The great lie of addiction is that suffering must be fled, must be numbed, must be drowned out by any means necessary.
Addiction is a hunger that gnaws, a thirst that will not slacken, and a want that will not be stilled. It is no fleeting urge, no passing weakness of the flesh. It is something deeper, older—a craving wound into the sinews, a fire that burns through the marrow of a man’s soul. And the more it is fed, the greater its hunger grows. It is the great lie: that more will satisfy, that one more sip, one more hit, one more hour lost to the old ache will, at last, bring peace. But peace never comes. The thing that promises comfort is the very thing that hollows a person out. They become a vessel scooped clean, a thing that is hollow inside itself.
The world is not kind to such people. There is no patience for the ones who cannot hold themselves together. The world steps back, looks down, and tightens its lips. There is scorn, the quick judgment of those who believe themselves strong. And there is pity too, but not the kind that heals—only the thin, sterile pity that moves someone to cross the road, to keep their hands clean.
But when the world turns away, God does not. That is the scandal of grace. That is the thing people cannot stomach. “The love of God which lives in man,” Luther asserted in his Heidelberg Disputation, “loves sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong.” The world mocks the weak and heaps shame on the broken. But God moves toward them. The addict, stripped of all illusions, emptied out by their own hunger, stands in the one place where God has promised to meet his creatures: at the end of themselves.
There is a thread that runs through Scripture, tightly wound and unbreakable. “My power is made perfect in weakness,” says the Lord (2 Cor. 2:19). Not in strength, not in mastery, not in the iron will that keeps a person upright in the sight of others, but in the place of shattering. The person who still clings to themselves, to their own will, their own schemes, has no room to receive what is freely given. But the one who has nothing, who has come to the end, who sits in the ashes with Job and cries out from their ruin—that one is standing on sacred ground. They are at the mouth of the well, the place where living water can be drawn.
The addict, stripped of all illusions, emptied out by their own hunger, stands in the one place where God has promised to meet his creatures: at the end of themselves.
To see this is to begin to understand the cross: that Christ did not break the world’s chains by power alone, but by suffering. It was not in the storm, the splitting of mountains, the fire and the flood that salvation came, but in the bruised flesh of a man, in the scourged back, in the broken hands stretched wide upon the wood. The great lie of addiction is that suffering must be fled, must be numbed, must be drowned out by any means necessary. But the cross tells another story. That suffering is not always the end, instead, it may be the door. The place of greatest loss may yet become the place of new birth.
The addict knows something of this road, though they do not see it as grace at first. The world speaks of "hitting bottom" as if it were the worst fate that could befall a person. And yet, it is in that moment—when pride cracks, when all the excuses collapse, when a person sees themselves in their full ruin—that something begins. There is no bargaining left. No lies that can stand. Only the raw, terrible truth: I cannot save myself. And that is the place where grace steps in.
Job knew it. Job, stripped of all but his breath, crouched in the dust while his friends accused him, while the world judged him as lost, cursed, beyond help. “Surely you have done something to deserve this,” they said. And how many addicts have heard the same? How many have been told that their suffering is proof of their failure, their worthlessness, their unfitness for love? But Job's story does not end in the dust. His suffering was not the end. It was the furnace in which his trust in God was tried. And when at last he heard the voice of the Lord, it was not in the judgment of men, but in the great silence that follows ruin.
For those who have walked this road, the weight of shame is often heavier than the suffering itself. Shame keeps a person bent low, keeps their mouth shut, and keeps them believing that they are beyond rescue. It is the enemy’s last stronghold, the final chain that holds her fast. And yet, grace is stronger. The thief who hung beside Christ, bound in his own helplessness, had nothing left to offer, nothing to give. He could not work his way to righteousness. He could not repay what was lost. He could only cry out, Remember me. And Christ, from his own place of suffering, answered, Today you will be with me in Paradise.
Addiction is a cruel master. It drags a person where they never meant to go. It takes and takes until there is nothing left. But it is not the end. It may be, instead, the beginning. The hollow place addiction carves, the emptiness that seems unbearable, may yet be filled with something greater. The old hunger that once drove someone to ruin may be turned toward the one thing that can truly satisfy.
But the road is hard. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. The cross was not easy, and neither is the road to new life. But it is the only road that leads anywhere worth going. For the one who has suffered long under the lash of addiction, who has seen the wreckage and felt the weight of their own ruin, the choice is clear: remain in chains or step into the unknown, where healing waits.
And so the addict stands at the threshold, weary and spent, looking back at all that has been lost, looking forward at what is yet unknown. And it is there, at that thin place between ruin and redemption, that they may at last hear the voice they have been running from all along. The voice that does not condemn, that does not heap shame, but that calls them home. That tells them the truth:
You are not beyond saving. The thing that has broken you will not have the final word. I have borne your wounds, carried your sorrow, paid your debt in full. You are not lost. You are found.
This is the heart of it. This is the deep and terrible mercy of God. The thing which should have destroyed us may yet be the very thing that drives us into his arms. Addiction, though it brings ruin, may lead to rescue. The cross, which seemed only a place of death, was the place where life began.
This article is based on Chapter 3, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross & Addiction Recovery,” from, The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction, by Donavon L Riley.
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