Sermon on addiction, AA, the tyranny of the will and Romans 7

Romans Chapter 7

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

Even I can't help admitting that there is a bunch of stuff in the Bible that's hard to relate to. A lot has changed in the last 2,000-4,000 years and I have no form of reference for shepherds and agrarian life and I don't know what it’s like to have a king or a Caesar and I don't know a single fisherman much less a centurion and I guess I can't speak for all of you but personally I've never felt I might need to sacrifice a goat for my sins. That's the thing about our sacred text being so dang old is that it can sometimes be hard to relate to. Things have changed a bit over the millennia. 

But one thing has not changed even a little bit and that’s the human condition.  Parts of The Bible can feel hard to relate to until you get to a thing like that reading from Romans we just heard in which Paul says I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

 

Finally. Something I can relate to. This I know about. I too do not understand my own actions.  I too can’t manage to consistently do what I know is right.  Paul’s simple description of the human condition is perhaps a most elegantly put definition of what we now call addiction. 

It's no secret that I am a recovering alcoholic. By the grace of God I have been clean and sober for over 19 years. But boy do I remember that feeling OF powerlessness that comes from not being able to control your drinking. I'd wake up each morning and have a little talk with myself “OK Nadia Get it together. Today is going to be different. You just need a little will power.” Then inevitably later that day I’d say “well, just one drink would be ok” Or I'll only drink wine and not vodka. Or I'll drink a glass of water between drinks so that I won't get drunk. And sometimes it worked but mostly it didn't. In the end, my will was just never “strong enough” Like Paul, I did the thing I hated. But that's addiction for you.  It’s ugly.  Yet on some level I feel like we recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have it easy. I mean, our additions are so obvious.  The emotional, spiritual and physical wreckage cause by alcoholism and drug addiction has a certain conspicuousness to it.

But the truth is, we are not actually special.  I mean, our whole culture is addicted. It's not just drunks who wake up in the morning and say today it's gonna be different. Perhaps some of you have done some “self-talk” recently.  Perhaps some of you have tried to garner up just a little more will power. Today I won't eat compulsively or i'll not yell at my kids or I’ll not spend money I don't have on things I don't need. Today, unlike yesterday I won't consume pornography or flirt with my married co-worker or look up my ex-boyfriend on facebook. Today I will finally stand up for myself.  Today I will not play video games.  Today I will really look for a job.  Today I will not lie to myself. Today I will start meditating and become a vegan and start training for a marathon and go back to college and go to the container store so I can organize my closet and be in control. But we're not. We're not in control.  That would be the point. We’re addicted to poison and people, and praise and possessions and power.  And sometimes I think the church and society fuel a very particular addiction to proving our worthiness.

 

We live in a worthiness driven culture. The pressure to be successful, hide your weaknesses, get ahead make your own way in the world … to pull yourself up by your boot straps, win at all costs and be as impressive as possible to the most people as possible is what drives our entire cultural and economic system. So naturally we think that we should be able to solve our problems through will power and a protestant work ethic. The human will, whether it be a strong will which thinks it can take care of its own problems or a weak will which just dissolves in the face of addiction is just about the worse place to look for salvation.  The source of my problems simply cannot also be the solution to my problems. I need something or someone external to myself to save me from myself. There simply is no amount of self-talk that is going to save me.  No amount of self-help, no amount of determination or gumption. There is God and God alone.

The 12 steps, which Richard Rohr calls America's single yet very important contribution to human spirituality works precisely because it isn’t a self-help program at all.  That’s the point.  Isn’t it interesting that one of the most truly transformative things to come out of America....the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is based not on proving your worthiness but on admitting your failure. 

 The genius is that the people who started AA recognized that addiction isn’t a drinking problem or a gambling problem or a food problem. It’s not a problem of the will see, it’s a problem of the soul.  It’s a putting something in the center of our lives other than God problem.  And as such it can only have a spiritual solution.  It took us awhile to figure this out but St Paul knew it all along.  Because as long as we hold out thinking that just a little more will power will do the trick we remain hopeless.   As Paul says, I can will what’s right but I cannot do it. 

So who will save us form this body of death as Paul calls it?  Well, the world gives us but one solution: our will. And as the saying goes -when the only tool I have is a hammer, all my problems look like nails.  And I just pound away at everything.  But the Gospel changes all of that.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ tells us to lay down our silly little hammers and let God do for us what only God can do for us.  Jesus doesn’t say “the solution to your problem is to just try harder”  And our brothers and sisters in 12 step fellowships can tell us that the freedom we gain from our addictions (and new ones crop up all the time mind you) but this freedom comes only from  admitting that we are a mess and that our will is not going to save us… …  believing that God and only God can restore us - and then turning our will over to the care of God. And when confronted with our own sin and addictions we no longer need defend nor deny because we no longer live under the tyranny of the will.

