Addiction: How to Help Each Other (Part II) - Confronting Deception and Concealment, Pride and Shame

Image from http://www.alcoholanddrugsrehab.com/

For Part I, click here.
For Part III, click here.

Addictions affect far more people than we realize. In the last 10 years, I have discovered so many types of addictive behavior affecting fellow Christians and others I come in contact with through criminal law that I wanted to make what I’ve learned available to help others care for people with addictions. We often miss the signs of addiction because many addictions don’t look like what we stereotypically think of as the behavior of “an addict.” Many people hide their addictions very well, and seem to function normally most of the time.

If you’re trying to help someone break out of a ‘bad habit’ or sinful pattern in life that is really an addiction, you can end up spinning your wheels and going nowhere if you aren’t prepared with an understanding of the mental maze that addicts live in. Addiction is a complex interplay of selfishness, shame, pride, denial, guilt, and fear. Most addicts actively work to conceal their addictive behavior. I have learned the hard way how easy it is to miss what's going on under the surface, and what it takes to get an addiction out in the open.

I posted Part I of this discussion last week, where I summarized what makes something an addiction, the risk-taking behavior that reveals someone has an addiction, and how addictions compare to idolatry. I also gave a breakdown of why people turn to addictive behavior, with a list of critical things to be aware of when trying to help someone with an addiction. Part II covers below why addicted people lie and conceal their behavior, why it takes so much careful work to get them to cooperate with their own healing, and the combination of pride and shame that trap people in addiction. Finally, in Part III I will give a detailed list of ways to recognize patterns of deception and concealment that addicts commonly use to keep their addiction secret or to resist help and accountability, and how to counter them.

There is enormously helpful biblical teaching on this subject from groups like CCEF. Although I am trying to give you the main insights and tips from 10 years of law practice dealing with addicted clients and addicted people in the church, I don’t have a counseling degree and I’m not a professional counselor. In many cases, your primary goal should be to get the help of a certified counselor, while using the type of information I have put together to support your friend and keep him or her accountable. Several quotes below are from Ed Welch, a CCEF counselor, and I encourage you to chase down more of his resources at CCEF.

Addiction Makes Liars Out of People: Deception and Concealment Come Naturally

I am not trying to be insulting or accusatory here. It simply has to be faced that one of the sad byproducts of addiction is that it nearly always turns the addicted person toward lying and deceiving the people around him, especially when people begin to confront the person about having an addiction. This is often a total shock to family and friends because it happens even to people who would never lie about anything else. Part of the difficulty in spotting an addiction can be that the person you're trying to help has always been honest and candid with you about everything, so it is disorienting and hard to grasp when you begin to realize they are deceiving you about their addiction. It's completely out of character.

1. Other People Just Don't Understand

Part of the problem is that addicts usually think they have things under control. They think their indulgence and vice is something they just choose to do, just something they use to take the edge off and relieve stress. You've heard the classic self-deception: "I can quit any time I want to." This is usually what they really believe - they never put it to the test because they don't want to quit. They want to keep using this to dull pain or relieve tension. So the first person an addict is lying to is herself. Ed Welch says: "All addicts lie. As idolaters they forge an alliance with the anti-god and his crumbling empire, and lying is one expression of this alliance. ... For addicts, this deception is not only what they speak, it is also what they believe. They also have been lied to and believe those lies—lies from family, friends and Satan himself."

You've probably heard pastors describe temptation to sin as a lie: what you expect a sin to give you and what you actually get are usually two different things. When you are tempted by a desire, sin looks appealing and satisfying and not too dangerous. If you give in, you realize afterward that the satisfaction was brief and the negative consequences are much bigger. (Just what James 1:14-15 describes.) Addiction functions this way too. A person's desire for the relief and comfort their addiction provides will blind them to how big the consequences are. In the last post I described how people take greater risks in order to satisfy an addiction than they ever normally would take. Their need has become so dominating that they rationalize away the consequences or sinfulness of their actions.

But while the addicted person is lying to herself about things being out of control, she usually has a perception of what other people will expect and accept. Addicted people often realize that others would question their choices or be concerned by their risks, and even though they won't admit to themselves that there's good reason for concern, they learn to conceal what they are doing in order to avoid the unpleasant confrontations. So they begin lying to others as well. There are plenty of excuses they can use for this: "I know it bothers him, so I just don't want him to worry needlessly," or "It's none of their business," or "We just have different beliefs about how to unwind, so there's no point in talking about it."

However, the deeper the addiction goes, the more lying becomes a means of self-preservation and a regular habit. Pride causes the addicted person to resist all efforts to question or intervene in the addictive behavior, and shame makes the person unwilling to confide in others or allow anyone to see how ugly the situation really has become.

