whether that be financial, relational, emotional, mental, or spiritual. Most of them have become so aware of the cost that they overcome the uncomfortable feeling of going to counseling. Thus they can easily adopt the perspective that the entire way to overcome addiction is by understanding the costs of it. In other words, avoiding future pain becomes the entire motivation. The problem with this is that most addicts know the costs intuitively and yet they can't stop. Pain motivated them to go to counseling, small group, or bible study, but how long will avoiding pain continue to motivate them? Will they build a life that is only about avoiding pain?
The Pleasure of Addiction
The problem with this mentality of just avoiding pain is that it isn't the only lens used to address addiction. The Bible gives us another lens to view addiction when it says, "For we ourselves once were foolish, ignorant, led astray, slaves of various passions and pleasures…"(Titus 3:3). The Bible is articulating that what lured you into this addiction and what has made you enslaved to it is the pleasure you get from it (James 1:14). Though it is a fleeting pleasure (Hebrews 11:25) with painful consequences, it is a pleasure nonetheless. To truly deal with addiction enslavement, we must deal with the pleasure it offers. For one's grip on addiction to be loosened, the pleasure of it must become pale.
More Joyful Life
The only way we can see addiction as pale and let go of it is by grabbing onto a more joyful, satisfying pleasure. In The Weight of Glory, C.S Lewis writes, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." Lewis is describing that Jesus didn't just come to save us from the ultimate consequences of sin, but he came that we may "have life and have it abundantly" through our union and communion with him (John 10:10). Outside of spiritual disciplines, God's creation provides so many avenues for one to find deep pleasurable connection with Him. When addicts experience a more joyful life on the road to recovery, it becomes easier to suffer against it. Thus a joyful life motivates them to suffer against the addiction. So what are some of your God given passions or dreams? How has God gifted you and where do you find deep connection with God through creation? Where are the God given deep friendships in your life that are refreshing? Answers to these questions may provide a way for a more joyful life in Christ that may loosen your grips on addiction. .
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