Fanatical

The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 7:25

Years ago, I met an individual whom I observed to have strict eating habits which I found to be bizarre. His diet was narrow and his commitment to it was absolute. He allowed no indulgence in any sugar, excess fat, or anything he considered unhealthy. I found him rigid and fanatical. What a weirdo. Then, however, he showed me a picture of who he used to be. It didn’t even look like the same person as that photo showed an overweight, bloated version of the person before me. Years prior, he recognized he had a radical problem and so, he committed to radical change. He didn’t care what I thought. He was simply going to keep doing what he had to do to stay healthy.

I didn’t understand addiction at the time, but I get it now. Because my own drug addiction was such a destructive force, and because it metastasized through my entire life, I had to make radical changes if I wanted to find recovery. Now, I sometimes imagine what my life must look like to someone who’s never struggled with addiction. What a weirdo. I must look rigid and fanatical. You won’t even have one drink? Because I remember what a disaster my life was, and because I never want to go back, I’ve made radical life changes, learning to cut out those behaviors that may cause me to stumble, while embracing behaviors that point me to God. If others find that fanatical, well, I just don’t care.

This fanatical opposition to any distraction is the posture God asked his people to take in today’s passage. As the Israelites prepared to enter the promised land, Moses warned against adulterating their faith by tolerating the false gods of the people in the land. He commanded them to burn anything that might lead them away from God.

That is still the challenge for me today – to cut anything out of my life that leads me away from God. It may look fanatical to others, but here’s the question I must regularly ask myself – Does this behavior lead me towards God, faith, and recovery or does it lead back to self-centeredness, relapse, and addiction? Maybe if I’d never torn my life apart with an addiction, I wouldn’t be so fanatical, but I can’t change the past and I don’t want to go back. So, if it keeps me walking in faith and recovery, I’m fine with being fanatical.