2. Pride and Shame Gain Control

"cultivating and encouraging humility is crucial for helping someone overcome an addiction."

You can see the evidence of pride in what I just described: the addicted person thinks they have things very well in hand, thank you, and anyone who thinks differently just doesn't understand. It is likely that the addicted person has thoughts like: "Who are they to tell me what I can do?" Self-justification and defensiveness are common side-effects of addiction (and sometimes causes of it). I quoted a therapist in Part I who said addicts believe two lies: that they deserve relief, and that they should get to decide how and when they get it.

For many addicts, even when they know the problem is out of control, the hardest thing to get past is the pride of being able to do what they want to do. That is one reason many fail in treatment: I have seen a number of people over the years walk out on treatment not because they believed they were cured or that they didn't have a problem, but simply because they were tired of having to abide by someone else's rules. When life is spiraling out of control, desperation may drive them to treatment. But when things stabilize, they start to think it's unfair that they no longer get to decide for themselves when and how they find pleasure or comfort. As time goes on, they are tempted to find compromises to make their addiction "manageable" instead of cutting it off entirely. Sometimes the hardest part to accept is never again.

Therefore, cultivating and encouraging humility is crucial for helping someone overcome an addiction. The person has to be willing to admit they have a problem: in other words, they have to be able to admit they can't handle this. They have to admit weakness. Along with that, they must submit themselves to someone else's accountability in order to make sure the person doesn't return to the addiction or get close to temptations that would trigger it. They no longer get to do whatever they want. It is a basic element of original sin lodged in all our hearts that we chafe and bristle at not being able to do things our own way. This is one of the biggest battles of the will in overcoming an addiction. Pray for humility in the person you're helping. Pray for the grace to listen and receive instruction.

A person who isn't growing in humility as they come to terms with an addiction is not going to fare well in overcoming it. That's why many addicts have to suffer devastating consequences before they surrender their addiction and accept help. It's only when forced into a situation where they must quit or be destroyed that they finally realize what a hold it has over them, and how helpless they are to control it.

Along with pride, addicted people are crippled by pride's evil twin: shame. Sooner or later a person with an addiction that is getting out of control will realize, in spite of their self-justification, that the state of their life really looks disgraceful. The effort to put on an image for everyone else of appearing to have it all together just makes it that much more frightening and intimidating to think about the veil getting pulled away and people seeing what's really underneath. Ed Welch sums it up: "If they were not dominated by shame before they began their addiction, they certainly will be after. When you live for something that is ultimately worthless, you feel worthless. When you live for neither God nor people, you will hurt others and degrade yourself. Then the cycle continues—addiction leads to shameful consequences, which leads to more devoted addiction." (Welch)

3. Killing Shame with Humility, Encouragement, and the Love of Christ

The solution to shame is also rooted in humility. As John Piper points out in Battling Unbelief, shame is really just pride that is wounded because it isn't getting praise. A shame problem is a pride problem: we feel shame because we want people to think about us a certain way - we want to take pride in something - and we perceive that they don't. So although shame looks vulnerable and sympathetic, it is really a problem of taking too much pride in what others see; so much pride, in fact, that you can't bear to have them see the real truth. Part of humility is learning not to worry about what other people think. As it happens, one of Ed Welch's best and most well-known books tackles shame expertly: When People Are Big and God Is Small.

To combat shame, an addicted person also needs diligent and frequent encouragement. They have to be reassured that it's okay to be you. They have to be shown that people will love them and accept them even with the veil pulled away. They also have to discover what is good and valuable in themselves and begin to feel good about it again. This is why most treatment programs and support groups for addiction heavily rely on a group therapy environment which emphasizes positive reinforcement for each other. They pour on the encouragement: every step forward is a victory that deserves praise and approval. Every day of sobriety is a celebration, which is why people get cheered when they report how many days they have been sober, whether it's two or two hundred. In fact, I cannot think of a single program that is successful - for any type of addiction - that doesn't use this approach of mutual encouragement.

I have seen firsthand in addicted people that if they don't care about themselves, they will likely relapse into addiction. People that try to beat addiction just to save their marriage, or just to keep their job, or just to please family and friends, are at serious risk. The problem is that, if they still personally feel like they are worthless, then sooner or later they are going to lose hope and believe they can't win. They will expect failure. Or, the thing they're fighting for will collapse, and nothing will seem to matter anymore. When they get that low, they are likely to just revert to numbing their shame and fear with their addiction. The marriage, job, and family are all worthy things to fight for, but at bottom the person has to care about himself or herself. The person has to care what happens to them. So the person needs constant encouragement from others that he or she is valuable and important and has gifts, personality, and other qualities that make their life special and precious.

