We are all addicts.  Even if we are not experiencing the symptoms of addiction at present, our hearts are inclined—literally Hell-bent—toward slavery toward sin and self.

Such words might seem harsh in today’s sanitized world of self-esteem and participation trophies.  And such words blur the comfortable divisions we create (or imagine) between ourselves and the really hard cases.  But when speaking of addiction, it’s important to recognize how sin powerfully affects us all, to the very core of our beings.  After that it’s only a matter of degree.

In Nehemiah’s day, the people were gathered for a ceremony in which they confessed their sins publicly, a confession that also included something of a history lesson, a snapshot of the relationship between God and his people:

22 “And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan. 23 You multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter and possess. 24 So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand, with their kings and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they would. 25 And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. (Nehemiah 9:22-25)

God had been faithful to Israel in her past.  But their present had become contaminated by sin.

WHAT YOU WORSHIP, YOU BECOME

Listen to the words that are used to describe Israel’s sinful spiritual condition:

26 “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. 27 Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. 28 But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies. 29 And you warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them, and they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. 30 Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.31 Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God. (Nehemiah 9:26-31)

The words that follow only further underscore a basic truth: that Israel’s hardships weren’t behind her; their iniquity had led them deeper into self-imposed slavery:

32 “Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. 33 Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. 34 Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. 35 Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. 36 Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. 37 And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress. (Nehemiah 9:27-37)

“We are slaves,” he says.  Slaves.  By that he meant that though the people had their Promised Land in their possession, they remained ruled by the Persian government.  Ironically, in seeking to be their own masters the nation had become enslaved.

The same is true for us as well.  You see, what’s really at issue here is worship.  Nehemiah highlights a basic Biblical principle: that what you worship, you become.  What you worship, you become.

Everybody worships, you see.  In his 2005 address to Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace told his audience that “everybody worships:”

“The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you worship money or things…then you will never have enough…Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly…Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid…Worship your intellect…you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.  But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious.  They are default settings.” [1]

Though Wallace was not a believer, his understanding of the human heart resonates profoundly with historic Christianity.  You’ve probably heard me talk about this before, but let’s apply our understanding of worship to the subject of addiction.

In the fourth century, a man named St. Augustine had this idea that our hearts indeed have “default settings.”  He called this the ordo amoris, or the “order of love.”  The simplest way to understand this is to picture your heart as a pyramid.  You will never flourish, Augustine would say, unless God resides at the top of your pyramid.  Your other loves—for family, for career, etc.—occupy the lower spaces beneath.

Sin, therefore, is a form of “dis-ordered” love.  When God no longer is my greatest source of satisfaction, something else will always take his place.

WE ARE ALL DIS-ORDERED

So while it may be true that addiction has a unique origin and a unique course of treatment, we can’t afford to treat addiction as a unique form of sin.  We are all “dis-ordered,” for all our sins are forms of dis-ordered love.  Sin isn’t just a set of bad things we do; it’s a condition into which we’re born.  David lamented that he was “sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”  Jeremiah would describe the human heart as “deceitful…and desperately sick.”  We’re all addicted to something.  We all look to something besides God as our source of joy and satisfaction.  Once we understand that, then, like Nehemiah, we can begin sharing the burden.

RENEWED LIVES FLOW FROM RE-ORDERED HEARTS

In Nehemiah’s day the choice before them was simple: to “renew their vows” so-to-speak, and to re-affirm their commitment to God alone:

38 “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. (Nehemiah 9:38)

If you know your Bible history, this would be the last time they renew their commitment to God’s covenant until the days of Jesus.  But in the intervening years, things still don’t go well for them.

We cannot, on our own, ever expect to follow God perfectly by sheer force of will.  Willpower alone is insufficient.  Why?  Because if sin is a form of dis-ordered love, then our lives will never change until we change our loves.  This is why addiction treatments fail: because we have addressed the symptoms, not the cause.  In his book Clean, David Scheff laments:

“Our prevention and treatment efforts have failed mostly because they’ve focused on dealing with drugs themselves, but drug abuse is almost always the result of kids starting to use early, genetics, and other problems—stress, trauma, mental illness, or some combination of these factors. The new paradigm is rooted in recognizing that drugs are a symptom, not a cause, and whatever problems underlie them must be (and can be) addressed. Until they are, our prevention and treatment systems will continue to fail most people.”[2]

We have to change the heart.  Renewed lives can only flow from re-ordered hearts. In John’s biography of Jesus he meets a woman by a well in the town of Sychar.  The woman had spent many nights in the beds of her many lovers.  Her most recent partner is a man to whom she’s not married.

