Addiction and Grace
I think Dr. Gerald may have done a marvelous job as to the writing and format of his book Addiction and Grace. As a psychiatrist and teacher with years of experience, I totally agree with his statement that all human beings have an inborn desire of God, whether one is consciously religious or not. Some people repress this desire by intentionally or inadvertently hiding it among the many other interest of life. I have noticed frequently in my line of work as working closely with people in the health field that many individuals whether they are believers of non-believers of God, often choose to cry out in the last and most crucial moments of pain and despair “Oh God pleas help me!” As he brings out the fact that many of us may experience this yearning in different ways as a longing for fulfillment, completion o wholeness. It all boils down to a longing for love, a hunger to be loved and to be drawn closer to the source of love. The scripture states “whosoever will let him come.” This simply tells us that whenever we are willing to surrender all, Christ is always there willing to pour out His unmerited favor to support and strengthen us along the way. Th
is favor is His Grace. A love without condition. How often we ignore this simple call, we as individuals often allow other desires to get in the way, which can gave a long or short term bearing upon our bodies. We as a people have the tendency to fix it ourselves “not realizing that the truth of the matter is that we have no power of our own not excepting the fact that God is All Love and All Powerful. Dr. May brings out very clearly as Paul states. “For that which I do I allow not, for what I would that I do not; but what I hate, that do I---It is no more that I do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” Here he brings out that Paul was talking about sin, though the will is in us away from God’s love, and love for one another and us. Dr. May brings out that psychologically there are two forces that are responsible, which is repression and addiction, repression being the milder force. We frequently repress our desire to love In fear of being hurt, because bringing joy, love can make us suffer so our repress desire to love to minimize suffering which is a normal human response, so we fall into displacement when we depress a desire to keep it out of our awareness by placing our focus on other things-safer things. So by the same method we repress our longing for God. Repression is there to deal with whenever we are ready and it is workable. On the other hand addiction, the other force that turn us away from love, is much more vicious. It was long believed by psychologist that repression was the cause of all self-defeating force that abuses our freedom and causes us to do things we really do not want us to do. It is known that repression stifles desire, and addiction attaches desire, bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain specific behavior, things or people. Dr. May brings out the fact that addiction are not limited to substances but one can easily be addicted to work performance, responsibility, helping others, or being liked, just to name a few. Dr. May brings out that it was his work with addicted people and the realization of he own addictive behavior that brought him to his knees and realize that grace was there he, had tried to run his life on the basis of his own will power, and finally re
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Approximate Word count = 1517
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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