This is not inconsistent with dismantling the person's pride. Pride is about overvaluing yourself and being too obsessed with what people think of you. Being humble does not mean you think you're of little value or think there's nothing special about you. The Book of Proverbs is filled with lessons that humility is essential and pride is lethal, yet it is also filled with exhortations to value your life, preserve your life, care about the quality of your life, and protect your life. Both pride and shame can be fought by having a correct view of who you are and what makes you precious. And what makes us precious more than anything else is being loved and accepted by God.

As Ed Welch points out, we are reassured in our identity by the fact that Jesus reaches out to people regardless of what other people think. The Lord went out of His way to touch those others considered untouchable:

"So, if we are to help, we watch the life of Jesus. He was born into shame and his people are outcasts. Watch him eat with the shamed and touch the shamed. Watch him identify with them so they can identify by faith with him. At every point, we expect Jesus to turn away and not be sullied by the shamed. Instead, he always invites, always surprises, and offers a connection to himself in which we are given cleansing, covering and belonging. As we follow the story, our roles begin to change. No longer is there an addict and a helper. Now we are two people who are seeing beautiful realities that will take the rest of our lives to understand. " (Welch)

You can't get too shameful for Jesus. His power to cover over sins cannot be exhausted. Belonging to Him cancels out all human opinions about your worth. The addicted person can be comforted and encouraged that he is precious in God's sight, fully accepted as a child of God because of what Jesus has done. And Jesus does not just accept us, but transforms us and cleanses us as well. He gives us a new life, redeemed from sin. This is the best possible news for someone struggling under the shame of addiction. Jesus can make all things new. In Christ, your life is never a lost cause.

Next: Part III - Breaking Through Deception and Creating Openness and Honesty - How to Help People Through to Recovery

When Relieving Stress Turns into an Addiction: How to Help Each Other (Part I)

For Part II - Confronting Deception and Concealment, Pride and Shame, click here.

You would probably be surprised at how many people you know who have addictions. When we think of addiction, we almost always think of alcoholics, smokers, or drug users. Those definitely qualify, but there are countless other types of addictions. They affect far more people than we realize because most people hide their addictions very well. In the last 10 years, I have discovered so many types of addictive behavior affecting fellow Christians and others I come in contact with through criminal law that I know this problem is going to show up eventually in the lives of people in your circle of friends, your small group, or the people you care for at church.

Ed Welch, probably one of the most valuable voices on addiction and idolatry in biblical counseling today, has a short post at CCEF (Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation) with extremely good advice for helping confront an addiction. I am going to expand upon his post because I haven't really addressed addiction directly on this blog, and I want this to be a solid starting point. I'll break this up into a couple of posts. I've learned in my law practice and in church counseling participation that addictions have special challenges to achieving accountability and cooperation from the person trapped in his or her behavior. Being aware of these patterns can save a lot of wasted time and discouragement.

Addictions Are Basically Idolatry - and They Enslave People

Virtually anything can become an addiction. What makes it an addiction is the role it plays in your life, and how it negatively affects other things in your life. If you turn to something to escape from stress, or anxiety, or depression, or pain, or loneliness, or fatigue, or fear, or any other problem, and it becomes your "go-to" escape (the thing you turn to again and again for relief), you're in danger of developing a habit of addiction. What makes it cross the line is when you don't have complete control of the behavior anymore: you start using the escape even when you really should be doing other things, or you use it in ways that leave you unable to meet your responsibilities afterwards. Think of the person who drinks too much and can't come into work on time the next morning, or the person watching pornography or playing online games all night and unable to stay awake at work the next day.

Other signs include taking risks in order to get the relief - doing things that a clear head would tell you are wrong or dangerous. For instance, doing things you know are sin in order to get relief, or using drugs illegally (so now you're risking criminal charges), or being under the influence of something while at work, or drinking before driving to go pick up your kids because you're going to be with them all night and won't have a chance later, etc. For people using pornography, already sinking into sin, it may be moving on to chat rooms where they seek interaction with real people, leading to meeting someone solely for sex or following an advertisement connected to prostitution.

What these all have in common is that the person trying to satisfy an addiction is now jeopardizing other things in life to fulfill their need. It is no longer something they do that seems harmless or private; it is now something they need so much that normal common sense doesn't guide their thinking anymore. The addiction must be satisfied, no matter the risk, and even things that are recklessly foolish don't stop the person because the alternative - that you don't satisfy this need - is unthinkable to them.

Welch says: "Addictions continue their upward swing. Given that we live during a time when self-control is not yet prized, our cultural strategy with hardships is to medicate them away rather than stand in the midst of them. And the possibilities for medicating hardships are always increasing. To sexual obsessions, add illegal drugs, then prescription narcotics, then computer games, and there are more to come. With this in mind, the church has a perennial project: to draw out fresh insights from Scripture on modern addictions, and move toward those who are enslaved by them.

