While walking out the door of Wally
World the other day, a woman and man were fast approaching the automatic doors
with her husband trailing behind her. She took one last puff from her
cigarette before passing it off, filter first, to her husband like a sprinter with
a baton to her teammate without missing a beat. As she walked through the door
unloading her lungs, she reminded me of a wood-stoked locomotive with smoke billowing
out of its stack and trailing along the passenger cars. I thought to myself
that it was not physically possible for anyone to have that much smoke in their
lungs and live to tell about it! I was wrong.
Immediately with the exchange, he
in turn dragged on the cigarette for all its worth; then he exhaled a big cloud
of smoke as if trying to outdo his mate while dashing the cigarette in flames
in the scuttlebutt and fell forward through the door opening as if pulled by an
invisible rope. The doors closed behind him.
I was upwind of the secondhand
smoke observing all of this. The abandoned cigarette looked like the crash site
of a private aircraft that took a nose dive, crumpled up and still smoking, with no
survivors. What a waste, there looked to be several puffs wasted on that crash
and burn…
It all happened so quickly. For
some unknown reason, my mind went into recording mode as if it was happening in
slow motion. There was nothing unusual about these typical smokers. They do
what all smokers do by taking advantage of one last puff before entering a
smoke-free environment. It was the sense of urgency on their part that caught
my attention. You should have seen the handoff! It was like poetry in motion,
smooth as butter, graceful as silk in the wind. I was impressed. It was readily apparent; this was not their first rodeo.
I could only imagine the role
cigarettes played in the lives of this couple. I knew the time spent in the war
zone (a smoke-free environment) was going to cause anxiety and play havoc with
their mind for the need to satisfy their craving for nicotine. Maintaining this
habit involved literally paying to have your life shortened! Why would people
do that? I was almost tempted to wait for them to come outdoors to witness
their withdrawal symptoms going into remission after inhaling another cancer
stick, but the weather was too cold, and I could predict with a clean air of
certainty the first thing they were going to do once outside the walls of Wally World.
That’s what I would do if I was addicted to nicotine – satisfy the craving ASAP.
That couple’s desire for one
last puff before going into Wally’s reminded me of my one-lung-Baptist-brother
of the past. He refused the overtures of his family and ignored the doctor’s
orders to give up smoking or else. In spite of the loss of one lung, he
continued to smoke like there was no tomorrow. It had to crush the spirit of
his family! One day I felt compelled to simply ask him outright why he continued
to smoke in light of his medical condition. I expected to hear the MYOB, but He
admitted it was bad for him, but he couldn’t quit. He never asked me to pray
for him which told me it wasn’t a couldn’t but a wouldn’t; he had no intentions
of quitting.
Here was a man with literally half
the lung capacity smoking twice as hard knowing it was going to kill him in the
end. The stress it brought on those who loved him was a heartbreaker as his loved
ones and friends watched him slowly kill himself before their very eyes. Besides
being a spiritual brother to him, I genuinely liked this man, and it was
painful to see him do this and watch his family endure this kind of absurdity;
it really hit home to me just how tenacious the grip of addiction can
be, saved or not. Undeterred, he was bent on self-destruction. Neither God,
family, nor friends were going to stop him from smoking; death finally succeeded
where all else failed...
As I walked away toward the
parking lot, I thought about why we are not overtaken by an addiction that is
good for us? Have you ever overheard someone say, “There’s Jane Doe; she has an
addiction to kindness?” If she smoked, why, we would be all over her reputation
like self-righteous ticks no matter how kind she was; you know we would! The problem is that we don't think or talk like that. We see addiction as only another sin problem; someone getting whooped up by personal abuse of their body. It's inherent in our sinful nature to look at the negative eclipsing the positive. We all struggle with this.
Are we not more inclined to jump on the bad
stuff rather than the good (bad eating habits anyone?). We repel from the benefits
and gravitate toward the things that are harmful to us! Bad is easy and good is hard,
isn’t it? Going downhill is simply far easier than going uphill. Free falling
takes no effort as standing upright does. Going with the flow is fun but going
upstream requires a lot of paddling. Putting someone down rather than praising comes naturally. Blame the flesh we must, but we also must take personal responsibility for our thinking, words, and actions.
As believers in Christ, why can
we not have a spiritual addiction of being consumed with a singular passion to
love the Lord with all of our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves? Have
you ever noticed what is involved in the first command for believers (Mk 12:30,
yeah, go ahead and read it)? This love fits the bill of an addiction, a spiritually
healthy one; it grabs our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strengths. This
love for God is to be all-consuming. God wants us to love Him with the
totality of our being, nothing short of that!
In addition, our love for our
neighbors is as we love ourselves (Mk 12:31)! This is self-love with a
positive impact; how rare is that! The caveat is that this love is agape, the kind of sacrificial love d when God gave His only begotten Son (Jn 3:16). So this is about loving ourselves like God does and that is how we reach
out and treat others. It’s a beautiful concept easily overlooked. This only
happens when we have a love (agape) addiction to God. Of course, treating these
two commands as optional and avoiding the addiction is less work than being committed to them in obedience.
Both commands are not equivocal
in nature by virtue of their ranking; love for God (the first command) trumps
all, but one and two are inseparable (cf. “like,” and “no other commandment
greater than these [two],” Mk 12:31, and “On
these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” Mt 22:40). The natural byproduct of love for God is an agape love
for others. Again, it is not a natural love but a supernatural love (agape),
God’s love given at the moment of regeneration (Rom 5:5), glory! The objects of agape love are different in the commands (God versus man), but the verb is the bond they share: love for God, love for man who is made in the image of God.
