Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Thursday November 3, 2011

In response to Tuesday's article, Addiction Really Idolatry the following note was sent to me be a long time and dear friend.

"Powerful stuff, Larry, I have used the explanation of Jesus in countering the temptation to focus my thoughts too much on the person to whom I was addicted. Friendship is a wonderful thing in its place, but it can become an unhealthy dependency, i.e. an idol. We have before discussed how we have both experienced this. It is amazing how much sin is coated with good things, like friendship. This is, in my judgment, what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was all about. It was mixing the two and experiencing the two together. No man chooses anything that is purely evil because it is evil. He chooses it because he perceives a good in it that he wants to experience. Well, on and on one could go. Thank you for your work."

The list of addictions if written out would be as broad as life itself. Addiction hides behind the good. Mary Wollenscraft Shelly of Frankenstein fame wrote “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” Who would have thought that a friend could be an addiction? Romance is often more of an addiction than being in true love. It is relatively simple to discern true friendship from a destructive addiction, unless you are the one suffering the addiction. This is where true friends shine like an early fall morning sun. But even in this situation we sometimes cling to the false addictive friendship rather than involve Jesus in the equation and thus break the bondage.

Any person who is not addicted to cocaine can say with authority, cocaine is destructive and so it is with addictive relationships. Any addiction which does not have you in its clutches appears rather easy to break. Yet the one or ones to which you are addicted seem as impossible as jumping over the Empire State building with your new exercise shoes.

I have always been encouraged by the following statement in Hebrews 10:17 "And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." The context further develops the thought concluding that because our sins are gone we can as it says in Hebrews 10:19 "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus," meaning that because our sins are gone we can and should be comfortable and at home in the Holy presence of Jesus the holiest of all relationships.

I mention being comfortable with Jesus because having a friend that is true is of enormous help in breaking addictions of any kind and especially when attempting to get away from toxic acquaintances.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2011 Use with credit

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