"Many of these insights exist within biblical teaching on idolatry, which has both voluntary and involuntary aspects to it. Human beings both purposefully indulge their desires—we sin because we like it—and we are dominated by those desires. We are both in-control and out-of-control." Welch, Two Underused Biblical Resources

You can see that addiction looks just like idolatry: anything can become an idol, and an idol is something we devote ourselves to so much that it takes disproportionate weight and importance in our lives, being fed at the expense of our devotion to God, our marriage, our children, our job, etc. The idol becomes the thing we must have at all costs. Welch and other CCEF counselors like David Powlison and Paul Tripp have done a great deal of work showing the link between sin and idolatry and addiction, and identifying the patterns of behavior that cause us such trouble. Searching the CCEF site on these topics will bring up a host of useful resources.

Idols aren't just 'false gods' like the carved images described in the Old Testament. Here's Powlison on how Scripture describes idolatry:

First, the Bible internalizes the problem. “Idols of the heart” are graphically portrayed in Ezekiel 14:1-8. The worship of tangible idols is, ominously, an expression of a prior heart defection from YHWH your God. “Idols of the heart” is only one of many metaphors which move the locus of God’s concerns into the human heart, establishing an unbreakable bond between specifics of heart and specifics of behavior: hands, tongue, and all the other members. The First Great Commandment, to “love God heart, soul, mind, and might,” also demonstrates the essential “inwardness” of the law regarding idolatry. The language of love, trust, fear, hope, seeking, serving—terms describing a relationship to the true God—is continually utilized in the Bible to describe our false loves, false trusts, false fears, false hopes, false pursuits, false masters. 

If “idolatry” is the characteristic and summary Old Testament word for our drift from God, then “desires” (epithumiai) is the characteristic and summary New Testament word for the same drift. Both are shorthand for the problem of human beings. The New Testament language of problematic “desires” is a dramatic expansion of the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting (epithumia). The tenth commandment is also a command that internalizes the problem of sin, making sin “psychodynamic.” It lays bare the grasping and demanding nature of the human heart, as Paul powerfully describes it in Romans 7. Interestingly (and unsurprisingly) the New Testament merges the concept of idolatry and the concept of inordinate, life-ruling desires. Idolatry becomes a problem of the heart, a metaphor for human lust, craving, yearning, and greedy demand.

From Idols of the Heart and "Vanity Fair"

Addictions Are Idolatry - But They Are Also 'Medication' for a Bigger Problem

Addiction is definitely an idolatry of the heart, a craving for something other than God to satisfy you. But there is an important layer underneath all of that. Virtually all addicts are enslaved to their addiction because they are hiding from something else. They began using the addiction to 'medicate' away something they couldn't cope with. That means that even if you strip out the drug or alcohol or pornography the person is addicted to, there is a problem underneath that is also out of control. Addictions don't just come from selfishly indulging yourself regardless of the damage it does to others (although they certainly look like that too); they come from deep wounds or fear or anxiety or pain or another affliction. The person underneath is suffering, and they have run to the addiction to make that suffering bearable.

To understand how to help a friend with an addiction, you have to be aware of these things:

1. The addict is afraid to give up his or her addiction. What drives them back to their addiction again and again is something else they feel they can't handle, and they are scared to face it without the numbing escape of their addiction.
2. This means the addict does not really believe he or she can face life without using the addiction.
3. In fact, far from thinking their addiction is ruining their life, a person with an addiction probably believes that using whatever they're addicted to is what makes them able to face life. They think it's what keeps them from falling apart.
4. That means that anyone pressuring them to give up their addiction is threatening to them. It feels like an attack on the one thing they are depending on to make life bearable.
5. Often an addicted person will never believe that their addiction is a problem until things collapse so badly that they realize it is ruining their life. That means that the crucial time to get a person with an addiction into counseling or treatment or other help is right after something disastrous has happened (a DWI, a spouse moving out, losing a job, etc.). The window of shock that allows them to see their addiction as a problem is short. Eventually they will 'medicate' away the shock with their addiction.
6. The answer is not only to convince him or her the behavior is wrong or dangerous, but to also convince the person that they can face life and can overcome whatever it is that is underneath the addiction. They need to believe they don't need it.
7. You need to help them figure out what the underlying problem is. This probably means they will need to see a counselor who has some experience helping people with addictions. Your best help to them is probably to convince them to start counseling.
8. If you don't address the underlying problem, this person will not be able to shake off their addiction. Some people may even abandon one addiction under pressure only to take up another because the same root problem is overwhelming them.
9. This is also why people with addictions can seem to be "cured" for a month or a few months, which often causes friends to stop being vigilant. But when the pressure of life gets too heavy again, or the person feels hopeless, they return to the same addictive behavior to cope. They may tough it out for a while, but unless they have learned to deal with life without the addiction, that's what they'll turn to when they can't take it anymore.

