Addiction is ruthless. It comes in various forms and destroys marriages, families, friendships, churches, and communities. The most disappointing thing I've encountered over the last 25 years or so serving in Annapolis is how little understanding the church has or addresses on this subject. Most people think addiction has to do with drinking alcohol, drugs or smoking. However, addicts can be addicted to sex, gambling, spending, work, food, adrenaline rushes, religion, chaos, or any number of other things. Author and former priests, John Bradshaw defined "addiction" as a "pathological relationship to any mood altering substance, experience, relationship or thing that has life damaging consequences. Addiction is pathological because it is rooted in denial." It is also clear that a person rarely has just one addiction. A vast number of addicts move to another addiction when they stop the addiction they were in. Addicts can be alcohol or drug free but use other more subtle substances to mood alter and cover up the pain they feel in their lives. Rather than deal with the pain, they can and will go into hiding and find a way create a false self to cover up. Addiction is all about numbing oneself from inner conflict and pain.
Recently, a young minister, new to our community asked me what I thought Annapolis' number one problem was and I said, "Heroin." He was shocked by my answer and didn't know how to respond. I wasn't surprised since most seminaries don't even talk about the real issues facing congregations today. However, I shared with him that I had been serving in a contemporary church setting that was made up of 80% of its people having come from various recovery programs or into the church seeking help breaking free from their addictions and that Heroine was the number one problem in our city. He just look at me in disbelief and I am sure he had no idea how bad things had gotten in our community. It took me many years to understand what we were dealing with and what our ministry could do to get people and families onto the road of recovery. The number one thing I have learned is the ALL addiction is a family problem. Understanding the nature of addiction and the options for treatment can help family members avoid the cycle of addiction if the whole family seeks "healing" from addiction. Jesus asked a very important question in John 5:6: "Do you want to be healed?" In this simple passage, we find some important keys onto the road for recovery. First, does the addict really want to get help? Or, is he or she just looking to just be propped up in their addiction.
If a person doesn't want to go into a detox, a recovery house or program immediately there's nothing you can do for them. When you read John 5:7 The crippled man answered Jesus by stating that "No one would help him." This is called deflection. It is always someone else's fault that I am not healed. He also is avoiding answering the question. A number of years ago, a young man was brought to me by another addict. He pulled up into front of the church as I was coming out and said, "Hey, Pastor Mike this guy needs your help." When I struck up the conversation I learned this guy was doing $400 to $500 a day's worth of crack. I recognized I couldn't help him because he was unwilling to go into treatment. He just returned the streets. He then went through our community telling various leaders that I left him out in the streets, wouldn't help him, and wouldn't provide him a place to stay, etc. It was my fault he could get help. A few days later, a local minister came into my office and accusingly asked me if I had left this guy out on the street homeless and how ungodly I was to do so. I just looked up at him and asked, "So, how much money did you give him?" He said, "I gave him a $1,000." "Oh," I continued, "Did the Lord tell you to give him that money?" The minister said, "Of course." I looked at him and said, "You should be proud of yourself. That probably went up his nose last night and you help him in his addiction" Then I asked the enabling minister to leave! Why, because he didn't hear God at all. He was nothing more than what many churches are - enablers. Sure enough, the young guy returned to our ministry center later only to tell me, what I told the minister, he went out and used again and asked if I could help him. I told him, "No I couldn't but Jesus could" and that there were treatments centers available to him if he would commit to going. He took me up on the offer and went to a treatment center and came to the Lord and began his recovery.
The next thing we see in John 5:7 "The crippled man blamed others for why he was not healed." In other words, "it's my friends, my family, my mother, my father's fault that I am addicted." No! Your condition is your responsibility. Jesus didn't offer him prayer, he didn't lay hands on him, give him money, or even offer to take him to the doctor. He simply said, "Take up your bed and walk." Stop the excuses and take the necessary steps for your own healing and stop blaming everybody else. A few years back, a lady who was related to some members of our church called me and asked me to help her son who had overdosed on Heroin. So in good faith, I met with her son and got him into a local Christian treatment center. Shortly, after he had completed the program. We assisted him in getting a job, a place to stay and plugged into church life to support his ongoing healing process. Everybody loved him. However, this same mother began demanding that he return home to meet her needs. What I didn't know is that he came from a home with two chronic alcoholics. Both mother and father were drunks. When things didn't go her way she began undermining his recovery process and started blaming me, his other siblings, and even our church for his relapse. He would later get into an auto accidently that totalled his car and had to be medivaced by helicopter to a trauma center. I was asked to come and as always went to the hospital to pray for God to spare his life. God spared his life. But he returned to his addictions and has been in and out of jail and has continued to make a mess out of his life. He knows the gospel, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit, read the entire bible and was discipled but is still addicted. To this day all his mother does is publically attack my wife, my kids, and me every chance she gets. Why? Because that's what drunks do! Churched or not. My biggest problem isn't her deflection, accusations, or unwillingness to get help herself. My biggest problem is that there are "Christians" who choose to believe her accusatory spirit or see the underlying problem of their addiction and make me the bad guy. Jesus didn't respond to this man's accusation. Ever heard the phrase, Well you made your bed now lay in it? This man laid in his "Crippled" state for 38 years in front of the temple too. Addicts are around the church today. Religious leaders are ignoring them too. 
How long is it going to take for the church to wake up and deal with all the addiction in the church today? Priests are being exposed for paedophilia, protestant ministers are being charged with sexual assaults on women, and pastors are having affairs with board members covering things up all because addiction has found a safe place to hide - in the church. Pastors have died from overdoses, have been caught with prostitutes, or found porning on the web while the governing boards of our current institutions turn and look the others way. It's time for the church to address the epidemic. It's time that the local church address not only the addict but the families in the churches that enable the addicted. How can the church talk about the health and growth of the church without building in processes for the sanctification process of leading people, marriages, and families into wholeness. Acts 16:31 gives us an important promise. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (healed and delivered) and so will your house!"
