When I say the word addiction, what comes to mind? Take a moment and think about it. For most people, it’s drugs and alcohol. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) names ten classes of drugs for substance use disorder, along with gambling as a behavioral addiction that mirrors the challenges and addictive nature of drugs.[1] While drug use is a problem, in and out of churches, we live in a culture where addiction is more prevalent than these substances. The DSM-5-TR doesn’t yet include behavioral addictions like shopping, internet use, pornography, or smartphone use due to the complicated nature of determining at what point behaviors become addictive, and yet I think a lot of people can identify with the feeling of knowing their “lives have become unmanageable” around some of these issues.[2] I’m confident that if a pastor asked their congregants if they felt they had an addiction of some sort—be it to their phones, shopping, outrage, politics, social media, or food—they may be surprised at the amount of hands they would see raised.[3] What is a pastor to do about the overwhelming number of people who feel like their lives are out of control?
In this article, I hope to show that recovery is both an individual and communal effort that the Church is uniquely equipped to address. Addiction is an isolating experience; knowing that you have a problem but being afraid to let your secret come to light is terrifying. It takes a safe community to allow someone to admit to an addiction out loud and it takes the individual being willing to be vulnerable and do the hard work of recovery for transformation to occur.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse defines addiction as a “chronic relapsing disorder characterized by drug seeking and use, despite adverse consequences.”[4] Like the DSM-5-TR, they focus on drug or substance abuse. However, it’s easy to apply this definition to other addictions I’ve mentioned. An important part of the definition is the idea that addiction continues “despite adverse consequences.” So many of us can identify with that, can’t we?
Perhaps Romans 7 comes to mind. Paul writes, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate” (14–15, CSB). Doesn’t that sound like a chronic relapsing disorder? He goes on to say, “For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me” (19–20). Doesn’t that sound like continuing, despite adverse consequences? More than that, Paul points to a reason he does any of this: sin. Sin often is an attempt to gain control, and addictions are often substitute gods that we think we can control.
I define addiction as a habitual and impulsive behavior to gain control of people or situations when we feel like we have lost control. “Doomscrolling,” social media, political conspiracy, pornography, and outrage all seek to control what is out of our control. We engage in these behaviors, sometimes addictively, because it gives us a false sense of control. For example, if you’re upset at the news and then get online to spew your anger into the void of the internet every day, you might feel better because you “contributed” and therefore have some control in the narrative of what upset you. In AA terms, this is no different than drinking alone after every bad day and saying it’s just to help you relax. Maybe alcohol makes you feel better, but you’re still alone, nothing has truly changed, and now it’s become a habit.
If this is what addiction is, then what is recovery? Recovery is giving up control to gain self-control. For Christians, it is recovering our lives with Jesus. The Message translation of Matthew 11:28–30 helps frame it this way:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (emphasis mine).
Here, we are invited into watching Jesus’ restful rhythms of grace that encompass his work. As we see what he does, we do the same. Notice he says he won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on us, not that he won’t give us anything at all. We are working with Jesus, in his way, with his tools. The process of recovering our lives with Jesus starts with spending more time with him. I know that may sound elementary or cliché, but if our relationship with Jesus is that—a relationship—then it follows that time investment is the first and most crucial way to build intimacy and security.
In my work studying Relational Neuroscience,[5] it has become clear that intimacy and security are foundational for people feeling loved and having a sense of belonging. When people can feel safe, they can feel loved. When they feel loved, they can allow for intimacy, conflict, and repair in relationships with other people and with God.[6] This is true for those struggling with addiction and those who aren’t, but certainly we can see how the struggle gets more intense in addiction. Imagine carrying around the secret of a porn addiction, gambling addiction, or the anxiety that must come with watching social media or the news for several hours a day. Addiction inevitably becomes an isolating experience, and helping those struggling with addiction learn to belong to a community where they are “loved into loving,”[7] as Todd Hall says, is paramount to recovery.
Dr. Susan Eastman stated beautifully, “Transformation is not a condition for belonging but a result of belonging.”[8] To press in on that, transformation happens, I believe, as a result of belonging. Transformation can mean a lot of different things. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2 that we are to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” In terms of recovery, I think of that as a loosening of the desire for the addiction and the tightening of God’s desire for us. We will know we have a transformed mind when we naturally seek God’s good for us. This is where belonging comes in. Telling other people about the worst choice you’ve made is a humbling and devastating experience. And yet, people keep going to AA meetings every week to do just that. Why? Because in that room, they find belonging; a group of people who can say, “Me too” when their worst secrets are exposed. It’s also why the Christian story is so compelling: We serve a God who identifies with our weaknesses, as Hebrews 4:15 says. When that kind of belonging is felt and understood then we will experience transformation of the mind and a change in our behavior (what we do with our bodies). The Church, then, is the best place for people struggling with addiction to be transformed. They can find a group of people struggling as they struggle and seek together the Kingdom of a God who identifies with them.
What does this look like practically?
Make your Sunday mornings embodied and embedded.[9] Sunday mornings should not be a spectator event for your congregation. In the verse before Paul talks about our transformed minds, he says to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” as a part of worship. Of course there’s metaphor happening, but I think it’s interesting that he connects the body and mind in this way. A transformed mind comes with being an embodied living sacrifice. So, include active participation in your preaching, encourage movement throughout the service in varied ways, and provide times for people to talk about what God is doing in their lives.