For example, this quote explains a lot about how an addict thinks: "Sharon Hersh is a therapist and an expert on addiction. ... Sharon says that addicts believe two things that fuel their destructive behavior. The addict believes she deserves relief, and that she should be able to choose when and how she gets it. In that sense, we’re all prone to addiction." (From Drunk Believers, by Erik Guzman. Guzman presents a thought-provoking picture of someone who may or may not be an alcoholic or addict.)

Therefore, a massive part of overcoming an addiction is helping the person learn to cope with suffering in a healthy and biblical way. It is also essential to remember that the person is vulnerable, and they turn to their addiction out of desperation. They need a lot of encouragement and positive support. The battle to change these patterns of thought and dependence is hard, and it is common for people to fall back into their addiction because they hit a period of hopelessness and despair where it doesn't seem like it matters anymore. Being sensitive to their moods and the life pressures that are happening to them is very important, so that you can perceive when they may be discouraged and help them fight it.

Click here for Part II - Confronting Deception and Concealment, Pride and Shame, which covers what makes addicted people habitually lie and conceal their behavior, and why it takes so much careful work to get them to be honest and open about what's going on.

Spiritual Coffee: Young Men Isolated in a Virtual Online Tribe - Knowing You're No Better than Unbelieving Friends May Help Save Them - Russell Moore Challenges Justice Advocates to Stop Being Selective

Mid-week roundup of three resources for Christian thinking and reflection. Prior collections are tagged under Spiritual Coffee.

Seeking the Living Among the Dead, Rod Dreher (The American Conservative)
What kind of virtual culture and religion have young men encased themselves in through online interactions? When you consider how much time they spend connecting virtually with people, through streaming video, social media, and online gaming, it becomes clear that this amounts to a self-designed reality that occupies more of their lives than ordinary community and culture. And that reality is missing some important pieces. Rod Dreher always brings an extra depth of thoughtful and insightful examination to what he discusses. This time, he shares at length from Edward Hamilton, who teaches at a small conservative Christian college in Texas. His observations about how young adults - mostly young men - are shaped by this virtual reality give us a lot to consider in repairing a healthy community. For example: these virtual webs of interaction are largely devoid of anything resembling church or Christian practice (not necessarily by intention, but simply by indifference); the content and material tends to be focused on feeding cravings, instead of building ideas or relationships; and the virtual YouTube circles and gaming clubs and social media become a sort of tribe that takes the place of church and community.

The Myth of Moral Superiority: When You're No 'Better' than Your Agnostic Friend, Jen Pollock Michel (Christian Living, TGC)
This tackles a very present problem for many of us with unbelieving friends: how do you display the need for the Gospel to people who don't have any big and obvious sins in their lives? Especially to those who sometimes seem to be better parents and spouses than you feel you are, leaving you feeling almost silly in trying to point out their subtle sins?

"Many of my non-Christian friends and neighbors don’t easily fit the snarly, selfish caricatures of the godless. They are good neighbors and good parents. In Lisa’s case, they are great neighbors and admirable parents.

"And this evident morality leaves me a little stumped in terms of evangelism. What does it look like to share the gospel with friends who fail the obvious narrative of “wretch,” a term with which converted slavetrader John Newton described himself? If I am the student—and my non-Christian friend sometimes the teacher—have I failed my heavenly assignment from God? Shouldn’t I be better than them?"

"Even the most morally upright person, Christian or non-Christian, falls short of God’s glory. In fact, the gospel exposes the depths of my depravity—that of all the pedophiles and pornographers, drunks and derelicts, I am chief sinner among them (c.f. 1 Tim. 1:15). And maybe this is the biggest difference between Lisa and me: not that I outperform her in virtue, but that I outrank her—by virtue of gospel self-awareness—in vice.

"The gospel doesn’t make me better. But it does make me eager to admit my debts and deficits, grateful to receive God’s good gifts from whomever’s hand they come."  

Russell Moore to Justice Conference: Don't Be Silent on Unborn, Sexuality, and Hell, Chelsen Vicari (Juicy Ecumenism - Institute on Religion and Democracy blog)
It's encouraging to hear that Russell Moore was invited to speak to a gathering like this, which usually features social justice pioneers and leaders who are more politically leftist. Christians are too often divided down liberal and conservative lines on doing justice, each side leaving something out. Moore is just the man to tackle this subject with wisdom and clarity, being fair to both sides.

