God and Addiction

God doesn’t care about addiction it self. He is not concerned abut the drinking or gambling or eating or smoking or drugs and the abuse of these things that comes with addiction. What he cares about is the damage our fixation on these things does to our relationships when we are addicted to them. For example: if my gambling addiction causes me to loose money so that I don’t have the money to take my kid to the baseball game or my wife out to eat, then I am not loving the way I should. This is the real big deal with God. (Love thy neighbor as they self.) This damage to the important relationship is what God does not like. He doesn’t mind so much if we enjoy gambling once in a while but he doesn’t like it if it damages our relationships. The danger can be even more subtle but just as damaging. You may have won money but if you stayed up so late you decided to sleep in instead of taking you son fishing, then you are still impacting your relationship. Or if you spend so much time fishing that you don’t have time to take your daughter to the movies, then fishing could be the problem. Anything that puts our important relationships at risk God hates.