ADDICTION- You Can’t Just Pray that Shit Away

There is a lot of secrecy and shame in the Church around the issue of addiction. Many followers of Jesus are led to believe that when we make a commitment to “live a Christian life” — Jesus will just swoop in and fix everything that is wrong with us.

We should just be able to “pray it away”.

Sometimes this message is spoken, sometimes it is unspoken. Either way, it causes many new believers a ton of confusion, anger and shame. Especially if they become leaders in the church. Then it is almost impossible to admit publicly that there is a struggle with addiction in your life.

This is part of the reason that it took me so long to get sober.

I knew that in order to achieve any kind of long term, healthy sobriety, I would need to join some type of recovery program and that would necessitate me “going public” with my problem. The problem that I was not able to overcome, no matter how much I prayed.

The idea of walking into a room of strangers and declaring out loud that I was an alcoholic was abhorrent to me. The idea of walking into a room full of strangers and admitting that I was a seminary student pursuing ordained ministry and couldn’t figure out how to stop drinking was impossible.

I knew myself well enough to know that if I truly was going to do this, come out…