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Sight-Seeing: What happened to you?

Holding on to love small

NILS VON KALM looks at how, drawing from the example of Jesus, Christians should look to approach the issue of addiction…

I was thinking the other day about a young guy from a church I used to go to who was addicted to drugs.

My default thought when he came to mind was one of judgment. Why couldn’t he get his life together and not be so self-destructive and destructive of others? I quickly realised I was seeing myself as morally superior to him. It’s something that Christians are known for and very good at.

Then I thought of a question that I heard from researcher, Johann Hari. When we think of addicts, the question we ask is generally along the lines of my question of the young guy I knew. It’s the question of “what’s wrong with you?”.

Holding on to love

It is compassion and love, says Nils von Kalm, that will help an addict change, not shame or moralising. PICTURE: Nick Fewings/Unsplash

 

“The addiction specialist, Dr Gabor Mate, says that shame and moralising will never change an addict; on the contrary, those attitudes make it more likely for the addict to stay in their addiction. It is compassion that is the best way for the addict to change.”

In the research that Hari has done, he has realised that the more relevant and compassionate question is, “what happened to you?”

No one chooses to be an addict. Addiction is always a response to pain. And the more traumatic the pain, often the more extreme the addiction.

The addiction specialist, Dr Gabor Mate, says that shame and moralising will never change an addict; on the contrary, those attitudes make it more likely for the addict to stay in their addiction. It is compassion that is the best way for the addict to change.

If we really want people to stop using drugs, stop drinking to the point of hurting those around them, or stop using porn, then it is compassion that will most likely lead to change.

When we think of it that way, our tendency is to often baulk because we think that such an attitude or approach is all sentimental, mushy and weak. Nothing could be further from the truth. Compassion is not weak. It is transformative and life-changing. It is also realistic and humble.

As Gabor Mate points out, we are all addicts in some sense. Your coffee or chocolate or work addiction is no different in substance to another person’s ice or porn addiction. The only difference is that you’re using coffee, chocolate or work and the other person is using more extreme substances or behaviours. But the reason you’re using them is the same: you’re trying to escape pain.

We have all experienced pain of some sort, and many of us still do. The substance or behaviour we are addicted to is not the real problem; the substance or behaviour is what we use to deal with our problem.

If compassion is the best and only real way to deal with addiction, why are so many Christians so judgmental about other people’s behaviours? Why, when Jesus showed so much compassion for ‘sinners’, and we have read passages like Romans 2:4, is it that we are exactly like the Pharisees who condemn and moralise and who, because of this, God himself had so much trouble with?

Most of us can probably relate to stories in churches where this has happened. It’s possibly even happened to you. Why is it that Christians are often less compassionate than those who don’t proclaim any sort of faith?

I think it essentially comes down to the fact that our individualised ‘Gospel’ emphasises personal morality over love. That is not to undermine personal morality; of course that is important. And that is the very point I am making. True personal morality is about love; seeing people as Jesus saw them. It is not about behaviour management. That goes for the addict and for Christians.



When I thought about the young guy I knew and could imagine myself asking “what happened to you?”, I felt a surge of compassion for him.

We can’t help what happened to us to trigger our addictions. So it is being shown love that will allow the addict to respond. Do we really think the addict needs to be shamed any more? Do we really think they don’t feel enough shame already? People don’t wake up one morning and decide they want to be drug addicts or porn addicts or alcoholics.

For goodness’ sake, let’s stop this thinking that shunning them, telling them what they’re doing wrong and condemning them is going to be good for them. We need to be more intelligent than that. Love is intelligent. Love is what changes people. Love is what Jesus did.

Johann Hari says that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but connection. Addiction is a way of trying to find life and connection through destructive means and continuing to do so despite negative consequences. When we find genuine connection we also find healing. Genuine connection involves compassion, unconditional acceptance, and lack of any judgment.

“For goodness’ sake, let’s stop this thinking that shunning them, telling them what they’re doing wrong and condemning them is going to be good for them. We need to be more intelligent than that. Love is intelligent. Love is what changes people. Love is what Jesus did.”

In his book, Chasing the Scream: The Opposite of Addiction is Connection, Hari tells the story of ‘Rat Park’. This was an experiment in the 1970s in which a group of rats was isolated in a cage with two drinking taps. One tap contained water while the other one was laced with morphine. Another group of rats was placed in Rat Park, which contained food, balls to play with and wheels to run on. The isolated rats turned to the morphine at much higher rates than the water, whereas the rats in Rat Park only took very moderate amounts of the morphine.

The Rat Park experiment showed the same results as it has for humans. When we allow genuine connection for people, they thrive. But when we shame people and moralise, it actually makes their situation worse.

I was brought up to believe that the Gospel is primarily individual and involves being moral. We talked about grace but it was effectively a behaviour-based Gospel. It was about sin management and it wasn’t good news.


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Jesus is the friend of sinners. He is the friend of addicts. In our struggles with addiction, if we can imagine Jesus looking us in the eye and asking, “What happened to you?”, and let that become a mindset, we will more likely know that we are heard, that we are known and that we are loved in our being known. We will then be much more likely to show that same compassion of Jesus to other addicts just like us.

Jesus never moralised. He wasn’t into sin management. That was what the Pharisees were into and Jesus strongly condemned it. I hope the next time I think of the young guy I used to go to church with, my default question will be “what happened to you?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?”.

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