Episodes
Sunday Feb 24, 2013
Finding freedom in a hopeless place of addiction
Sunday Feb 24, 2013
Sunday Feb 24, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 8:26-39
The most popular song around the world these past several years has been a song by the singer Rhianna. It sold seven million copies … the most records of a single song ever sold. It is entitled “We found love.” We found love in a hopeless place.
Something about these words “We found love in a hopeless place” has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world.
It is an upbeat song, however, if you watch Rhianna’s music video, the video isn’t upbeat. After a somber introduction, the video starts upbeat enough. It shows Rhianna and her boyfriend having fun together, riding bicycles, skateboarding, running in a wheat field, smiling, dancing, roller skating, kissing.
Then suddenly pills start floating across the screen. And the couple begins smoking homemade cigarettes. There are more and more pills. More and more smokes. Then arguments begin, and ultimately there is violence. In one horrible scene Rhianna empties her stomach on the sidewalk. It gets ugly.
All the while Rhianna sweetly sings: “We found love in a hopeless place.”
The video really does portray a hopeless place.
We decided this Lent we want to talk about hopeless places where we can find ourselves in our lives … hopeless places where we can feel stuck and imprisoned.
The places we’ve identified for this series are shame, addiction, depression, grief, powerlessness, and death.
During Lent we want to talk about these kinds of places that can feel hopeless and we want to turn to one another and to Scripture to discover how we might find hope and liberation in these hopeless places.
Our affirmation this Lent is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord –not shame, not addiction, not depression, not grief, not powerlessness, not death. Nothing can separate us from God. No matter how imprisoned we feel, how hopeless, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We want to talk this morning about addiction. Addiction can be a hopeless place.
Before we look at Scripture Pastor Dawn will talk with Chuck Lisenbee . Chuck is helping to lead a group this Lent on a book by Gerald May entitled Addiction and Grace.
[Interview]
Thank you so much, Chuck, for sharing your story.
We all have our demons. We all have our demons.
The German philosopher Paul Carus who spent his life studying world religions wrote: "There is no religion in the world but has its demons or evil monsters who represent pain, misery, and destruction."
We all have our inner pain and misery and self-destructiveness. We all have our demons. We all carry pain inside us.
And when we experience pain it makes all the sense in the world to begin to turn to whatever it is that will help us feel better, even temporarily. I know addiction is complicated and has physiological as well as emotional and spiritual components, I don’t want to oversimplify. But I suspect sometimes where our addictions begin is just wanting to feel better when we are carrying pain inside.
The problem is that the things we do or take to relieve our pain can end up enslaving us and making our pain worse.
I’d like us to spend a few minutes with the story from Luke that we listened to thisN morning… the story about the person commonly called the Gerasene demoniac. His life was clearly out of control. Clearly he was living with pain, misery and self-destructiveness.
I’d like us to quickly notice a few things about this story.
The demoniac did not want to be around other people. He did not want to be around Jesus when Jesus came to town. Part of his condition was that he would break the chains that kept him bound to others and “he would be driven by the demon into the wilds.” He would be drivenby his demon away from others into isolation.
Isolation can be the breeding ground of addiction.
Gerald May writes that those of us being drawn into addiction “experience a growing isolation from others.”
“To compensate,” he writes, “the addicted person may put on masks of competence, lightheartedness, and good humor. His [or her] charades can be effective at fooling others, but internally they only intensify feelings of inadequacy and lack of integrity.”
The more distant we become physically or emotionally from others, the more susceptible we are to addiction.
This is why recovering people so emphasize meetings. Recovery Connection has a page on their website entitled “Isolation: The Curse of the Addict.”
It says: “One of the behaviors of [those of us wrestling with addictions] is the propensity toward isolation. Most people involved in recovery understand the role of meetings, support groups, therapy and spiritual communities…”
Isolation intensifies the inner pain which intensifies the desire for relief. Many days the most important decision we may make is whether to have lunch alone or with coworkers, whether to go home alone after work or go bowling with our league, whether to stay at home or go to church, whether to spend Wednesday nights alone or with our small group.
