Addiction and Manipulation: Victimhood, Agency, Sin, and Grace.

A friend contacted me about the following problem. She is related to a woman who uses her addiction aggressively to manipulate those around her. She asked what I think about this problem psychologically and theologically.

Psychologically, the woman has an addiction. Presumably, there are physical aspects to that. But she also has a psychological addiction, first to drink, more fundamentally to thinking of herself as a victim (including of those who most love her and offer help). And hence as having a right to be angry and to strike back at others (perhaps especially those who most love her and are most eager to help). She probably does not well love herself, doesn’t see herself as lovable, and hence sees those who love her as fools, especially if they let her take advantage of them, and therefore as contemptible.

Those who offer assistance and advice are her enemies, because, at the heart of her cherished victimhood is a sense of lack of agency. The one thing she can do is to hurt those who love her, and the weapon she wields is suicide. She can end it all and that will teach them! Let them live with the hurt and guilt (which, unfortunately, they are almost certain to feel) for the rest of their lives. How can a person decide to end her life? The character that defines a person has long since been emptied out by drink and fantasy victimhood and behaviors, ugly even in her own eyes, that break healthy ties to others and undermine self-respect. So the completely self-indulgent self ends up with no self worth perpetuating. There is nothing left to hold onto. What meagre shred remans offers less satisfaction than dramatically striking back through suicide. Psychological models tend to run aground here. Most of them are deterministic. Her troubles, they say, are the fault of a bad childhood, or of “society” (which, oddly enough, is spoken of as if it had agency, i.e., makes us do or think this or that, of which we are then victims).

So what do we say about all this theologically? For Christians (like my friend), the vital theological concepts are sin and grace. For grace to be operative, a person might well need to understand her own sin. And sin implies agency, free will, so the woman in question can’t go there, and those aspects of our culture that deny agency, including many in the helping professions, can’t go there. So her sin, as sin, remains unattended and unrecognized. There are many conduits of grace, but among them are the people who love us and those who, for humane reasons, want to be helpful. The nature of sin is that it does not want to be “helped.” The alcoholic does not want “help,” does not want even to recognize his or her condition, his or her “sin.” We can close ourselves off to grace: “inwardness with the door closed,” as someone called it. God sometimes breaks through extraordinary barriers – grace can reach the drunk with his face in the gutter — but the agile sinner can stave it off until it is too late.

Doesn’t Fit Our List

I was sending a proposal to academic publishers and discovered that the current language of rejection is, “doesn’t fit our list.” Can’t argue with that. An editor from one of the most distinguished wrote: “This is a wonderful project, and I enjoyed reading and thinking with your proposal.” Ooh-kay …

Abigail has sometimes received even more striking praise in letters of rejection, one saying, “I hope God doesn’t strike me dead for turning this down.” I have wondered if she should have written back, threatening divine retribution. I suppose calling down infestations and plagues has gone out of style.

The Parts Can Communicate with the Whole

 

“Lord, I feel you want me to do more of the mystical stuff, ‘entering’ You and so forth.”

Yes, and you can remove the scare quotes.  There is nothing strange about it.  That is how the universe is.  The parts can communicate with the whole.  It is no more mystical or mysterious than your ability to move your arm. 

Actually, since Descartes introduced a sharp mind-body distinction, how the mind moves the body has been a philosophical mystery.  But, in actual life, it is not.  The parts can communicate with the whole and vice versa.  But I had never thought of the universe that way.

I continued to have experiences of divine indwelling and partial union with God.  Now that I am used to them, they do seem similar to getting lost in an experience.  God mentioned music as one example, and we all know that feeling.  Sometimes you are not something separate, standing back and noting the music—you are immersed in it with your whole frame, without reserve.  However, the more radical, “dissolution of self” mystical experiences—I may have had them two or three times—make me uneasy and I avoid them.

Nico’s Wisdom

My favorite pizza place is closed. It still has a website, but no information about why it is closed and for how long. I found a nearby place called “Nico’s.” As I waited for my food, I looked the many photos covering the wide expanse of one wall. They appeared to be family members, mainly daughters, one of whom was at work in the kitchen. Near where you put in your order was a plaque: “I have my doubts about people with million dollar plans/ And a minimum wage work ethic.” You tell ‘em, Nico!

I Too Can Only Grow Through Suffering

 Karma is the Hindu idea that actions, both good and bad, have consequences for a person’s character and fate.

Human beings must learn a lesson.  They are not in this life to sit in the lap of luxury.  It is a challenge, a test.  They can only grow through sufferingI too can only grow through suffering.  The main suffering is through the consequences of their own actions.  That is the most intense suffering, the kind of suffering that leads to suicide.

There Can Be No Love Without Difference

“Lord, Pherecydes also says the world was composed of opposites.”

There can be no love without difference, no harmony or balance without opposing items or forces, no magnetism without the magnet and its object, and so on.

Mystic merging is not quite right.  You (people) need to live out your lives in relation to, in concert with Me, but it would serve no purpose, karmic or otherwise, for you to get lost in Me, like a drop of water in the sea.

I knew that I wanted to love Abigail, not to merge into her, or to have her merge into me.  There is not just unity, but creative tension as well.

“The Eternal Already had the Potential to be a Person.”

“Lord, what was there before?  What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person.  Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces.  ‘Who am I?  What am I?  Am I an I?  What is an I?’  A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way?  Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense:  “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete.  The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

 

If It Weren’t For the Honor of the Thing …

I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.  “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” the man said, “I would rather have walked.”  And I had seen the war movies, “You will have the honor of leading the assault.”  Some honors aren’t worth it.

I did feel the honor.  God was about to put His seal on this role for me, a role more suitable for a real Elijah.  I felt a swell of pride, as I was being told this, and immediately the line went dead.  Ego had broken the connection.