Addiction with Power is a Deadly Combination

sin

For someone who has never struggled with addiction, it’s hard to understand the depths of shame that accompany it. When it has found a home in you, it makes you do things you never thought you’d do in a hundred lifetimes:

The compulsive gambler who takes out a second mortgage on his family’s home to pay off debts; the suburban housewife who loads her kids in the minivan in the dead of night to meet her supplier on the other side of town; the teenage daughter who finds her chastity ring in a drawer to be an uncomfortable reminder of the little girl she used to be.

It gets harder to ask for grace when you have used up your get-out-of-jail-free card over and over again. “This is the last time…”; “I promise…”; “I just need…” become a weary chorus of excuses to continue a pattern of behavior that is both knowingly abhorrent and hard to imagine living without.

Grace and hope

At a certain point, the dependence on grace to break one’s bonds to a substance or behavior – a grace which is not bound by human weakness or circumstance – becomes the only vestige of hope in an otherwise black-as-night existence. For one who desperately wants to leave an addiction behind, who recognizes its damage and power and has nothing left to hold on to, grace is the only power that can ransom someone in a hostage standoff.

Addiction can blast through the natural barricades that are set up to keep it in check. When you’ve exhausted your savings, you may resort to borrowing, stealing, or prostitution. When there are moral check-points (that is, a sense of right and wrong), these may be compromised or easily passed through. There is one advantage to them though: they at least set up “runaway truck” mounds of remorse like those highway ramps that keep a truck from barreling down a mountain out of control.

There is a memorable scene in Nikos Kazanzakis’ “Zorba the Greek” that has stayed with me over the years:

Well, he had all the vices, but he’d slash them, as you would with a sword. For instance, he smoked like a chimney. One morning he got up and went into the fields to plough. He arrived, leaned on the hedge, pushed his hand into his belt for his tobacco-pouch to roll a cigarette before he began work, took out his pouch and found it was empty. He’d forgotten to fill it before leaving the house. He foamed with rage, let out a roar, and then bounded away towards the village. His passion for smoking completely unbalanced his reason, you see.

But suddenly – I’ve always said I think man’s a mystery – he stopped, filled with shame, pulled out his pouch and tore it to shreds with his teeth, then stamped it in the ground and spat on it. “Filth! Filth!” he bellowed. “Dirty slut!”  And from that hour, until the end of his days, he never put another cigarette between his lips. “That’s the way real men behave, boss. Good night!”

The twelve steps

Addiction is, in many ways, a sin against reason. Depending on the substance or behavior, as well as the inner fortitude of the addict, it may be more or less difficult to change course. Those who have successfully worked their twelve-step programs know the “First Commandment” of AA/NA is to admit one’s powerlessness, to acknowledge that their lives have become unmanageable. The second commandment follows closely behind it: that only a Power greater than oneself has the ability to restore one to sanity.

In a scriptural context, we see this confession in David’s lament: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5).

And later, we witness the Power which has the ability to free him from slavery: “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance” (Psalm 32:7).

Addiction and power

When an addict is also in a position of power or influence, the spiritual danger of “covering up” becomes even greater. In Communist regimes, the State usurps God as the seat of power. In the lives of addicts, the influence of wealth, power and political influence as well as their ability to cover their tracks become spiritually lethal. They substitute these things in place of their need for God.

In other words, power becomes a golden calf, a dumb idol, with no real capacity to save. But it does not keep one under its spell from worshiping it. Power can also mitigate the natural shame that comes from sacrificing one’s reason to a substance or behavior because it offers “something else” to latch on to in a similar pattern of addictive grasping.

A current scandal

I’m writing this in light of the present scandal concerning Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. There is plenty of evidence now of Hunter’s ongoing drug abuse, his salacious and deviant sexual indulgences and purported unethical nepotistic financial dealings. He seems never to have had any natural check on these behaviors on account of a seemingly endless well of money, political cover, and opportunities for indulgence.

As a result, he doesn’t ever seem to have come to terms with the proverbial “rock bottom” which every alcoholic or drug addict has to face at some point in their lives when the friendships are severed and bank accounts go negative. This is the real danger of power, wealth, and influence: they are idols an addict clings to, like wooden life rafts, rather than letting one come near to death by way of drowning. They rob the agent of the necessary experience of having his back against a wall with nowhere to look but up.

The sovereignty of God demands that nothing else stand in His place. Shame razes one’s ego and self-assurance to lay the foundation for hope of redemption. When one has wealth, power, and influence to mitigate that shame, these serve as enablers. There is no solid foundation to build on, for even those things will be eroded away eventually when an addiction goes unchecked.

Follow the saints

For this reason, the saints have abhorred anything which feeds the ego and makes genuine repentance and metanoia more difficult or outright impossible. With their reason undimmed by any addictions, they were able to ascend to the heights of spiritual perfection by exercise of the will. Perhaps this is why religious art depicts saints with halos over their heads: because they have submitted their reason to God’s Right Order.

I am inclined to extend a modicum of grace and pity to Mr. Biden (the son) for being deprived of the cold filthy floor many of us who have struggled with addictions have found ourselves face to face with at one point in our lives. When you have money, influence, power, and cover, you may never hit bottom because your supply valve is always open.

There is something in me that suspects, however, that deep down he knows he is a royal screw-up and lives with that shame, however mitigated by the insulation provided by his family influence. I believe that, deep down, he knows he needs God and a hope that his dirty dealings might be exposed, not on the cover of a newspaper, but in the recesses of his heart.

True religion and true God

Every kind of pseudo-religion – faux-Catholicism or otherwise – that does not recognize the need for change, for repentance, and in some cases a resolve to radically turn away from the things which put one in spiritual danger is merely a prop, a false idol, of no use. It is a religion that cannot save. But “a humble and contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn” (Psalm 51:17).

There is always hope for the wayward because the God who saves did not come to call the righteous, but sinners…even the high profile ones. Yet, unless one crawls out from underneath the pile of dumb and mute idols with which he has been surrounded in his addiction, falling to the floor may be an exercise delayed until it’s too late, “for in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will give You thanks?” (Psalm 6:5). For those who have survived addiction and been saved by shame and grace know it’s better to wake up on the floor than to die on a knoll.

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2 thoughts on “Addiction with Power is a Deadly Combination”

  1. Pingback: MONDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

  2. Good morning!
    A fascinating and insightful article. Thank you. Like you, I am super-grateful for never having struggled with addiction. That said, it doesn’t make me better, it just makes me wonderfully blessed.
    Finally, I must admit that the heading of the article, “Addiction with Power is a Deadly Combination,” led me to expect writing about a different and very powerful person.

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