GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 5:10
Habits and Addictions
AHabits are powerful, regular practices or routine behaviors, repeated frequently that often occur subconsciously, automatically, and with no need to make deliberate decisions each time. Habits can be good and constructive or bad and destructive. One writer described habits as carved neural paths.
I always carry my keys in my right-hand pocket. Perhaps that is because I’m right-handed. Occasionally, I’ll put my keys in my left pocket if I have something else in my right hand. When I reach into my right-hand pocket for the keys and they’re not there, there’s a brief flush of frustration because things are not as they’re supposed to be.
There appears to be a fine line between habits and addictions. Habits are often defined as something one wants to do—such as brushing one’s teeth, drinking morning coffee, or praying; addictions, on the other hand, are things that feel like they control you—such as abusing drugs, gambling, or compulsive overeating.
In St. Mark’s record of Jesus confronting a man with an unclean spirit in the region of the Gerasenes, there’s a subtle suggestion of the fine line between habit and addiction. It appears that Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave this unfortunate man, but it did not. Then it appears Jesus tried to excise the unclean spirit by demanding its name, but with no success. Finally, Mark wrote, “And he begged him earnestly that he might not send them out of the region.” (Mark 5:10)
Granted that readers understand this story in various ways, in one view, it seems that this man begged Jesus not to send the evil spirit, or spirits, out of the region. Why? Had this man become habituated to his terrible condition? Habits are hard to change. Addictions are even more difficult to change. Addicts often hate their addiction, but hate even more the loss of that to which they are addicted. As terrible as this unfortunate man’s condition was, he pleaded with Jesus not to change it—“Please do not send them away.”
Good habits, yes. Addictions, no.
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