Though the word addiction carries
a damaging connotation of its negative connection to something or someone, I
love the phrase, “addicted to love.” Though there is a rock song using that
phrase; it is definitely nothing involving sexual desire here like the Greek
word eros, but agape. It sounds so literal and brazen, and so unashamedly outside
the box of conventional thinking – addicted
to love. I like it in the context of an abnormal craving to be like
Christ; now that’s a great addiction!
Unfortunately, the number of
addicts for Christ is eroding as apostasy swells. You can see it in the disconnection
between believers and the first and second commands. Now, I realize that this sounds
a bit legalistic, but I assure you these are transcendent principles of not
only the OT but inclusive of the NT teaching as well. Do you think Christ was
being legalistic by His words in Jn 14:15? The great disconnect among believers
is seen in the very violation of commands 1 and 2. Lack of obedience (cherry
picking, ignoring, or rejecting portions of Scripture) reveals a faulty love
(Jn 14:15) and a resultant breakdown in loving others as ourselves as we skirt
around their needs by being judgmental (the self-righteous, hypercritical, or
hypocritical type; contrast Jn 7:24) or lacking the time to help them. God help
us! We can identify the harmful addiction as self-centeredness as opposed to
being Christ-centered (beneficial addiction).
Being an addict to Christ would
be characterized as fanatical or radical in our culture where you can’t even ask
if someone is Christian without being politically incorrect or viewed as
imposing your belief on others? Yep, it’s anti-evangelistic in thinking which
is characteristic of anti-Christ doctrine. It is inconceivable such childish
concerns of fretting over a question by those claiming to be Christians in America
while Christians in the Middle East are being beheaded by radical Islamic terrorists
because their mantra is “Death to all infidels (non-Muslim)!” What's wrong with this picture?
You get the impression people are thinking we can't do anything about ISIS persecuting Christians in Syria other than dropping expensive bombs on them, but we can do something about those pesky evangelical thorns sticking in our sides in America! Does it look like we have the word "ISIS" on our backs? It almost sounds double-standardish. Lest we forget; America is part of the world system opposed to anything God. Remain skeptical if you will, but please be diligent in your faithfulness to God; increased persecution of Christians is coming to America from within and without.
You get the impression people are thinking we can't do anything about ISIS persecuting Christians in Syria other than dropping expensive bombs on them, but we can do something about those pesky evangelical thorns sticking in our sides in America! Does it look like we have the word "ISIS" on our backs? It almost sounds double-standardish. Lest we forget; America is part of the world system opposed to anything God. Remain skeptical if you will, but please be diligent in your faithfulness to God; increased persecution of Christians is coming to America from within and without.
We so desperately need a craving
for being like Christ among genuine believers living in America today with apostasy nipping at everyone's heels. People of God who
are not afraid to ask the most needed and pressing question in America – “Are
you a Christian?” I fear it will be more an indictment than a solicitation for
information. We can know by their fruits and tongue (Mt 7:20; Lk 6:45; 12:34; Jas
2:18). It may cause fire and smoke, and may eventually lead to our demise
barring the rapture of the Church, but it is the only addiction worth living
and dying for, knowing and doing the will of God in subordination to the
supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and practice, the Word of
God (2 Tim 3:16-17). It truly reveals if you are addicted to love (Jn 14:15).
Think of the concept of “one
last puff.” You know; that puff you take before spending any time in a
smoke-free environment. Unlike smokers, I want you to think of the concept
of “one last prayer.” Let me give you an example. You get into your car and say
a little prayer for protection and being Christ-like on the road. Before
entering Wally’s, as you walk in you say a little prayer to God for wisdom and
being Christ-like in the store. Rather than leaving your buggy in the way, you stow
it in the proper place. You say a little prayer for protection and to be like
Christ driving home. You arrive at home thanking the Lord for His goodness to
you.
This is an addiction to agape love. It’s a faith choice we make. Unlike the world, we don’t take one last puff (symbolic of a worldly decision, always harmful, temporal in nature). Rather our addiction to Christ causes us to take one last prayer (a spiritual decision, always beneficial, eternal in nature) before we enter any environment (Col 4:2; 1 Thess 5:17). Yes, that’s characteristic of an addiction, a good one that controls and consumes our thinking and our actions. Are we tenaciously addicted to Jesus or just taking one last puff like the world? The world will go up in smoke one day, but we who are in Christ will go up to meet our great Addiction in the air. Are you a Christian? <><
This is an addiction to agape love. It’s a faith choice we make. Unlike the world, we don’t take one last puff (symbolic of a worldly decision, always harmful, temporal in nature). Rather our addiction to Christ causes us to take one last prayer (a spiritual decision, always beneficial, eternal in nature) before we enter any environment (Col 4:2; 1 Thess 5:17). Yes, that’s characteristic of an addiction, a good one that controls and consumes our thinking and our actions. Are we tenaciously addicted to Jesus or just taking one last puff like the world? The world will go up in smoke one day, but we who are in Christ will go up to meet our great Addiction in the air. Are you a Christian? <><
%20MG%20t-bkgrd%2060x44%20png.png){kind=small}
%2BBlk%2BCamel%2Bfor%2Bposts%2BT-bkgrd%2Bright%2B53%2Bx%2B44.png)
