In his book Addiction and Virtue, Kent Dunnington likens addiction to counterfeit worship:
"Several years ago, a friend who had worked his way through graduate school as a paramedic told me about one of his more grisly experiences on the job. He received an anonymous call reporting a heroin addict who was on the verge of death in an abandoned apartment building. When [my friend] got to the apartment, the man was huddled in a corner, shivering and unresponsive, surrounded by piles of rotten trash, used syringes, lighters, spoons—all the paraphernalia of heroin addiction. When I asked what that was like, my friend related that it was terrifying, but that he also thought it was probably the first time he fully understood what worship looks like …. For all sin, as idolatry, is essentially counterfeit worship."
Powerful imagery, and a profound observation. It reminds me of the people who are in Hell in C.S.Lewis' haunting book, The Great Divorce. In the book the people in Hell could leave Hell and go to Heaven if they would only let go of the addiction, habit or whatever put them in Hell in the first place, yet none of them are willing to simply release what has come to define them. Abandon their little gods to gain the Eternal God.
Happens a lot. I'm guilty of it at times and so are you. So we all cry together COME LORD JESUS AND RESCUE US.
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