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

Jesus confronts her sin, yes, but that’s neither the starting point nor ending point of the conversation.  It’s as if Jesus is saying: “I want more for you.”

In the face of addiction, we mustn’t forget the gospel.  The gospel doesn’t simply promise that if we try hard enough, if we are good enough, God will provide us what we need to navigate our warring desires.  No; the gospel says that because God is good, he gives us himself, and he alone is what we need to satisfy the deepest longings of our soul.

That’s why, honestly, if you are currently facing addiction, if you have ever faced addiction, please hear me.  Whether it’s heroin, whether it’s pornography, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s greed—the greatest thing God wants to change in you is not your addiction; it’s your lack of dependence on him.  The cross offers not only forgiveness for your lack of dependence; it also beckons each of us to come to him—come to Jesus—to pledge our whole-hearted dependence on him and him alone.

[1] David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” Kenyon College, 2005.  Available online at http://bulletin.kenyon.edu/x4280.html

[2] Sheff, Clean, xix.

Much of life slips by us with neither incident nor significance.  Other events cling to us with all the scent and texture memory can preserve.  Events that, given the chance, we wish to pass on to our children, and to their children as well.

We hand down stories of our past because we believe memory to be a faithful guide to our futures.  And surely, for God’s people especially, there is value in looking back to see God’s consistent pattern of faithfulness in our lives over the years.

The same was true of Israel.  We remain in Nehemiah 9, where the people gather in a “revival service” in which they recited the nature of their relationship with God as well as their admission of their unfaithfulness in that relationship.

A STORY OF REDEMPTION

We might best understand Israel’s historical narrative with a single word: redemption.  The word literally means to “buy back,” the way the Lord “redeemed” his people from “a house of slavery” (Deuteronomy 7:8)—referring of course, to Egypt.  This story, the story of the exodus, became the defining event for God’s people for centuries.

It’s little wonder, then, that the redemption of God’s people took center stage in the prayer of Nehemiah 9:

9 “And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, 10 and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. 11 And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters. 12 By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. 13 You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, 14 and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. 15 You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them. (Nehemiah 9:9-15)

FATAL FORGETFULNESS

The problem, of course, is that this defining work of God did not produce lasting change.  The prayer now turns to the act of confessing the people’s disobedience to God:

16 “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. 17 They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. 18 Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, 19 you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. 20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. 21 Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. (Nehemiah 9:9-21)

God’s sustaining power is emblematic of his surpassing goodness and grace.

REMEMBERING REDEMPTION

How are we to understand this today?  First, we understand that we live in a different covenant than Nehemiah’s people.  What is a “covenant?”  Most simply, it is a promise, an agreement.  For us, we might see a covenant as asking and answering a basic spiritual question: How can I experience God in my life?

For Israel, they lived in the promise of the covenant made to Abraham, wherein God pledged that his people would have the blessing of the Promised Land and the descendants with which to fill it.  This promise was given as an extension of God’s grace and steadfast love.  But, if God’s people were to enjoy God’s blessings to the full, they would conform to his righteous character as stipulated in the Law given through Moses.  Here in Nehemiah, we’re seeing the people corporately admitting that they had been unfaithful in this regard.

For us, we live in the promise given through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We experience God’s presence directly now that the cross has given access to the Father’s throne, and we live in the wild hope of God’s promise that we, too, will share in Jesus’ resurrection when Christ returns to renew heaven and earth.

What does that mean?  It means that we, too, have been redeemed; we have been bought with a price, and set free from the slavery of sin and self.

For us, then, we recite this gospel story every day of our lives.  We tell this story to our children, that they might understand God’s goodness.  We tell this story to our neighbors, that they might be brought near by the blood of Christ.  We tell this story to our brothers and sisters in Christ, that we might be reminded of what holds us together in common purpose.  And finally, we tell this story to ourselves, that we might remember our identity in Christ, and not fall into a fatal forgetfulness that looms and threatens to wear away the fabric of our faith.

One of the surest indicators of spiritual health is our capacity for gratitude.

Many cultures devote a time or season in which to express their thankfulness—a response to the goodness they see in their lives and in their families.

As the years wear on, gratitude seems increasingly hard to cultivate given our more natural tendency toward self-interest and greed.  It’s almost cliché to point out that on Thanksgiving Day, we bow our heads to give thanks for what we have; on Black Friday we trample others for what we don’t.  Given the state of American culture this year, gratitude seems very far away.

