Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions

by Gerald G. May

Christian tradition holds no doubt that evil actually and vehemently means to work against, not for, God. Evil is irrevocably at cross-purposes with love, life, freedom, and creation. According to the same tradition, Satan was created free in God’s love just as was humanity, and in all of creation Satan most willfully and maliciously chose against God. But the tradition further maintains that Satan has been vanquished; the power of evil is invincibly restrained by grace. Evil continues to work against God, but with no chance of ultimate success. Moreover, there is no power and no condition that God’s grace cannot penetrate with love. God can indeed, then, work through the power of evil. Perhaps this is what happens in the phenomenal deliverances that sometimes occur in the most severe addictions, and even more frequently in the many opportunities attachment provides for authentic surrender to God. Grace shines radiantly through addiction.