What If I Never Went to Treatment?

How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Luke 18:24-25

In the disaster of my addiction, my personal and professional life was a mess. If I had any hope of saving my marriage or my career, I had to go to treatment. I knew I needed help, but honestly, I went to treatment because I was forced to go. I could have refused, but I would have lost everything.

No one wants to go to treatment, just like no one wants to go to jail. I required desperate need to convince me to change. Looking back, I’m not thankful for the pain I caused others, but I’m thankful for the consequences of my addiction. Without them, I honestly don’t know that I would have ever stopped using. If I would have been able to maintain a successful career and keep my addiction a secret, I wouldn’t know the faith, life, and recovery that I do now.

This is the problem with self-sufficiency. When we appear to be winning at life, we don’t feel the need to change. Even if we’re enslaved to some addiction that is slowly killing us, if we can keep things together enough on the outside, we usually remain unwilling to change. Change is painful and if we’re relatively comfortable – even if we’re riding that comfort to hell – we refuse transformation.

This was Jesus point in today’s passage. In it, Jesus explained how difficult it is for the wealthy to find God. The problem for those who have a lot, is that they don’t believe they need anything. Imagining themselves to be self-sufficient, they’re fine where they are. If changing means giving up their addiction to the comfortable life, then, No Thank You!

In the disaster of my addiction, I was forced to embrace transformation. Going forward now though, I’d like to learn to follow God out of love for him. I’d like to become spiritually mature enough that I remain continually aware of my need so that I don’t have to wreck my life to cause me to turn to him. If I don’t want to go back to the disaster and treatment, I must daily abandon the old life for the new one.