One Catholic writer has historically put it this way:

“Our basic attitude of life is one of claiming rights and shunning responsibilities. We have ceased to appreciate the blessings of life, such as health, the beauty of nature, human friendships and love, and then to respond to them with gratitude. Gratitude is the key to happiness. We feel that life owes us the fulfillment of every desire, and if we do not receive this we feel bitter and we feel entitled to take advantage of others. Any question of moral good and evil is eliminated.”

Gratitude withers under the weight of entitlement.  Gratitude ennobles us to receive life’s blessings as gifts from God; entitlement insists that blessings come to those who deserve them, and all man’s happiness reflecting the supreme triumph of the will.

How do we cultivate a sense of gratitude in an age of entitlement?  I think a clue comes from today’s reading in Nehemiah 9.  As we’ve already observed in our series, the people had gathered for a ceremony in which they re-dedicated themselves to their relationship with God.  Chapter 9 begins with the people gathering to confess their sin, their dire need for God:

Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.2 And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. 4 On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani; and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God.5 Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. (Nehemiah 9:1-5)

“Stand up and bless the Lord.”  These words form more than just the words of an old hymn; they are vital to the cultivation of gratitude and joy.  Entitlement looks inward, toward self; gratitude lifts the eyes to delight in things that lie beyond ourselves—the food on the table, the laughter of a child, the God in his heaven.

What follows in Nehemiah is one of the most beautiful yet overlooked prayers in all of Scripture:

6 “You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. 7 You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. 8 You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous. (Nehemiah 9:1-8)

We need a greater vision of God and a smaller vision of self.

So again: how do we cultivate gratitude in an age of entitlement?  Let me spring off of this text in Nehemiah to offer three suggestions:

(1) Reject the vision of “supposed to be”

I studied chemistry as an undergraduate student.  This meant spending considerable time in the lab, where we’d quickly realize that the principles in the textbook didn’t always look the same in nature.  The tendency for young, unproven students was to approach the professor with a test tube full of…well, gunk is probably the most scientific word for it.  “What’s this supposed to be doing?” we’d hesitantly ask.  And our professor would amiably scold us, saying: “Don’t ask what’s supposed to be happening.  Ask: what is happening?” Something is always at work, even if it’s not what you’d expected.

As humans we become far too attached to life as it’s “supposed to be.”  When you’re young, you might start by thinking “I’m supposed to be finished college by now” or “I’m supposed to be married” or “I’m supposed to be having another baby.”

But this vision of life as it’s “supposed to be” obstructs our view of life “as it is.”  When we anchor our joy in social (or personal) expectations, we will invariably find that we fail to fully measure up to what we think is “supposed to be” happening.  But God is always at work, even if it’s not what you’d expected. We find joy in a God who numbers the hairs on our head, a God who is active in our lives as they are—not merely as we think they’re “supposed to be.”

(2) Reject the temptation to “comparison shop”

Related to this is our tendency to “comparison shop” through the windows of others’ lives.  There’s a vital reason God prohibited his people from “coveting” their neighbors’ lifestyles.  It’s extremely tempting to look at friends or family and think: “Man, I wish I had his success” or “I wish I had her figure.”  Because the ugly flip side to this is to be thankful you’re not as bad as someone else, thinking: “I’m glad my diet’s working better than hers” or “I’d sure hate to raise my kids on his salary.”

Comparing ourselves to others effectively anchors our joy in human circumstance.  It relegates joy to a system of metrics, fluctuating according to our relative success amidst our social circles.  One of the Bible’s greatest song-writers once said to God that “the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6).  In the original context, that meant that the lines that marked his property marked an amount of land he could be happy with.  What he had was enough.

What if we could celebrate the success of others rather than window-shop in their lives?  What if for us as well, the lines could fall in pleasant places, and we could likewise find delight in what God has done for us?

(3) Rejoice in what God does “instead”

Finally, we must learn to find joy in our circumstances not in our imaginations.  Entitlement insists that happiness is found in my plans.  Gratitude finds joy in what God does instead.  Instead of that job we thought we wanted, God gave us a different path.  That relationship?  God steered us on a different course.  At the time, these things seem like wounds—sometimes mortal ones.  And this is to say nothing of the immeasurable difficulties that come in the form of medical reports and test results.  Remember, dear Christian, that all these things are in the hands of a God who numbers every teardrop and promises to one day wipe them from our faces.

Entitlement may never be satisfied, but in Christ our joy may be complete.  May each of us experience the true joy of the Lord today, whether around tables that overflow with food and family, or tables where chairs sit empty from loved ones that have passed on.  We may be thankful for each year and for each table, because both are gifts of a God whose blessings transcend circumstance.