there a pattern here?
Maybe the most powerful thing we can do is simply to pray, “God, give me eyes to see the lie here.”
Perhaps you can relate to this progression and the lie and the ways we get hooked. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’re in the middle of it right now. Something has got its tentacles wrapped around you, and you are having an impossible time getting free.
Happens all the time.
And so it feels like it’s you versus the craving. You against the addiction. Your brain and heart against your flesh.
I often meet people who say, “My battle against . . .” and then they name something that has them in its grip.
To be honest, if it’s us against the craving, we will often lose. It’s too hard. And what happens most of the time is we see ourselves fighting all alone against some temptation that is so strong it wins. Maybe we will win here or there, but those become the exceptions. And when we give in, it can start to feel pointless. Why resist today if tomorrow we won’t be able to?
There’s Something Else Going on Here
There’s a passage in the book of Ephesians where it’s written, “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer.”15
Which is quite straightforward—don’t steal. But the passage doesn’t end there. It continues: “but must work, doing something useful with their own hands.”
But it doesn’t there. It ends with: “that they may have something to share with those in need.”
On first read, the instructions seem as basic as it gets. But there is much going on here just below the surface.
First, the command doesn’t stop with the “don’t” part. The writer understands that that kind of instruction rarely helps. When we’re told not to do something, how often are we truly compelled not to do it, especially if we enjoy it? If it’s just me against the lust, the odds are already against me.
But there’s something else going on here.
Stealing involves large amounts of adrenaline. The rush of planning, pulling it off, not getting caught, getting something for nothing. And then there’s the expectation of next time. If we got something this significant for free, could we steal something even more valuable? What if we raised the stakes, hit a store with a better security system, tested ourselves? Stealing involves the senses, the intellect, a person’s fear threshold. It even has a powerful social dynamic. Stealing with someone creates powerful bonds between people. When our adrenaline is pumping, that’s a physiological phenomenon. It feels good because things are happening with the chemicals in our bodies, with our nerves and brain and bloodstream. If we do that enough, our bodies get used to it.
We could use the word addicted. A person gets addicted to it.
If you tell the person who’s stealing not to, and you leave it at that, you’ve taken something away, but you haven’t replaced it with anything. That’s why the instructions in Ephesians are so brilliant. The urging to stop stealing is followed by the command to have the person do “something useful with their own hands.” The word useful is the Greek word agathos, which is also translated “good” and “benevolent.”
Why does the writer mention the hands?
Because you steal with your hands. Stealing is a sensory experience, an adrenaline rush involving the hands. The command is to replace one adrenaline rush with another, a better one, one that’s good. But it doesn’t stop there. The command ends with the person who was stealing learning to do something good with their hands so that they can take care of the needs of someone else. Stealing is about taking from someone. This passage is about giving to someone who has less because you have more.
Stealing is the ultimate in being selfish.
Making something and giving it away is the ultimate in being generous.
This passage is about something central to what it means to be human: it’s about desire. It’s about the thief finding something they’ll desire more than stealing.
“You thought taking things for free was a rush? Try giving free food to someone who’s starving.”
The writer of Ephesians understands that to tell the thief not to steal and leave it at that doesn’t have a very high chance of being helpful. The thief will be left with a battle on their hands that will pit them against their craving.
Whatever it is that has its hooks in you, you will never be free from it until you find something you want more. It’s not about getting rid of desire. It’s about giving ourselves to bigger and better and more powerful desires.
What are you channeling your energies into?16 Because they will go somewhere.
If they don’t go into a few, select, disciplined pursuits that you are passionate about and are willing to give your life to, then they’ll dissipate into all sorts of urges and cravings that won’t even begin to bring the joy that the “one thing” could.
You are crammed full of the “madness of the gods.” And you will end up giving the force of your being to something.
Maybe it’s as simple as asking God to show it to you, to give it to you, to make you aware of it.
There was a story all over the news about a television star whose boyfriend videotaped the two of them having sex and then put it on the internet. Apparently lots of people were watching it, and she was crushed. Which is sad. But what’s tragic is that she was known for having sex and shopping. It kind of became her schtick—she was making a career out of being shallow. Now, of course, she was all over the media, and she was making lots of money, so she was clearly much smarter than she let on, but she was made for so much more than this.
Her life force was tremendous. But the problem was she hadn’t channeled it into something, or a few things, that were good and true and beautiful. She hadn’t focused all of that God-given sexual energy into the ongoing creation of a better and better world. And so she fell for all of these temptations that robbed her of the joy she was made for.
The last thing she needed to do is tone down those energies.
She simply needed to redirect them.
What is it you’ve given your life to?
Life is not about toning down and repressing your God-given life force. It’s about channeling it and focusing it and turning it loose on something beautiful, something pure and true and good, something that connects you with God, with others, with the world.
What do you want more?
How can you make your life about that so that you won’t be tempted to give in to this?
CHAPTER FIVE She Ran into the Girls' Bathroom
When I was twelve, I went to a dance at my school. It was held in the cafeteria, where they folded up the lunch tables and brought in a DJ. The girls stood on one side of the room, the boys stood on the other. Every once in a while, somebody would bravely venture across this massive chasm