"The annual gathering of young evangelicals is described as 'one of the largest international gatherings on social and biblical justice' and is a project of World Relief. The Justice Conference customarily invites members of the Christian Left to Champion issues related to social justice. For example, last year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Cornel West, liberal political activist and Union Theological Seminary professor. So it’s a bit surprising that this year, wedged on the schedule between Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, was Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission."

"He tackled issues ranging from racial injustice, human trafficking, and refugees. But it was his mention of the sanctity of unborn life, sexual ethics, and the reality of Hell that had some in the room squirming uncomfortably in their seats.

"Too often, Moore said, Christians are tempted to solely focus on the social issues that their peers or 'tribe' approve. 'When I’m speaking to people in my tribe of conservative confessional evangelicalism,' explained Moore, 'I often have to say you are pro-life, and rightly so, but because you recognize the image of God and the humanity of God in the unborn child and in his or her mother, you must also recognize the humanity and dignity of God in people who might not be politically popular with you right now: with prisoners, with refugees, with immigrants. And that works the other way too.'

"The bulk of Moore’s discussion urged his audience to recognize the dehumanizing of the unborn as equally unjust as the dehumanizing of other vulnerable groups more popular among younger Christians."

Spiritual Coffee: Power of Christian Narrative in Fantasy - Against the Myth of Progress and Historical Pessimism - Glorifying God as a Generalist

I really enjoyed today's collection of links. I hope that you will as well. Taken together, these three pieces restore some of the excitement and wonder in exploring God's Creation and the endless possibilities of discovery in the Christian mind and imagination. There is even now a great portion of beauty and glory awaiting us.
(Click on Spiritual Coffee for earlier collections of links.)

James Stoddard's Interior Castle, David Randall (First Things)

The quoted section below is enough to excite interest, especially for those who enjoy C.S. Lewis's fiction or The Lord of the Rings. I usually get the most enduring and satisfying enjoyment out of stories that have a great layer of truth underneath them. When you piece together the fantastic and unusual elements of a story and find they reveal a mystery about reality, you gain something personal and permanent. It is always a delight to discover beauty, but to discover something that is both beautiful and true is priceless.

"James Stoddard ought to be famous for his Evenmere trilogy—The High House (1998), The False House (2000, revised 2015), and Evenmere (2015). He isn’t, unfortunately. The High House received the Compton Crook Award for best fantasy by a new novelist, but The False House and Evenmere haven’t gotten much notice. But the three books are wonderfully written fantasy, and Stoddard is nearly as good as C. S. Lewis at recapitulating aspects of the Christian myth. He isn’t just trying to be another Lewis, either. Stoddard’s trilogy does something new and nifty: It is an argument in fiction that narrative is at the center of Christian theology—that the universe is narrative, that Christ is its sacred narrator, and that narrative is the means by which mankind can understand God. Stoddard’s sustained invention and stylish prose are enough by themselves to earn him a place in the mainstream fantasy canon. But his shift of emphasis from Christian myth to Christian narrative makes his trilogy a major work of Christian fantasy."

[I also find this description of the worldview of the villains to be brilliant. The deception that mankind can achieve a perfect world lies behind virtually all modern false ideologies (and the next link from Al Mohler happens to show what it's like for those ideologies to crash down).]

"The books’ villains are the Society of Anarchists, who are ruthlessly dedicated to establishing a perfect world."

Christ’s Exaltation: The Ground of Our Hope, Albert Mohler (Ligonier)
A succinct picture of Christ's reign and how it provides us confidence both now and for the future, contrasted with the hopelessness of faith in "progress" or perfection of humanity and its disillusioned counterpart, historical pessimism.

"'The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made us all into deep historical pessimists.' So observed Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. What happened? The nineteenth century’s humanistic faith in inevitable moral progress was destroyed on the battlefields of two cataclysmic world wars and in the unprecedented murderous cruelty of Hitler’s gas chambers, Stalin’s gulags, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields. History seemed to point, not to a golden age of moral progress and enlightenment, but toward an age of unspeakable cruelty backed by technological developments that would stagger the moral imagination.

"Fukuyama demonstrated the failure of historical 'faiths' such as Marxism, with its confidence in the ultimate victory of the proletariat through class struggle and revolution. His analysis of modern historical pessimism was correct, at least in this respect, for secular myths did not fare well in the twentieth century, and most contemporary Americans look to the future with a mixed sense of unease and uncertainty.

"The Christian worldview stands in stark contrast both to the humanistic idea of progress and to modern secular pessimism."

