In a consumer society, there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addictions and the prisoners of envy. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality
We have all had the experience of struggling to break a habit, failing repeatedly, and then at some point meeting with success. What was this success, and how did it happen? We can say it was willpower, but what suddenly empowered our will? We can say it was finding the right strategy, but what enabled that discovery? Did we do it on our own, or did grace break through and deliver us, or was it some mysterious cooperation of will and grace that we could never have engineered? Gerald G. May, Addiction and Grace
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable; we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity; and we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Adapted from the first three steps of The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
I'm afraid the churches are just enabling the addictions of our culture. If we are not free from the cultural addictions in the church, how can we be a healing presence for all those who need to be set free? N. Gordon Cosby, By Grace Transformed
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcoholic addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts. Rep. Shirley Chisholm at a Congressional hearing on crime
Recovery is a process; it is not a quick fix. It involves much more than giving up the addictive agent. Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel, The Addictive Organization
My denial of my sin protects, preserves, perpetuates that sin! Ugliness in me, while I live in illusions, can only grow the uglier. Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion
We can't prevent the problems of sexual addiction within the church if we don't change our message from "how to feel better now" to the unpopular biblical theme that "the sufferings we now experience are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). Dr. Harry W. Schaumburg, False Intimacy: Understanding the Struggle of Sexual Addiction
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