What are you passionate about? What is it that gives your life purpose and direction? For some people the answer is “Nothing.” For others, it might be family, a political cause, cheering for your favorite sports team, playing computer games and trying to make it to the next level; etc. Like the Prodigal Son in the famous story told by Jesus (Luke 15) we are often driven by passions or desires that in the long run leave us empty and lost. No wonder Comedian George Carlin could make us laugh (and wince) with his comedy routine on our love for stuff and its importance in our lives. Down deep inside, we know that stuff will not ultimately satisfy us.
The writer Henri Nouwen describes this experience as “addiction.” Writing in The Return of the Prodigal Son (pp. 42-43) he says this about “addiction”.
“Addiction” might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates contemporary society. Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink; and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world’s delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in “the distant country” leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father’s home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in “a distant country” It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a child of God, the Beloved of my Father? I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God had given me—my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts—and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God.
Ouch! Do you see yourself in any of this? Unfortunately, I do. Maybe my addiction and passionate pursuit isn’t to accumulate wealth and power, status and admiration, but it is often a search for recognition, affirmation and unconditional love. And like the prodigal in Jesus’ parable, I discover that what I really need and what I have really been searching for is something more basic, more radical, and more fundamental. I realize the truth that there is a passionate desire that stands behind and under all the other desires of my life. And that that fundamental passion can only be satisfied in returning home, returning to the Father’s unconditional love.
It is not easy to realize this, to “come to myself” to use the words of the parable (Luke 15:17). It is hard because as I look around, it seems that everyone has the same passion, everyone is pursuing the same goals – the successful life as defined by my culture, my society, my family and friends. It is hard to break from the script and live a different narrative. Not many of us like going against the flow, especially when it means being different. In many ways it is easier to give ourselves over to the “addictions” and illusions that hold sway over the people around us. Like those in the movie The Matrix at least we’re all sharing the same “illusion.”
We protest when confronted with our apparent addictions, whether it is alcohol, work, sex, achievements, the need for more and more entertainment and “fun” to fill our waking hours and days, or the accumulation of material things. When confronted, we defend ourselves, often by either comparing ourselves to others who we believe are far worse than we are or by pointing to others who are similar to us, so we aren’t so bad.
Addiction is the craving and need for something or things that ultimately do us harm. And the ultimate addiction is for a life lived apart from God at the center. This does the ultimate harm because it cuts us off from the real source of Life and wholeness. Addiction is destructive because it is fundamentally a form of idolatry. It is ascribing ultimate worth to something or someone that isn’t God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right when he said: “Whatever you can’t get enough of, that’s your god.”
But sometimes we listen and we make a move to “kick the habit”, break our addiction when we are confronted with the truth of our bondage and the toll this passion is taking on us and our soul. Some of us can do it “cold turkey”, but most of us need help. We need someone to be there – to work and walk with us. We need to find alternatives to the things that have been the focus of our lives. We need to cultivate a new focus and a new passion that liberates and empowers us rather than entraps us.
And the interesting thing is that when our relationship with God takes center stage in our lives, the other things of life – people, things, experiences, desire and passion assume their rightful place. And where there was craving and a mild to intense sense of dissatisfaction because what we used to desire and pursue didn’t ultimately satisfy, now that we are focused on the right center and desire – to know, love and live with God—the other things of life are richer and more satisfying.
Now getting there isn’t easy, as anyone who has tried to kick a habit knows. But the resources God makes available to us – the Spirit, prayer, the community of the faithful, trained counselors and compassionate friends, etc.—make it possible to break our addictions. Whether they be physical, emotional or spiritual.
Have you kicked your “addiction”? We need to live for something or someone. Our desire for things that can ensnare us and we can become addicted to is evidence that we were created to live passionately and wholly in a growing, maturing relationship with God. Have you come home to the life that God wants to give you? Or are you still in the “far country” trying to feed your addiction for things that don’t satisfy? The choice is ours.
