Addiction is the warped fruit of a good tree: a sign that the heart longs for transcendence but has sought it in places too small, too finite to hold such hunger.
“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”
― Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth
Addiction grinds the soul down like a millstone, turning steadily, its weight shaping a pattern that bends and folds. It is not a new story but one told in cycles; its origins older than the fires that first baked bread. Long before we devised clinical terms for addiction, we intuited its shape. Humans are born into longing, we are creatures made to reach toward something greater. But when the pull of desire finds no proper anchor, it twists inward. Addiction is what happens when we become worshipers of what is small, of things incapable of satisfying us. The longing does not vanish; it grows ravenous, swallowing everything it can until nothing remains.
The Bible offers striking images of how addiction turns created things into counterfeit gods. In Exodus, the Israelites, grown impatient while waiting for Moses, gather their gold to cast an image of a calf. What should have been treasure held for blessing becomes metal melted for worship, bent into an idol. This calf is their desire made tangible, a thing they can see and touch. It promises safety, power, certainty. But it costs them dearly. In this story, we glimpse the unchanging pattern of misplaced worship—how human hearts twist objects of love into objects of need. We sacrifice for them, arrange our lives around them, defend them. Addiction doesn’t simply satisfy a hunger; it demands complete dominion.
Addiction is what happens when we become worshipers of what is small, of things incapable of satisfying us.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he warns of those who “worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). He describes a kind of moral erosion, but it is also deeply theological. Worship is not neutral—it will happen whether we are conscious of it or not. In our distraction, we cling to what is immediate: substances that soothe, ideologies that thrill, or habits that lull us into forgetting. Modern addictions often seem untethered from the gods of old, but they carry the same roots. We may laugh at golden calves, yet every society has its monuments to false gods. Today, addiction finds its power in digital screens, the pursuit of wealth, and the endless drumbeat of consumption. These take hold in subtler ways than statues on an altar, yet their claim on us can be just as total.
In our distraction, we cling to what is immediate: substances that soothe, ideologies that thrill, or habits that lull us into forgetting.
Addiction mirrors the language of worship, offering counterfeit salvation while leaving the soul impoverished. Like worship, addiction comes with its rites: time devoted, sacrifices made, and rituals repeated until they define the rhythm of life. In ancient civilizations, the gods demanded offerings of grain, livestock, or incense; addiction requires offerings of dignity, relationships, and health. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it asks for more, hollowing us out. What we once pursued freely becomes a master. True worship draws us outward and binds us in love, shaping us in beauty and truth. Addiction does the opposite: it collapses our attention inward and drags us into a pattern of destruction.
Patterns always govern the human experience. In the Gaelic tales, the fisherfolk on the western shores tell stories of whirlpools at sea, dreaded things of immense pull. If your vessel strayed too close, the whirlpool’s reach would take you, dragging you into its belly. Sailors knew to read the signs in the water: spinning eddies or abrupt silences where the sea seemed too calm. The warning was always there, written in the waves, but ignoring it led to ruin. Addiction is much the same, pulling us into destructive depths while we remain blind to the surface clues. If left unbroken, its pattern unfolds predictably: small sacrifices turn into large ones, and soon nothing is left but the crushing pull of devotion to something unworthy.
But there is a deeper story within addiction—not just of ruin but of possible redemption. History, myth, and Scripture tell us that to be lost is not the end of the story. The Israelites’ golden calf brought disaster, yes, but it also brought Moses back from the mountain, bearing tablets of truth. In stories of the whale-road from Norse tradition, the sailor swallowed by the sea often emerges not just alive but remade, born again in the storm’s belly. When addiction’s grip tightens, it leaves space only for the object of desire. But this void, terrible as it feels, can also be a place where light enters.
In addiction, what begins as false worship can become an unintentional prayer—a reaching out from the depths for something more lasting. Addiction is the warped fruit of a good tree: a sign that the heart longs for transcendence but has sought it in places too small, too finite to hold such hunger. The Psalmist writes, “Deep calls to deep” (Ps. 42:7), a cry from the soul for the God whose hands hollowed out the caverns of the sea. The old stories teach us that even in ruin, there is the possibility of return.
Addiction wounds and disfigures, but it cannot fully unmake us. The soul may cling to counterfeit gods, but it carries within it the imprint of the real God, whose claim is deeper. True freedom comes not when we lose all limits but when our desires are re-anchored in what is true, good, and eternal. To step away from the whirlpool, to set aside the golden calf, means relearning what it is to worship rightly—not to seek freedom for its own sake but to be bound to what is greater than ourselves.
When Jesus proclaims, “I am the bread of life,” he offers what no addiction can: sustenance without depletion, fullness without emptiness, freedom without destruction. The good news is that the One who shapes stars and seas has not abandoned us to our addictions. Where false gods demand sacrifice, he himself becomes the sacrifice. Where false gods demand we give everything and leave us with nothing, he gives everything and asks only that we come. Where addiction binds with chains that grow heavier, his grace breaks every bond and leads us into the light of true freedom.
He calls us out of the barren wilderness of false worship and into a feast that satisfies not just the body but the soul. In him, we find the nourishment we were made for, the deep fulfillment that untangles the knots of our misplaced devotion. Christ doesn’t just demand our allegiance; he restores us to wholeness, grounding us again in the patterns of life as they were meant to be lived—with God at the center, not the periphery. Here, at last, is freedom: to be bound, not to addiction, but to love.
Based on the first chapter of Donavon Riley’s forthcoming book, The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction, now available for preorder.
