My Addictions

I observe in myself that my basic drive is for security.  I want to be safe. Not just physically, but emotionally as well.  I want to be loved.  I also want to be needed because if I am needed, I am obviously valuable and so will be loved.   I am not saying that it’s real love, but it’s what my insecure self feels.  If I don’t have it, I feel alone and even afraid. And if my needs for food and safe cover are not met, then I also feel fear. Fear is a way of me rejecting what’s going on.

Once my security needs are satisfied, then my mind itches for pleasure.  I want to have fun.  If I don’t have it, I feel restless, bored, frustrated, and generally irritable --- other ways of rejecting the here and now of my life.

Suppose I am feeling secure and am having fun, am I satisfied?  Nope. Now I want power.  I want to dynamically affect people and events.  Part of that is the need to be effective.  It feels like I am more valuable and safer if I am effective.  Just like when my security and pleasure “needs” are not being met, when my power need is unsatisfied I feel emotions that are symptoms of me rejecting what is happening in my life.

These drives are a problem because they don’t allow me to tune into reality.  They keep me from seeing what is really happening. One of the ways they do this is by distorting my perceptions.  If I am operating with the security drive triggered, it blows the security aspects of my situation all out proportion to what they really are.  Something happens, and I focus not only on the threats in the situation, but on what I fear the threats might grow to be.  Of course, what I fear most rarely, if ever, happens; so this means I have an illusion gripping my attention.

The Bible recognizes these drives in diverse passages.

We see this recognition in the very first woman as she is tempted to eat the only prohibited fruit in the garden where she lived.  Genesis 3:6a: “The woman saw that the tree had fruit that was good to eat, nice to look at, and desirable for making someone wise.”  This fruit seemed good to eat (nourishing the body, which is the drive for secure living). It was pleasing to look at (pleasure), and it seemed it would make her wise (which would give power).

The gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, each tell us, in their fourth chapters, of three temptations wherewith Y’shuah was tested by Satan.  First, he was urged to turn stones into bread after he had been fasting almost 6 weeks.  This appeals to the security drive.  Then an appeal was made to the pleasure drive when Y’shuah was urged to jump from a high pinnacle. This was followed by an appeal to the human drive for power: he was offered rulership over all the earth.

Later, in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, the master teacher is recounted at Luke 8:14 as describing a man’s motivations: “…worries, riches, and pleasures of life…”   Worries have to do with security, riches with power, and the term “pleasures” is just that.

John describes the motives of the world (I John 2:16): “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”   Notice the pattern again?  Security (lust of the flesh), pleasure (lust of the eyes), and power (pride of life).   I know each of these well: the fear of being hurt, the yearning for sensations, and the pride of life, one manifestation of which is going out in the morning without having prayed first --- a sense of self sufficiency.  All illusory.  And all addictions.  They aren’t needs.  They’re addictions --- attachments to what I don’t need, but which cause unpleasant symptoms if I am deprived of them.

Happily there is a methodology that is useful in rising above and beyond the reach of these addictions. It is sometimes called “Living Love” and I intend to say more about it in other posts although a little was said at

http://gordonfeil.blogspot.ca/2016/11/why-dont-we-love.html.

P.S.: The topic is now picked up at
http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2016/12/the-pain-that-keeps-us-from-loving.html.