In the Quaker church I attend, we start our service with about twenty minutes of what’s called open worship, which means time for silent prayer and then a time for sharing what the Holy Spirit may have prompted people to say. This action helps prayer become an embodied experience. Embeddedness happens when people can be vulnerable about what is happening in their lives and others can choose to support them and pray with them. This is good for everyone, but for the one in recovery, it is choosing to replace the voices telling them that they are their addiction with the voice of God and his people telling them they are loved as Image Bearers.
These practices don’t guarantee embodiment or embeddedness unless people feel like they can be secure as a community. That is first modeled in the pastor. The posture of worship and attentiveness to God that you practice every day will be evident every week. For those struggling with addiction, you are giving a vision of what belonging to Christ and each other can look and feel like. This is arguably the most important piece of recovery. Sure, stopping the addictive behavior is important, but if they don’t have a clear vision of the real God, then the substitute god is always going to be more convincing.
Secondly, I recommend practicing the Examen as a church body to teach people how to do it individually. The Examen is an Ignatian practice produced by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. He was a soldier turned monk in the 1500s who started the Jesuit movement. While the whole of his Spiritual Exercises can be formative for recovery, this one practice is a helpful tool to introduce people to the Exercises. The Examen is admittingly “supposed” to be done individually, but because recovery is both communal and individual, doing it as a community will help people feel that sense of belonging and security. I will walk through ideas for a community Examen and trust that the individual way is easy enough to apply.
Start with a time of silent prayer. Ask people to do breath prayers if they feel comfortable (i.e., breath in: God is with me. Breath out: I am with him.). Perhaps recite Philippians 4:6, reminding people that we can cast our anxiety on God. Ask them to try to quiet their mind and focus on God’s presence. John 17 would be helpful passage to hear Jesus pray for us to be one with him and with each other. Next, have them think of places in their day or week where they saw God, perhaps in nature or in a good conversation with a friend. Job 12:7–9 comes to mind here. Second, practice gratitude for God’s work in your life and others lives throughout your day. Where did you see God’s kindness toward you today? Where did you display God’s kindness? Name them out loud. Next, pay attention to your emotions. Emotions are the door to other interior motives and desires. Consider which emotions brought you closer to God and which ones moved you farther away. Out of God’s love for us, face our shortcomings. Colossians 3:12–14 is rooted in this idea. Ask for God’s grace in the places where you saw yourself moving away from his presence. Remind them that shame is not the goal. If guilt arises, it is to remind them of who they say they want to be: a person who follows Jesus. Guilt may motivate repair with others and with God when they realize how they’ve harmed people. Shame makes people hide and if there’s anything addictions love, it’s secrets. Shortcomings are to be faced with love as our motivator. To paraphrase Fred Rogers: If it is mentionable then it is manageable. If we can say the hard secret out loud, we’ll be on our way to recovery. Facing our shortcomings individually, and hopefully with others, can lead us toward transformation when done with love of God and others as our core motivator. Fourth, review the actions of your day. Are there places that you need to ask for forgiveness or forgive others? Are there places where you need to celebrate making better choices than you would have made yesterday? Don’t rush this; it’s tempting because it can be uncomfortable. Finally, look toward tomorrow. Are there attitudes or actions you can take to seek God’s presence intentionally? At any of those points, you can invite people to share out loud as they feel led.
The foundation of Ignatian spirituality is seeing God in all things. The Examen is one way to pay attention to where we see God. For the one struggling with addiction, the practice of noticing God is sometimes easier than spending time with him at first. Ideally, the Examen is something that gets written down so you can have a reminder in a physical place of how God has shown up in your life.
My hope with this article is to shed some light on the “normal addictions.” If you’re the one struggling with addiction, it’s easy to believe that porn and all the other “normal addictions” mentioned above are not a problem compared to drug abuse. I hope you see that none of them help us have healthy relationships with God and others. Addictions are all difficult to admit and get help addressing. My hope is that pastors can help repair harm from addiction by re-pairing with the person struggling.
References
[1] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. Text Revision: DSM-5-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2022), 546–47.
[2] This language is taken from Step One of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book,” as it’s called in AA circles. Step One reads: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism, 4th ed. (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001), 59, https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf.
[3] This brings up a separate but important issue. Addiction has become a “junk drawer” word, so to speak, like trauma or other therapy culture words. I don’t want to minimize trauma or addiction by any means, nor the helpful and important work of therapy. However, not everything is traumatic or an addiction. If everything is an addiction, then nothing is an addiction. Everything has the potential of being traumatic, but not everything is. These are important distinctions to make so that we can rightly call addiction and trauma what they are and treat them accordingly.
[4] “Drug Misuse and Addiction,” in Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction (National Institute on Drug Abuse, July 2020), https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-misuse-addiction.
[5] Relational Neuroscience is the fancy way of saying attachment theory, drawing on the work of Daniel Seigel, Mary Main, and others in the attachment field.
[6] Dr. Curt Thompon’s language of “rupture and repair” has been helpful in my understanding of building healthy relationships built on trust and intimacy. The more friends, spouses, and church families can name the rupture—what hurt them—and repair it quickly, the more intimacy grows.
[7] Todd Hall, Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation (Intervarsity Press, 2021). Hall regularly uses this phrase to call us back to our central aim as Christians: We are loved into loving.
[8] Susan Eastman, “Paul and the Person” (class lecture, DMin Cohort 2, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI, August 8, 2026).
[9] This section is inspired by Warren S. Brown and Brad D. Strawn, The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church (Cambridge University Press, 2012).