Isolation, whether physical or emotional, makes our pain worse and makes us more susceptible to whatever we think we need to do to find relief.
The Gerasene demoniac was driven by his demon into isolation.
The next part of the story I’d like us to quickly notice is that when Jesus asked the demoniac to name his name, he answered “Legion.” And Luke adds, “For many demons had entered him.”
In the Roman military, a legion was a unit of 3,000 to 6,000 troops.
In addiction, the pain we are trying to make better can feel totally overwhelming … too large, too complicated, too heavy for us to face or even imagine dealing with.
It feels as though the pain is too big to ever be faced or dealt with or healed. It can only be numbed.
Part of the perceived reality that drives us to addiction is the perception that our problems are unsolvable.
I was talking to a therapist a while ago and he said to me that there are memories people would rather die than recall. Addiction can be a way of dying rather than face a pain that seems like legion.
These are the first two parts of the story: Isolation and a sense of pain too massive to face.
Now here is to me the most interesting part of the story and I would like to spend a few minutes on it.
When Jesus addressed the demoniac’s demons, “They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.” (Luke 8:31)
The pain does not want to be repressed. The pain does not want to be forgotten. The pain is crying out for attention.
Listen to Luke 8, 32-34
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
This is the most interesting part of the story. The question is: What was a herd of pigs doing in the Jewish town of the Gerasa?
The answer is that the Romans had conquered the city and the region 60 years earlier. The Romans liked their bacon and their pork chops. They loved pork. So when they militarily invaded and conquered the country of the Garasenes, they had imposed swine faming on a culture and a people to whom it was repugnant and offensive and humiliating. The consequence was a town of people living in violation of their deepest values. They were a town that had had violently forced upon them that which they found most dehumanizing and repugnant. The demoniac was suffering the traumatic shock that results from having forced on him that which violated his deepest self.
So for him to be healed, to find freedom, the demons, the pain, the misery, the self-hate had to come out of him and be put back into the swine to whom it really belonged.
I understand most returning veterans from war are healthy but returning veterans do have a statistically significantly higher rate of addiction issues? They may have been exposed to violence that violates their deepest sense of what it means to be human.
Many people who have been sexually abused as children live healthy lives and raise healthy children. But survivors of sexual abuse do have a statistically higher incidence of addiction? They have experienced violence that violates their deepest sense of what it means to be human.
The pain that leads to addiction can sometimes be traced back to physical, sexual and emotional violence that violates our deepest human knowledge of the way we are meant to live with one another.
And one way out of addiction to freedom is to give the pain back to the swine. Give the pigs back their demons. Give the Roman invaders back their demons.
Gerald May says we all have addictions. We all have ways of dealing with our inner pain. It is just that some addictions are more dangerous than other. Pills are more dangerous than shopping. Alcohol is more dangerous than nicotine. Nicotine is more dangerous than caffeine. Caffeine is more dangerous than exercise. But we all do or use something to make ourselves feel better.
One of the ways out of addiction, back to our right minds, is to give the corruption we’ve experienced in life back to the swine. To not own the pain of the corruption imposed upon us. Give the corruption back to where it belongs.
Addiction is complicated. I don’t want to use a biblical story to provide easy answers.
But neither do I not want to talk about it at all.
If you wrestle with addiction, find someone to talk with … a therapist … a recovering person … an AA group … an NA group. Do not let it isolate you.
Understand that the pain may feel like the pain of hundreds of thousands –it may feel like legion-- but it can be brought into the light.
And it can be given back to where it really belongs so that you and I can be free.
I am not saying it is easy. I am not saying it can be done without feeling the pain. But I am saying it is possible. I know this because of the people in this congregation who have done it. One day at a time. They have done it. You and I can too.
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