 

And it is tyranny to be sure.  The burden of the too strong or too weak will is heavy. It's exhausting. It's futile. And so we come here today and we hear Jesus say lay it down. Lay down your addictions and fixations and compulsions and all the ways you suffer from the additions fixations and compulsions of others. Lay them here he says at the foot of the cross lay them atop the blood and tear soaked dirt at the foot of the place where God allowed human will to take its inevitable course. Lay your weighty burden on the holy ground where human ambition was allowed to play itself out to it’s logical conclusion.  Here is where you can be free from the bondage of the self. Jesus says for the weary and heavy laden to come to him. You can stop believing in your sin management programs and futile exercises in will power because he is simply stronger than all of it.  We can all take comfort that it is not our wills but the will of the God who named and claimed us which has the strength and power to transform us. Us. The addicted, the proud, the lazy, the failures, the washed-out and those on top of their game.   Lay it down and he shall give you sweet rest - for your worthiness lies not in the strength of your will but in the unyielding determination of God’s Divine Love which is simply too fierce to leave you unchanged.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Richard Kidd]

Excellent Sermon. Thank you!

[Chris Estus]

Great word. Thank you.

[Christina]

All I can add, is "amen, and thank you!"

[Rick]

Excellent. Thank you.

[Carl Gregg]

In 1961, Carl Jung wrote a letter along these lines to the founder of AA that, "Spiritus contra spiritum": "Spirit against spirits"  (http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/recovery/jung.shtml).

[Sue]

Truly inspired!

[Ali]

Nadia, I love to hear an honest,powerful female voice in the world of sermons. As a practicing Catholic, I long to hear a woman speak to me on the gospels, with authority and confidence. I look forward to each and every one of your posts and share your blog with others, whenever I can.

[Sam]

yes, also Amen and thank you.

[Sue Bastian]

Thank you for these words. For those of us waiting for a word on a loved one in the ICU after a life of addiction, this article is miraculous.

[Theo]

I love your blog, which I discovered earlier this year, and I love your sermons. However, this sermon, while inspiring, brought me up short.

If the fixations and compulsions you speak of are the result of a mental disorder, submitting to God's will is unlikely to help you - you need professional help. I'm thinking particularly of scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I recently had to decide on including a book, SCRUPLES AND SAINTHOOD, on my OCD web site. I did include it, but with admonitions that it probably was not a helpful book; my opinion was based on two articles the author wrote, "From Scrupulosity to Lutherosity (Parts 1 and 2)":

http://catholiclane.com/from-scrupulosity-to-lutherosity-part-1/

http://catholiclane.com/from-scrupulosity-to-lutherosity-part-2/

From the second part: "If only Luther had acted like the many saints who were troubled by scruples - that is, if only he had humbly obeyed his lawful superiors - he would have saved himself and the world from so much confusion and misery." I suspected the book was more of the same, hence my admonitions. Someone who suffers from OCD (e.g., one who obsesses that every action or thought of theirs is blasphemy) cannot simply lay their obsessions at Jesus' feet - you can't turn OCD off that easily. (Spoken as someone who suffered from scrupulosity in the 1980s when various older family members were continuously in and out of hospitals; the scrupulosity faded out in the 1990s as other obsessions moved in.)

All that said, my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister who counseled alcoholics for the VA after World War II. In a newspaper interview after he retired, he said his counseling was of little help and he recommended AA as the best bet for alcoholics.

(My apologies to Ali for dumping on a Catholic author.)

[Eric]

Nadia,

Once again a sermon that spoke to me at just the right time. I have been reading your sermons off and on for a couple of years. Originally I started reading them because it brought me back to my Lutheran/Liturgical roots and I find myself coming back because of your poetic style and the fact that you don't beat around the bush. Thanks for being true to yourself and to your calling.

Peace,

Eric

[Ashley]

This is exactly what I needed to hear today...thank-you for your ministry.

[Kris]

Thank you

[John Hoxeng]

Wonderful sermon. I am a Ministry Leader for Celebrate Recovery and I found this absolutely dead on. The 12 steps is about surrender. Thanks!

[Julie]

thank you- beautiful.