The Spirituality of Addiction
A sermon by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein
It has often been said that religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, while spirituality is for people who have already been there. An interesting distinction, but it isn’t really accurate, is it? Not all religions are concerned with heaven and hell. There is no hell in Judaism. Or Buddhism. And Universalism is a doctrine that claims exactly the opposite. Universalists come to church in gratitude, rather than fear, confident that all souls are worthy of redemption.
The part about spirituality may be more accurate. Many of us first got in touch with our spiritual selves when we faced some kind of loss or disappointment that challenged our world view, shook up our perspective. There are many ways to experience hell on earth. I’m sure most of you in this room have your own personal version. Living with addiction is one way to find hell on earth. For addicts, for their families and friends, the dynamics of addiction bring pain and confusion and anger and disappointments on a daily basis. Alcoholism and drug addiction are hells – and many who have been there need spirituality in order to return.
Rev. Denis Meachan, himself a recovering alcoholic, is the author of The Addiction Ministries Handbook. He cites statistics about the prevalence of addiction in the
If for no other reason than statistical prevalence, addiction is something that we ought to be able to talk about in church. Alcoholism and drug addiction are progressive diseases which can prove fatal if untreated. We are a caring community that stands ready to walk with people through illnesses like cancer or heart disease. Are we also prepared to walk with people struggling to recover from addiction? I hope so. We should be.
I would argue that faith communities should be even better prepared to minister to people dealing with addiction than any other disease because addiction has such a powerful spiritual aspect to it. Carl Jung referred to addiction as a spiritual malady. Gerald May, who was the guiding spirit of the Shalem Center near Washington DC for decades before his death 2 years ago, also talked about addiction as a disease of the spirit as much as the mind or body. Denis Meacham says, “Our spiritual dimension is about what is most profoundly important to us in our lives – our faithfulness to an ultimate source of hope, joy, and solace. Addiction represents a disruption in this spiritual grounding. As such, addiction could be called a disordered spiritual attachment.” Both Meacham and May quote the Apostle Paul who spoke for the human condition when he said, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”
If nothing else, that quote from Paul should help us to remember that addiction, like many of our self-created hells, is more than just a matter of carelessness or inattention and the solution requires more than just an act of will. If the Apostle Paul cannot make himself do good, who can? In fact just as the brief reading from Gerald May reminded us that in some sense we are all addicts, it also reminds us that to recover takes an act of grace. Recovery from addiction is medical, and psychological; it is physical and emotional. But it is also spiritual. Our spiritual attachments need to be reordered in a healthy and non-compulsive direction. We need, when we seek recovery, to reground ourselves. However we understand ultimate worth – we need to reconnect with that ultimate source and work hard to maintain that connection n a regular basis.
That is why communities of faith are, or could be, such important tools for recovering addicts and their families and friends. When you look at the factors important to long term recovery, the characteristics of a supportive recovery community, many of them also describe a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
The first is that a recovery community offers a safe place for those in recovery to come and live with honesty and integrity. We have a commitment to safety at
Second, since part of the recovery process is to rediscover, or perhaps find for the first time, one’s own personal sense of spirituality, a community that is supportive of such exploration is essential. Sounds like a description of Unitarian Universalism to me! We offer to care for and support each other as we each discover our own unique truths. We honor the journey and have no inflexible expectations as to the nature of that journey for any particular person. Meacham writes, “All the power of the transcendent in life gets played out in one’s relationships with one’s fellow human beings. No one heals from addiction, no one is restored to well-being, in isolation. Human beings are social animals whose well-being is fostered by participating in groups. And there is no better community in which to heal and find new meaning than a community of faith, in which members support each other’s unique growth in common pursuit of the sacred.”
Third, part of the recovery process is to cultivate a healthy sense of the transcendent and to cast out false idols. To say that addiction is a disease of disordered spiritual attachments is to say that all addicts worship a false idol. Of course many others do also. To recover, those false idols must be replaced with something that has ultimate worth and value. Unitarian Universalists can be particularly good at supporting that endeavor. Because of the theological diversity inherent to our faith, when we are at our best we offer a broad and generous interpretation of the transcendent. The possibilities for the nature of a higher power are almost endless in our congregation.
Finally, recovery from addiction requires that people look outside themselves and get involved in service to the larger community.