I've wondered some, lately, about the relationship between the language of addiction and the language of sin. I'll say from the get-go here that I am not professionally trained in addiction studies or counseling, so please take this as a theological reflection.
Perhaps the place I find my mind most going to is how often both the behavioral patterns of addicts, and the behavioral patterns of "sinners" (more on the quotation marks in a bit), are criticized along the same lines. It always comes back to a simple matter of personal choice - you choose. If you are an addict, it is because you chose that path. If you are engaged in behavior perceived (rightly or otherwise) as sinful, it is because you chose that path. It is a critique of others that is primarily intended to cause shame on the part of the addict/sinner.
Why shame? Why do we want to shame those who are caught up in these behavioral patterns that we rightly find some troubling? I can speak less for the addiction studies side of things, but I do have some theological ideas as to why that I think may very well apply:
-We shame others because we are ignorant of their struggles. Simply put, it's a lack of empathy. Since we don't understand what another person is going through, and since their behavior disturbs us precisely because we don't understand it, we rush to condemn it and attach a stigma to it.
-We shame others because it deflects attention from our own sinful behavior. You could call this throwing stones in a glass house. It is impossible, as a follower of Christ with any interest in orthodoxy, to discount this - "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23). I would contend that religion provides a safe haven for those who do not wish to admit to their own sinfulness and fallen nature in that it enables people to hide from themselves by focusing their attention on the sins, real or imagined, of others. We have all likely encountered this phenomenon, of "Sister Bertha Better-Than-You" (to make a Ray Stevens reference) terrorizing others with her moral authority...when in reality, the accuser is just as guilty of wrongdoing as the accused. Their superiority isn't a moral one; they're merely better at covering their own tracks.
-We shame others because it makes us feel better about our own failings. Not everyone is ignorant of their sinfulness or at a stage where they desire to hide it. We might simply prefer to justify it as not right, but at least not as bad as what others are doing. Never mind the fact that Isaiah reminds us that even our good works are "like filthy rags" in the sight of God (Isa 64:6). If that's our good works, you can imagine God's estimation of our not-so-good ones. There's not much room for moral authority here.
The first reality is the easiest to fix; ignorance is, at least, a temporary condition cured by knowledge. You don't understand what another is going through? Letting them tell their story for themselves is a quick way to discover that, just maybe, we have more in common than meets the eye. We might discover that addiction is every bit as much about being trapped in systems of dependency that rapidly spiral out of our control, and that it is as much disease as it is personal choice. We might discover that the person we labeled sinner is not really different from us at all. We might all have quite a bit in common.
And what is that commonality? It's not that we all drink uncontrollably, or gamble excessively, or swear like sailors, or wrestle with uncontrollable lusts...it's that we are searching for wholeness. So often, the word used in the New Testament for "to save" is sozo, which carries with it a broader meaning of "to heal" or "to restore to wholeness." Mark likes this word a lot, actually, and the notion of healing in Mark is usually a holistic relationship of body and spirit. To put it plainly, what we all hold in common is that we stand in need of the kind of saving that makes us whole again - all of us, all of who we are.
We also hold in common an inability to make that happen on our own. No one is righteous - no, not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This is the core of what we're all about...well, at least what those of us who are Lutheran are all about. We are saved, made whole, only because of the intervention of a "higher power" on our behalf - Christ, who saves us by grace. Not our being better than other people on a moral scale, or "less of a drunk" than the other guy in the room, but simply because of who Christ is and what Christ does.
The living out of the salvation we receive - well, it's tricky, but reconciliation and sharing the liberating Good News of Christ stand at the heart of it...along with the honest admission of our own imperfection and own our likelihood to stumble. To fall back into old ways of being. To struggle each and every day as we learn to live in God's grace a day at a time. We are invited not to shame others or be ashamed, but to live in community and support each other as we struggle, together, toward the full realization of the wholeness we receive by grace.
What would it look like if churches took this to heart and saw themselves as "Sinners Anonymous" rather than holy spaces for holier-than-thou people? How would our role in society change? How would we be perceived differently? Most importantly, how might grace abound even more deeply and richly, how might justice and mercy reveal themselves more fully, if we walked a bit more humbly with our God?
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