Looking at the 'spiritual' side
Submitted by Forgiven on September 25 2001 14:05:05
In reply to A question about sexual fantasies submitted by Dusk on September 22 2001 22:31:30
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I couldn't have written this until about a week ago when my church house group started to look at Richard Foster's 'Celebration of Discipline'. In the first chapter of this is a quote from Emmet Fox "As soon as you resist mentally any undesirable or unwanted circumstance, you thereby endow it with more power - which it will use against you and will be deducted from your own resources to exactly that extent". The argument is that Self Control is a 'fruit of the Spirit' - which comes into existence as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. As a result the way to address the problem of "addiction" is not by facing it head on, but rather developing the 'Spiritual' side of your personality. Specifically 'Celebration of Discipline' is an introduction to a variety of the spiritual disciplines - from the obviously traditional - Meditation, Prayer, Fasting, and Bible Study, through the outward - Simplicity, Solitude, Submission and Service - to the more obvious - Worship and Celebration. (This is the real joker in the pack - when I first read the book long ago I remember going for this first off on the basis it sounded fun and unchallenging - in fact it was a major challenge for me as a restrained, unexciteable sort of guy....) The basis for my support of this is two fold. First off is that it chimes in with the whole Alcoholics Anonymous approach to addiction. At the heart of that is a call to work on the spiritual side. But also because it coincides with my own experience; when I first got onto the Net, but also when I first really got into computer games, I got dragged a long way down towards a pattern of addiction. For no terribly good reason I pulled out of those - and I suspect that that was because there is a small but significant amount of spiritual strength in me built up over time, as a result of being 'open to God' in small but significant ways. The whole point about the disciplines is that they are a way of opening yourself to God and letting the fruit develop; as with the gardener working on a crop, the need is to water and fertilise the plant - not just think good thoughts at it! And there are no 'quick fixes' in this - it is a case of working at these over a long time and in relatively small doses. One of the challenges is to keep going when there appears no obvious benefit; the truth is that in the long term God 'will give the increase' - but we live in a society that is VERY bad at the long term. It should be part of the role of the church to provide the sort of environment where these things are learnt about and encouraged, but unfortunately Protestant tend to dismiss them as Catholic (when they are clearly biblical) and even Catholics tend to assume they are mediaeval hangovers. So - I hope some food for thought. But no easy answers.... the only thing that I would definitely offer there is the need for something to absorb your energy in a more positive direction. That may be working out at the gym, or some computer game (hmmm...), some voluntary activity - or it might even be really getting absorbed in your work! Anyway, I would like to believe that this offers some grounds for hope for progress toward 'liberation'. As I've hinted, I've looked over into the abyss occasionally, but have never actually been through that sort of purgatory, and I hope I never will.... |
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