NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

May 11

Scripture focus: Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. James 1:2-4 The Message

If our deepest desire is found in various permutations of loving God, self and others - then perhaps the most destructive component of addiction is that it steals desire. Addiction is a form of spiritual cancer. Specific obsessions and compulsions steal our life energy, leaving nothing left for other people and larger purposes than feeding our urge. Idolatry is the old-fashioned name for addiction.
Adrian Van Kaam has called it a “counterfeit of religious presence.”

Addiction exists when people are compelled to spend energy on things that are not their true desires. Addiction is the process of becoming attached (enslaved) to anything that distracts from our deepest longing for love and goodness.
I attended a funeral recently and the grieving widow said, “He loved his booze more than me.” I gave her a hug and kept walking. Maybe someday I will be given the opportunity to tell her, “He was addicted. That’s not love.”

If unhealthy attachment equals addiction (sometimes mistaken for obsessive love), then healthy detachment means that we are free to love in a way that takes other people’s needs into account. Detachment is not aloof; it is freedom to choose love. Detachment isn’t isolation; it is the ability to make choices within the context of loving relationships.

My boy calls home, not because he has to, but because he wants to have a loving connection to his parental units. We, his parents, appreciate his choice and do not presume that we deserve his largesse. None of us presume, feel entitled or take for granted this love connection.

In this moment (we do not pretend to know the future), we are experiencing a freedom of desire. This is very different than freedom from desire. Our son seems free to choose to love us. Freedom of desire means that we have a capacity to love. This gives us the ability to know how to love others in a way that is both healthy and appropriate. Michael calls because he knows that when he does, he is giving his mom and dad a gift. He is building a relationship of trust, one phone call at a time.
Addiction robs us of the freedom to love God and others. Yikes! That’s serious business.

Do you know where your treasure is buried?


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