Monday, May 27, 2019

Wisdom Reconciles Idolatry (A.K.A. Addiction) Restoring Peace

Imagine if you had a formula for success.  A formula that worked every single time.  And part of that formula involved a thing called ‘wisdom’. It worked because it, like clockwork, works like mathematics. It just works. So work it! Imagine.
There is such a thing. It’s known in God. Indeed, it’s only known in God. And we can say that it’s only known in God, because technically speaking God’s put it into every part of creation. It’s a law.
Here’s how it works.
We all function in idolatry, which has its nexus in addiction, and its nemesis in wisdom. We all function somewhere along a continuum between the addiction of being under control to the peace of experiencing God’s freedom. And the Law of life, which was created by God, in as much as we’re created, suggests with certainty, that if we resist the sway of myriad idolatry, through the addition of wisdom, we reconcile the madness and bring ourselves to the place of peace.
This peace is what we were created for.
And wisdom is the vehicle to this peace.
Now, let’s accept for a minute that addiction is idolatry on anabolic steroids. Idolatry, which is something many ‘pious’ religious zealots claim they do not do, is the practice of us all, to lesser or greater extents. And the epitome of idolatry is the idol that has primacy of worth, i.e. addiction.
The opposite of addiction is peace, for one is bondage and the other is freedom. Wisdom gets us to peace by reconciling the idolatry—which requires the sacrifice of pain, which is to do without the idol or the addiction. It is possible, but it does involve pain.
Once our idolatry (or our addiction) is reconciled through the application of wisdom, peace is restored to that part of our lives.
Would it make sense to you that God wants to do this in every corner of our lives? And it can be done. We just need to want it. And we must accept that it’s God’s way of wisdom or else.
All roads to peace traverse the crossroad of wisdom, which reconciles the madness of idolatry through a sacrifice we know as pain.
See how pain is the pathway to peace? That would ought not to fear it, but learn to enter it and be healed.

Photo by Tom Swinnen on Unsplash

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