Have you ever felt like life is so terrible that you need to escape urgently? Like life need an eject button right now, so you can extricate yourself from the horror story. Sometimes it is not even your own story, but still, you feel like the main character. I believe it is not an uncommon feeling. I can honestly relate to the feeling of hopelessness.
When this feeling slithers into our lives, we tend to look for safety, for closure and stability. I believe this is natural because we were made as relational beings to gather for safety. We yearn for meaning in the support and love of someone other than ourselves. But sometimes we substitute the safety in someone, for something. Yes, we decide that people or God is not working, lets rather trust in something.
Let me be direct, I have realised that we only find true meaning in a relationship with our Maker.
You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. Psalm 119:114 (ESV)
For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the Lord. Proverbs 8:35 (ESV)
If something is not going to help us to overcome a feeling of hopelessness, why do we still go for it?
Let’s not beat around the bush, addiction is the attempt to escape from hopelessness, when we believe nothing else can help with my problems. It is when we run away from dealing with the pain. Pain could be caused by any type of prolonged trauma or unmet needs. I’m not going to entertain the cause here, but the feeling is usually clear – feelings of helplessness, worthlessness or unlovable. Escaping from these feelings into addiction is trusting in a thing to provide relieve. This leads to being trapped by the thing. But being captive to a false sense of relieve or outcome is worse than dealing with the initial problem.
Whatever deception, I truly believe, can be overcome through Jesus Christ. That is what Jesus Christ came to do – to release us from the sin and sickness that keep us in bondage.
When I believe that Jesus Christ cannot free me from my sin, pain and sickness, that is when hope is lost. And when hope is gone, I’m open to escape into the welcoming arms of physical distractions or things – alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, gamble, sport, exercise, food, you can name it, anything that make you believe that you are able to cope on your own, instead of going to the only person that can save, Jesus Christ.
As an example, in my own life I tried to escape from a sense of worthlessness through video games, TV and pornography. This addiction is such an easy escape to a false sense of achievement. In the digital age we live in we can easily believe that pixilated bodies to look at or taking control of hero characters, triumphing over digital monsters or bad guys, could be real solutions to a nagging feeling of worthlessness. In some cases when the games or the show does not cover the internal worthlessness we continue to feel, we start acting out with an entitled hero-complex in real life. Demanding what we get in the digital world, in real life. We see school shootings where young people act out against those who wronged them in some way. I know from my old life that I needed more and more escape from feeling worthless, till the false sense of achievement produced in me an entitled jerk in real life.
I believe that the same can be said about any of the other addictions. It may be less accessible, but it is a method of trying to escape something difficult that you believe cannot be redeemed. The lie herein is that we believe there are things that is not redeemable by Jesus Christ.
Having Jesus with his arms stretched out, inviting us into a relationship with Him, begging us to lavish his healing upon us, and yet we walk right by Him to something that cannot redeem us.
We can accept His invitation and be freed from prisons of addiction, into a life of hope.
‘He came to Nazareth where he had been raised. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!” He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” Luke 4:16-21 (MSG)
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