Christian Family Services Ministry

3-26-2022 – A Word to the Wise – Part 1 What causes addiction? There are two basic causes of addiction: idolatry, and covetousness, each cause has a corresponding trait that identifies it. A person may have either or both of these root problems. The identifying trait or penalty for idolatry is compulsive-obsessive behavior. This is total absorption with the object of the addiction.

Compulsive addictive behavior enslaves one to the physical body. Concerns over physical needs choke out one’s relationship with God and with one’s fellow man. Jesus addresses idolatry in one of the sayings from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6:24 says, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

This passage is perhaps the most fundamental of all Biblical passages that deals with the root sin of idolatry. In sharp contrast to the self-induced anxiety over the quest for the material, Jesus calls our attention to His demands and rewards.

One of the characteristics we learn of God in the Old Testament is that He is an uncompromising God. The person who is unattached and uncommitted to His Son, can have as many distractions and commitments as he pleases. However, from His servants, He demands allegiance. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have nothing else before me. I am a jealous God.” Then, He threatens to bring His wrath on the third and fourth generations. There is a continuing effect connected with one not making up ones mind in His service. We cannot

serve God and riches, or alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or food.

But if there is anything we are out to pile up for ourselves, it is the material, the perishable, to gain by whatever name and by whatever means the temporal. Jesus says we cannot have it both ways. We cannot go on pleasing ourselves and have a relationship with Him. So, we are warned against attaching our hearts to things of a material nature.

Jesus gives some reasons why our hearts do not belong on the material. One reason is because earthly things are temporary; they steal the heart away. Do you remember that short verse in Luke 12:34 where Jesus speaks about our anxiety? He says, “For where your treasure is there will be your heart also”. If our treasure is in God, our heart is going to be in heaven, but if our treasure is in earthly things whether they are food, drugs, sex or any other addiction, then like Scrooge, we are going to be scrounging around trying to get more. Where the heart is put, the whole self will be. So one type of addiction is rooted in idolatry.

TO BE CONTINUED

A second type of addiction finds its roots in covetousness.