Chained to an idol

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Ante-Nicene, Idolatry, Uncategorized

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Addiction, Chained to a body, Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, idolatry, idols, Romans 7:24

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For that wicked reptile monster, by his enchantments, enslaves and plagues men even till now; inflicting, as seems to me, such barbarous vengeance on them as those who are said to bind the captives to corpses till they rot together. This wicked tyrant and serpent, accordingly, binding fast with the miserable chain of superstition whomsoever he can draw to his side from their birth, to stones, and stocks, and images, and such like idols, may with truth be said to have taken and buried living men with those dead idols, till both suffer corruption together.

Therefore (for the seducer is one and the same) he that at the beginning brought Eve down to death, now brings thither the rest of mankind.

Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Heathen,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 173.

This quotation is interesting on a few grounds. First, it contains a source for the not-uncommon image used in sermons particular on Romans 7:24 (who will deliver me from this body of death). But I note that even Clement didn’t have a definite source of the story beyond the indefinite “they say” (legousin, in the original).

Second, it is a striking description of the danger and evil of idolatry: “to have taken and buried living men with those dead idols, till both suffer corruption together.” To have an idol is to be shackled to an idol.

A similar image is used of addictions in our day, which is appropriate seeing addiction is another way to understand magic and idolatry. It is to be chained to, buried with.

Shame and Narcissism

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Addiction, Biblical Counseling, Narcissism, Psychology, shame, Sin, The Atlantic Monthly

Since the Fall in the Garden, shame has been the constant partner of sin. Indeed, the first act of the fallen Adam and Eve was to hide from God in their fig leaves. One of the great goods of the Gospel is that it relieves us of shame. And, upon the return of Christ, we are promised to have all trace of shame relieved and glory given in its place:

1 Peter 1:3–7 (ESV)

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

In Where Narcissism Meets Addiction, (The Atlantic) psychotherapist Joseph Burgo contends that shame lies at the heart of addiction and narcissism:

In other words, addictive behavior is a defense against unconscious shame.

As I discussed in an earlier article for The Atlantic narcissism is another way to ward off unconscious shame – indeed, narcissism is the primary defense against shame. In the sub-title of his book on the subject, the psychologist Andrew Morrison refers to shame as “the underside of narcissism”: hiding beneath grandiosity and narcissistic behavior is a painful sense of internal defect or damage.

I would agree with this evaluation, although I do not think he sees the depth and trouble shame deeply enough. Moreover, without a Christ who can bear sin and shame (1 Peter 2:24), no explanation of the immediate sources of shame will be enough.

Addiction and Shame

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Thesis, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Addiction, Culture, shame, Thesis

In recent years, the language of addiction has been applied to an ever-increasing range of behaviors – one recent study even claimed that college students are “addicted” to self-esteem! Unfortunately, as the psychoanalyst Donald Nathanson has noted, attaching the addiction label to someone’s behavior “is merely shaming or frightening unless addiction has been defined in terms of” its psychological function. Rather than simply calling these various behaviors “addictions” or “compulsions,” we need to ask what lies behind them:

Why do some college students continually need to be told they have personal value?

Why did Anthony Weiner seek ongoing reassurance from his sexting partners that he was attractive, virile and worthwhile?

What does the addict seek to avoid when he turns to his drug of choice, be it pharmacological, relational or sexual?

The answers seem obvious enough. If no amount of praise or positive reinforcement can satisfy some college students, if they continually “come back for more,” it must be because they struggle with low self-worth, or what I would call a sense of basic shame.

Read the rest here.

How Software Developers Promote Your Addiction

28 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture

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Addiction, Compulsion, Habit, Psychology, Technology, Trigger, Variable Reward

For a long time, the methodology for designing habit-forming products was haphazard: build it, put it before the public, and watch it go viral or fade into oblivion. In recent years, though, product teams have become more deliberate. Principles derived from behavioral science play an increasing role in software design, creating a demand for experts who can guide developers in the art—and science—of behavior engineering.

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It starts with a trigger, a prod that propels users into a four-step loop. Think of the e-mail notification you get when a friend tags you in a photo on Facebook. The trigger prompts you to take an action—say, to log in to Facebook. That leads to a reward: viewing the photo and reading the comments left by others. In the fourth step, you inject a personal stake by making an investment: say, leaving your own comment in the thread. This pattern, Eyal says, kicks off a cycle that lodges behaviors in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain where automatic behaviors are stored and where, according to neuroscientists, they last a lifetime.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/535906/compulsive-behavior-sells/

A trigger, anything which gets your attention and starts you going.

Action: it must not be too difficult to execute.

Variable reward: you may or may not get something you want. Thus, when you are scrolling down a page in Pinterest, you might see something you like.

Investment: you somehow can add to the process. You have a buy-in to the overall process (say by posting something yourself), which leads you back to the trigger — which has now been internalized, and thus onto new action.