Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8462 Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 Elder turned out to be a game-changer. After I confessed my sin in our Bible study, he invited me to meet more regularly with other people from the neighborhood to help conquer my addiction. As I submitted to his spiritual direc- tion and let myself be accountable to him, he helped me to see a different way of relating to the neighborhood. He shared many of his own struggles and feelings of inadequacy, and by doing this, he modeled how I could think about my community and pray for my neighbors in a way that expected God to work regardless of my efforts. When I reoriented my heart toward loving Christ first, it was much easier to see that my self-perceived failures could not stop his work in redeeming his people. Most decent addiction programs recognize the need for a holistic approach, in part because it’s so clear how the barbed hooks of addiction embed themselves in a person’s mind, body, spirit, and community. The importance of good friends, stable work or hobbies, regular exercise, a good diet, and spiritual discipline is routinely emphasized by practitioners and therapists who understand how a patient’s day-to-day life differs from the few hours a week they spend together. Still, despite the many psychiatrists and pastors who appreciate this reality, I often hear from patients how a trusted authority breezily denied or ignored either the biochemical or the spiritual dimension of their illness. What’s more, despite noble exceptions, not enough recovery programs recognize how poverty puts the recommended practices of self-care out of many addicts’ reach. The first step for those of us seeking to serve broken neighborhoods, then, is to avoid the temptation to self-importantly distance our- selves from those we are helping. Wealth and privilege can blind us to the spiritual realities that shape all disease (not just mental illness). The Enlightenment worldview that comes with a professional degree pushes us to treat addic- tion and mental illness as wholly biochemical processes that are suffered passively. The treatment, we too easily believe, lies in submit- ting to pharmaceutical modification and professional therapy. While well-intentioned, we may fail to realize that our attitude is just as simplistic as our less “enlightened” neighbors’ belief that mental illness and addiction are purely a matter of sinfulness or spiritual oppression, unconnected with the body. In fact, both approaches – the modern scientific impulse to define every injurious behavior as “addictive,” as well as the reaction- ary tendency to deny that there’s anything biochemically mediated about plain old sinfulness – fall short in describing most people’s experience of addiction. Sin begins in our hearts, minds, and souls, to be sure, but it almost always spreads to our tongues, hands, and genitals, so that even our brains are physically reshaped (most obviously in the case of drug addiction). As a result, addicts usually suffer from a combination of basic human sinfulness, paralyzing social shame, and the ugly feedback of brain chemistry, with no bright lines marking where one category ends and another begins. Accordingly, when people seek healing, we should recognize how important it is to bring all aspects of a person’s life to light so that we may bring every possible resource to bear: community support, regular accountability, prayer, pharmaceutical treatment (if indicated), and careful discussion with a professional. Most people – including myself – need to acknowledge both the physical and spiritual dimensions of their addiction in order to begin to fully recover. Furthermore, while loneli- ness, poverty, and abuse do predispose people to addiction and other mental illnesses, it is