TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012 -- SOFT ADDICTIONS (1)

Soft addictions can be habits, compulsive behaviors, or recurring moods or thought patterns. Their essential defining quality is that they satisfy a surface want but ignore or block the satisfaction of a deeper need. They numb us to unfamiliar or uncomfortable feelings by substituting a superficial high, or a sense of activity, for genuine feeling or accomplishment.  Rather than leaning on these temporary crutches, God wants to meet us in our places of need with help that is truly healing and satisfying.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Psalm 139:23-24

Many soft addictions involve necessary behaviors like eating, reading, and sleeping. They become soft addictions when we overdo them and when they are used for more than their intended purpose. Soft addictions, unlike hard ones such as drugs and alcohol, are seductive because they seem like perfectly harmless and pleasurable activities while we’re engaged in them – shopping, talking on the phone, eating, or gaming.  At other times we simply give in to moods and reactions and act on behalf of what we are feeling.  We don’t often realize how much time and energy we give to these things, both positive and negative and how they compromise the quality of our lives.  Jesus came to give us life to the full and these things rob us of our daily experience of that fullness.  The Bible teaches us to check everything we do in order to see if it is done in response to God’s goodness, or as a substitute for God’s desire to bless us.  So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  (1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV)

The motivation and the function of our behavior determine whether or not it's a soft addiction.  Are we engaging in a particular behaviour to enhance our life and our relationships or are we simply trying to numb feelings, “vegg out” and let the world go by?  Are we seeking to engage with life or to escape from life?  Are we inviting God’s presence to fill us and teach us through a particular activity or relationship or are we looking for satisfaction that we feel we haven’t gotten from God’s way of living?  Do we believe we are serving God’s purposes with what we are doing or are we substituting this activity for comfort and distraction from discontented feelings of loneliness or anger?