Breaking Free

The following is a summary of Winston Smith’s presentation, “Groaning & Slavery: The Old Testament and Addiction.” Winston has served as a counselor in a local church for several years. He is a counselor and faculty member at CCEF and a lecturer in practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.

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There is a man who not only struggled with a pornography addiction, but was completely absorbed and consumed by his addiction. He was either continually looking or thinking about pornography. He had stacks of videos and piles of magazines in every room of his house. He reported that as he met people throughout his day they would star in a pornographic scene in his mind. This was a man who not only scared other people – he scared himself.

Upon further counseling, this man revealed that he desperately wanted love, acceptance and intimacy and had not been able to find it in real relationships. Pornography had become the way he fulfilled this desire. Pornography was the safe, easy, and controllable alternative to a real relationship. He could find exactly what he wanted in pornography without the risk of ever being rejected.

How do you find commonalities with someone like this? How do you instill in them hope?

The Old Testament can give us a unique perspective on addiction. We often rush through and simply tolerate the Old Testament in order to get to the New Testament. The New Testament has the magnificent story of Christ and salvation. It shows us our hero. But the Old Testament has a lot to offer to the addict.

The Old Testament can help us as we work with individuals suffering in two different ways. First, it tells us stories of slavery and groaning. The groaning is important because it tells us of our desperate need of a Savior.  Through these stories, we see hope, grace, and love.

How exactly can we use the Old Testament to help with the healing and recovery process?

1) The Old Testament puts us on common ground with the addict

Read Genesis 3 and you will see that we are all commonly plagued with the problem of sin. You can also see the path of decent we each follow. First, you see the entertainment of the lie that the serpent told Eve. Next, you see the enticement of the lie. The fruit was held before her was good and pleasing. The sins in our own lives also seem to be pleasing and enticing – for the present. And then, you see sin take hold resulting in misery, corruption, and slavery. Adam and Eve responded as we each do when caught by sin through covering themselves, hiding, and blame shifting. But finally, in the end we see that God comes through with hope and grace. There are many consequences they must endure because of the sin but this in itself gives us hope because we know that God is not giving up on us. God blesses us by cursing the sinful things we desire so we continue to seek the one who will offer us fulfillment. God promises to send a deliverer.

2) Hope can be found through groaning and lifting up our afflictions to God.

Psalm 88 is a psalm of lament. The author cries out to God about his sufferings. Feelings of desperation, despair, and isolation emanate from the author. We see that the scripture gives us permission to give voice to the suffering we feel. The suffering that the sins of others have placed upon us and also the suffering that we may endure because of our own wrong choices. Because the Bible uses this type of language, we ourselves may groan and cry out to the lord in our despair. We also know that even when we do express words of aloneness and feelings of being abandoned, that if we are speaking with God we have some level of faith. We know that because God was the author of the Bible that he understands our sufferings and we are not alone. Even though the pain can seem too much to bear, too much to face we know that when we give voice to the pain and take refuge in God we can begin breaking the bonds of addiction. When we take refuge in God we begin the process of breaking free of our refuge in sin and addiction.

3) The Old Testament can assist us by giving us bad news.

“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
The spring of living water,
And have dug their own cisterns,
Broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

The Bible in this passage uses language of thirst. We see that the thirst is not the problem, where we are looking for it is! We are guilty of the most horrific crime – we have tasted God and we have rejected Him. We look for fulfillment in other areas: pornography, sex, gambling, food. These things becomes our idols. It is imperative we know how desperate our condition is so we turn to the cross and seek a Savior.

Through all of this, we know that God is not surprised by our relapses in sin, but he continues to endure through them. He is within our relapses in a mysterious way, so we can come to the end of ourselves.  To defeat our addictions we must see and understand our need for a Savior.