HOW RECOVERY GETS SABOTAGED

Better a poor, miserable alcoholic than
a self-assured, self-righteous teetotaler.

There are only two kinds of people in the world—those in recovery and those who need to be. We all battle addictions. Yours may not be drugs or alcohol, but if you are part of the human race, you undoubtedly have some unhealthy attachments that limit your ability to love.

Recognizing and owning these self and other-destructive habits is the first step forward. The next is addressing the issue(s). Most of our hurts and quirks do not need professional attention nor will most of us require residential treatment, but whatever pathway we take in our quest toward freedom, there are some minefields to which we must all be alert.

MINEFIELD #1: GETTING “BETTER” IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER*

Recovery has its dangers. Behind every endeavor—good or bad—lurks our great enemy, pride. I do not pretend to know the mind of God, but my own experience leads me to believe that God in his mercy more often than not chooses to let the demon(s) live. Seldom does he deliver a person completely. It is just too risky. It has been said, “For every person who can handle success, a hundred can handle failure.” For the alcoholic, it is the very urge to drink that keeps him crying out to God. Remove the struggle and the temptation to think more highly of ourselves is nearly impossible to resist.

That is why we never say “recovered” but rather “recovering.” The moment we think we are good-to-go is the beginning of the end. Paul staunchly warns, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:12). There is nothing like a little clean time to make a person think, “I’m okay. I’ve got this.” So, God keeps part of the burden on our plate. It is the ongoing wrestling match which keeps the recovering alcoholic humble, on his knees, returning to the Scriptures, prayer, and the fellowship.

But what is true of an alcoholic is true of those who battle other faults like lust, laziness, greed, and gluttony. I have been fighting anger issues my entire life whether driving, playing Catan with my family, standing in line at Walmart (thank God for delivery services!), or singing in a Sunday worship gathering (Why are we doing this song again!?). My anger can flare up pretty much anywhere, with anyone. I am fairly good at concealing it (most of the time), but God knows what’s in my heart. There self-righteousness and judgement abound. Sometimes I feel like I am not much further along in my walk in this area than when I got saved over fifty years ago.

However, with my vulnerability ever exposed, I am continually reminded of my need for Jesus. Baring his help, I will snap and do something terribly stupid and possibly damning. I do not live in paranoia, but I pray regularly (and with a vengeance) the prayer Jesus taught his first disciples—the petition that, in fact, anchors and closes what we call the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us (me!) not into temptation, but deliver us (me!) from evil.” My propensities to run amok keep me serious about seeking him.

We all want resurrection; but God wants our crucifixion. While our chief priority may be improvement, top on God’s agenda is our desperation. Of course, God takes no pleasure in us groveling in the dirt before him. But desperation holds immense potential if we respond appropriately. God is determined to save us by curing us of all confidence in ourselves so that we learn to be totally dependent upon him. God wants you and me to come to grips with our weakness so that we can experience his power manifested in our lives. He longs for us to discover the joy of being fully reliant upon his Son Jesus Christ. St. Paul knew this all too well. Remember these words he wrote about his thorn? “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).

So, my question is this: Could your and my experience of failure be God’s door to helping us see our creaturehood with all its limitations and, more, the cure to our insidious desire to be independent, autonomous? Could our struggle actually be God’s gracious gift to us, driving us away from ourselves to him? Is it even possible that we would look seriously to God without the frustration? Could it actually be that the best thing that ever happened to us is our very disease, our addiction? Could it be that forced dependence is the only real pathway to true freedom?

We are more often preoccupied with sobriety than real transformation. True recovery is about wholeness, and wholeness does not mean resolving all our problems, having it all together. Wholeness comes from embracing all that makes us human—the good, bad, and ugly. It is an acknowledgment that we are a bag of mixed motives with an assortment of both wonderful and horrifying capacities. Nothwithstanding . . . we are unconditionally and infinitely loved. As we become grounded in the Father’s love, we start to become comfortable in our skin and subsequently, grateful, content, and present in the moment.

A few years ago, I had been reflecting on my life—doing a deep dive of sorts for a class I was taking on ministerial health. Wounds from the past which had been long forgotten began to surface. Missteps from long ago to the present started replaying in my mind. My brokenness came to light in new and very painful ways. One afternoon as I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Costco waiting for my wife to finish shopping, I suddenly and involuntarily burst out, “I am f!#cked up!” (I am glad the windows were shut.) I then began to laugh and cry, almost hysterically, overwhelmed that God could still love me. It seemed almost too outrageous for me to believe yet I did.

We must remember that the whole point of recovery—whether from drug and alcohol abuse or gambling, pornography, overeating, . . .—is NOT actually overcoming what we deem the problem. Getting victory is good and important and something certainly to be sought. But God has an infinitely better goal. It is meeting him. Knowing him. Relationship. Community. Entering a deeper place of union with Jesus and his body, the church. And the way he does that is through our wounds, pain, . . . our fight to stay alive. This is what moves us to him and each together.

I am starting to understand why Paul said what at face value seems outlandish: “I delight in weaknesses” (2 Corinthians 12:10). Brokenness is the conduit of blessing. Or to loosely quote A.W. Tozer, “Him that God would bless, he afflicts.” Jacob confessed this truth in the aftermath of getting his butt kicked by God (excuse the French), “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:30). I appreciate this statement from the late theologian Marva Dawn, “Let weakness be the agent for God’s tabernacling.” We are all cracked, but as Leonard Cohen sang, that is how the light gets in.

We say we want recovery. An end to our love affair with booze and cigarettes, the gamepad and FanDuel, sugar and caffeine, porn and prescription pain meds. But what we may really only want is power, control. It is the original temptation. Like Adam and Eve, we want to be like god. So, God in his grace makes sure something or several things come our way that we cannot manage. Father Richard Rohr concludes, “God seems to have hidden holiness and wholeness in a secret place where only the humble will find it.”

*This is part of a three-part series identifying key pitfalls or minefields of how people’s quest to get better can easily get hijacked and go south.