How to Glorify God by Being a Generalist, Joe Carter (TGC)

Probably fascinating for anyone who is curious how people like Justin Taylor, Russell Moore, Tim Challies, and departed heroes like Chuck Colson manage to have such diverse knowledge and insight into so many subjects. Carter is careful to say he can only describe his own experience, and that it may not be a calling that applies to many people. Particularly interesting are his conclusions that generalism is artistic, generalism is a personal act of worship to God, and generalism is not primarily pursued for the sake of imparting knowledge to others (although that is a valuable byproduct) but for the sake of beholding the majesty of God in greater and wider detail. The highest reward is a private moment of awe and wonder between the generalist and the Lord.

This line is also helpful and practical for those of us who get stalled out trying to find the perfect way to do things: "sometimes you have to use whatever method works for your personality, even if it’s less than ideal."

"What if we generalists are beckoned to seek knowledge not as a means for some other end but simply as an act of performance before our Creator? This is not to say that the knowledge gained cannot be used for practical purposes or in service of our neighbor. But viewing knowledge-seeking as a performative act done for God and before God frees us to treat it as a form of ongoing artistic worship. Just as David performed for God with leaping and dancing (2 Sam. 6:16) we are free to seek truth, knowledge, and understanding in a variety of areas as a way of glorifying him." [On Sincerity:] "'By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world-view,' Schaeffer says, 'or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted.' If it’s to glorify God as a work of art, generalism cannot be pursued as a means of impressing others with our erudition. For the Christian generalist, the pursuit of knowledge is a performance for God, not an act of pedantry to impress our peers. The validity comes in performing not for the applause of others but for the approval of our divine patron."

"What turns generalism into an art (or at least one major “style” of art) is “sublime pattern-matching,” seeing the interconnectedness of God’s creation in a way that impresses our minds with a sense of awe and veneration of his grandeur and power. 

"God takes delight not in the discovery of the patterns of his revelation (which, of course, he already knows) but with the way that the process leads us to childlike worship. It is the process that leads us to continuously repeat the prayer of the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler: “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!” It’s the pursuit of knowledge and discovery as a way to glorify our Redeemer by becoming increasingly enchanted by his majesty." “What is elementary, worldly wisdom?” Charles Munger asked. “Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.”

Does "The Inner Ring" Dominate Your Life? - Summarizing C.S. Lewis's Essay on Relationships and Ambition

I shared the link here to Alan Jacobs contrasting and comparing how C.S. Lewis gave a speech to students with how modern commencement speakers such as Steve Jobs imply moral lessons without acknowledging them. The C.S. Lewis speech Jacobs used was The Inner Ring. For several years I have been passionate about seeing every Christian read it, because it is one of the most important and universal explanations of human nature I have seen.

The longer I observe how people choose to prioritize their lives, which groups they prefer to join, and who they want to spend time with, the more I see Lewis’s insights confirmed. The best value for me has been what Lewis revealed about wrong motives for being a part of

things, which makes us able to recognize those motives in our own hearts and choose to resist them. What it comes down to is the difference between using people and relationships as a means of self-advancement, or valuing people and relationships for their own sake. As Lewis also brilliantly showed, doing the former makes you a prisoner and slave of ambition, rather than enabling you to control it. On the other hand, being authentic with people, doing good work for its own sake, and accepting the people God places in your life can be amazingly liberating.

The whole essay is here, but I’ve done my best to give you an abridged survey of Lewis’s main points identified by headings. All the material below is from Lewis, except for the headings I have added. The last two paragraphs are especially encouraging.

The Longing to Be Inside the Inner Ring

I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.

People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man—it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we—we four or five all huddled beside this stove—are the people who know.

The Longing that Will Dominate Your Life – Unless You Choose to Resist It

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it—this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing—the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an “inner ringer.” I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in—one way or the other you will be that kind of man.

The Fear of Being Left Outside

Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for... But it is not quite true. … It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.

Making the Inner Ring More Important than True Friendship

Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.

I will ask only one question—and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. IN the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.

The Danger of Moral Compromise in Pursuit of the Inner Ring

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.

The Endless Thirst that the Inner Ring Can Never Satisfy

My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made part of a certain circle for some wholesome reason—if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music—then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.

Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.

Becoming Free from the Desire for the Inner Ring

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

Spiritual Coffee: Work Doesn't Satisfy Anymore - Christian Choices Without Limits - Saying Hard Things

Today's evening coffee break. I plan to post updates with new links on Monday - Wednesday - Friday - Saturday, all under the label Spiritual Coffee. I explained in the first post that the goal is to simply share three links to the best things I've come across in the past few days to feed a Christian mind and heart.

When You Don't Love Your Job, Bethany Jenkins (TGC)
Jenkins gets honest about what it feels like to not enjoy your work or be satisfied by it - something more of us struggle with than we will acknowledge. She also critiques the common notion that you can just fix things by figuring out what you're passionate about.

