How Are You Medicating Your Pain?

As Christian leaders, people often come to us in pain, confused, broken, addicted. They need help, counsel, freedom from sin. How do we discern the core of their need? How do we guide them to God?

One powerful question I’ve learned to ask is, “How is this person medicating his or her pain?”

Scott Peck began a best-selling book with a sentence only three words long: “Life is difficult.” Life starts difficult, when we’re forcibly pushed from the warm, soothing womb into the cold, glaring lights, then turned upside down and smacked. Life ends difficult, when we’re struck down by cancer, emphysema, stroke, or old age. And every day in between has some degree of difficulty.

So very early on, we learn to soothe our pain. We cry till our momma comes and holds us. We suck our thumb or hide under the blankets. And then we discover more socially advanced ways of soothing our pain: getting a good grade, making somebody laugh, dressing up and getting a compliment.

And we also find chemical ways to soothe our pain: drinking Surge Cola, taking a long drag on a cigarette, popping half a box of chocolates, drinking a rum and Coke. We can also pump our own adrenaline to soothe pain, by going to scary movies, driving fast, getting angry, looking at porn, or booking our lives full of activities.

But the bottom line is, we still have pain, because life is difficult. And that’s where spirituality comes in. Richard Rohr, an author and retreat leader, says that “Spirituality is all about what you do with your pain.” You can choose to medicate it, or you can face it in God’s presence. One path stifles growth, the other promotes it.

So when someone comes to us for spiritual counsel, we should listen well and ask ourselves, “How is this person medicating his pain? What are the deep agonies in his soul, and how is he dealing with those?”

We often notice alcohol, drugs, and pornography, but may miss the more socially acceptable medications of performance, anger, eating, achievement at work, shopping. [I exclude from this list substances properly designed to medicate, such as antidepressants.]

God sees each of us turning to this thing when we’re down. God sees us looking forward to it. God sees our hearts going after it, asking this thing to tell us, “It’s okay. Life’s okay. You’re special. You matter.” Henry Blackaby, the author of Experiencing God, explains that “An idol is anything you turn to for help when God told you to turn to Him for help.”

The apostle John warns in 1 John 5:2: “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.” And the prophet Jeremiah cries out in agony with these words from God: “You’ve forsaken me, the pure spring, and built broken cisterns that can’t hold water.”

If the people you’re ministering to want to grow spiritually and become closer to God, they need to know when they’re slipping over the line and using something to medicate their pain and letting it become an idol in their life. The challenge, though, is that when people are medicating their pain with something, they won’t want to give it up. It may be wisest not to take the frontal approach and demand that they do. The resistance you’ll encounter will be ferocious.

Instead, we can help people say yes to something even better. Henri Nouwen once said in a Leadership Journal interview: “I cannot continuously say ‘No’ to this or ‘No’ to that, unless there is something ten times more attractive to choose. Saying ‘No’ to my lust, my greed, my needs, and the world’s powers takes an enormous amount of energy. The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive that I can devote all my energies to saying ‘Yes.’ … One such thing I can say ‘Yes’ to is when I come in touch with the fact that I am loved. Once I have found that in my total brokenness I am still loved, I become free from the compulsion of doing successful things.”

Something miraculous happens when people contact God’s love — through listening in prayer, reading Scripture, receiving the kindness of others. As we help people experience God and his mercy, they gradually become free from the need to medicate their pain.

Kevin A. Miller is executive editor of PreachingToday.com. To reply, write Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.