Remember, pleasure is often more about drugging ourselves than it is about enjoying ourselves. And the things we do to avoid the ache are always worse in the end than the ache itself.
John Eldredge, from "The Journey of Desire" ISBN 0-7852-6716-6 Page 184
… we have only three options: (1) to be alive and thirsty, (2) to be dead, or (3) to be addicted. There are no other choices. Most of the world lives in addiction; most of the church has chosen deadness. The Christian is called to the life of holy longing.
John Eldredge, from "The Journey of Desire" ISBN 0-7852-6716-6 P 182-183
Thanks to Vern for sending me these quotes.
One reply on “Eldredge on the Church”
I do Drug and Alcohol counseling in prison… this quote and its ramifications has been incredible for helping addicts in prison. They feel somehow that they are “less than” or damaged relative to a large part of the population. The addicts have chosen addiction, and I compare their addictions with those who are addicted to food, golf, crack, sex, religiosity, heroin… all varying degrees of social acceptance, with varying degrees of denial and ultimately varying degrees of resolution… many die in their addiction. I find it amazing that at a church dinner it is not uncommon for a person who by all standards is morbidly obese will discuss what can be done about the scourge of addiction, while consuming a 4,000 calorie meal… denial is not only a river in Africa.
While addicts have a challenge to ask God for help in redirecting the addicted part of themselves back to God’s design for their lives, those who have killed their desire have to ask God to raise this part of them from the dead. Like falling asleep on your arm and experiencing the tingling that occurs, having part of oneself “raised from the dead” is a painful process… God never intended us to be partly dead.
-vern-