Christian Choice in an Age of Fracture, Joel J. Miller (Theology That Sticks)
An intriguing analysis of how the Church today has embraced the idea of limitless choice and individuality, without any common agreement about how we should use our personal choice. Historically, Christians differing in choices were still uniting around the same community and goals, not expressing unbounded individualism. Stronger focus on free will theology than I would choose, but good contrast with Church Fathers and Early Church.

"A good and holy life, in other words, assumes the power of personal choice. But it’s simultaneously assumed there is a proper direction for those choices. 

 "...the fourth-century bishop and theologian Gregory of Nyssa said, “there is always something towards which the will is tending, the appetency for moral beauty” (Great Catechism 5.21).

[But today in the Church] "Freedom does not mean liberating someone to make the right choices; instead, it means freeing him to make any choice."

Say Hard Things, Marshall Segal (Desiring God)
Most of the time we feel a tension between loving someone and telling them the truth. It is hard to believe in the moment that the most loving and kind thing you can do for someone is to say what they don't want to hear or what may make them feel challenged. This is an encouragement to put love into action without feeling guilty. If our outlook on life doesn't reflect the whole story God is telling with our lives, something vital is missing.

Authentic Church Culture Requires Openness about Sin - and Open Love

The solution to the culture of hypocrisy I addressed here is to have a church culture that emphasizes sincerity and a safe environment for openly confessing our sins and struggles to each other. Too many churches try to clean themselves up and put on a 'holy' face by discouraging any open discussion of struggling with sin. They may not realize consciously that they are doing so, but a church culture that tends to shun people who confess their struggles with sin, treating them as lesser Christians or 'unreliables,' simply discourages people from admitting when they have a problem. If the response to being made aware that someone is ensnared by sinful desires or has committed particular sins is an implied disappointment and shame that is shown by starting to treat that person differently (and usually less closely and affectionately), then people will naturally avoid admitting they have a problem. And that leads to hidden sinful habits and indulgences that go on under the surface, growing and taking deeper root while the churchgoer tries at the same time to keep up the appearance of godly living and Christian obedience to maintain friendships and acceptance.

This is exactly why hypocrisy is such a danger in churches like this. Anything that leads a person to keep part of his or her life hidden from others is putting that person at risk for becoming a hypocrite. Likewise, a church culture that makes people feel like they have to keep their flaws and weaknesses hidden in order to be accepted is a church culture that teaches people to prioritize the praise and recognition of other people over actual sincere relationship to God. Such churches train people to believe that they can only be welcomed and liked if they keep problems hidden. That is lethal. It ends up blowing up in their faces when beloved leaders or longtime members of the congregation are discovered to have carried on a hidden life of sin. And everyone is shocked. Because they found a sinner in their midst. Instead, they should be remorseful that they ever deceived themselves into thinking any of them were not sinners.

An authentic Christian church culture will always encourage people to confess their sins without fear of judgment or rejection. Although it is true that some sins and weaknesses may require that the church not place a person in a particular role of leadership or service, openness is encouraged by clearly demonstrating that acceptance and affection by the other members are not going to be jeopardized if a person confesses any type of sin. The important thing is proving by example that the relationships in the church will not be strained or lost if a person admits their own struggles and flaws. This kind of culture acknowledges that all of us are prone to weakness and vulnerable to certain sins, and refuses to treat the realities of sin and personal weakness as dirty little secrets to be kept in the closet. Instead, such a culture locks arms together in loving commitment to help each other fight these battles with temptation and sin. We commit to never shaming anyone, and to being ready and willing to hear anyone's confession and gladly help them pray for healing.

This kind of thing makes some people very uncomfortable, especially if they are used to the kind of church culture that pretends sin isn't among us and shames those who are caught in it. Of course it should not be the typical practice for people to confess their sins publicly in front of the whole congregation; there is some discretion involved in choosing the brother or sister to whom you confess. Even then, some people may resist hearing other people's confessions because it is something they aren't used to and it feels to them like a crisis point in a relationship. But once people see how liberating it is to be able to admit you are having problems without risking your friendships, and realize that the love of other people in the church is not going to be withdrawn even when the hidden sins are exposed, a person who is burdened by their sin will crave that kind of openness and freedom. It is as vital to spiritual life as air to the body. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, in one of the most valuable books ever written on Christian community:

In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged.

- Life Together, p. 112 (HarperOne edition, 1954).

It must be, because if it is not, then the grace of God that comes through experiencing the forgiveness and freedom of the Gospel is denied to the sinner. Bonhoeffer captures beautifully what this experience of Gospel freedom looks like in authentic community:

The fact is that we are sinners!

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. 'My son, give me thine heart' (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. Thank God for that; He loves the sinner but He hates sin.

- Id., pp. 110-11.