Dr. Larry Crabb Reveals the Central Root for all Addictions in New Book

According to the American Addiction Centers, drug abuse and addiction cost American society more than $740 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, healthcare expenses, and crime-related costs.  Best-selling author and Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Larry Crabb, believes he has pinpointed the common root of all addictions and describes his discovery in his new book 'Waiting for Heaven: Freedom from the Incurable Addiction to Self."
 
"There is a rarely recognized addiction operating covertly, to at least some degree, in virtually every human being," says Crabb. "Each one of us has arrived in this world with a stubborn commitment to our own felt well-being. We then live addicted to arranging for satisfaction of whatever longings we can neither deny nor smother. We are a society of self-addicted people, and it has become an epidemic."
 
Crabb says self-addiction leads to what he says is a specific sin that causes both Christians and non-Christians alike to turn away from God.
 
"Our self-protection to keep from hurting, our self-procurement angling to enhance our self-esteem through others, and our self-preservation techniques manifest into Relational Sin," says Crabb. "This plants the seeds of quarrels, fights and jealousies, causing relational poverty in families, communities, churches, nations and the world. We are failing to love others the way Jesus loved us. When we turn our relational longings towards heaven, we can then learn to fully love God and people."
 
Crabb says the predominance of what he calls "Casual Christianity" has led to self-addiction, even among the most faithful of believers.
 
"As Christians, many of us have given up self-examination that reveals what is ugly in us," says Crabb. "We live too often with our felt well-being as our priority concern, and because we think Jesus shares that priority, we believe we're living the Christian life. Casual Christianity has become Counterfeit Christianity, something Paul warned us against in Galatians 1:6.  The absence of waiting for complete satisfaction until heaven begets the presence of addiction, a demand to feel pain-numbing delight in this life."
 
Crabb says he knows his hypothesis is not an easy one for most people, even Christians, to swallow, and he admits that while writing "Waiting for Heaven," he struggled with the concept himself.
 
"There was an uncomfortable hesitation in me," says Crabb, "The choice to wait is easy to state but hard to make. Waiting becomes more difficult as we get weary with life's struggles, disappointments, and setbacks. I don't believe there is any path to walk that completely eliminates the struggle to resist temptation or that guarantees no further failure. Our addiction is incurable until Heaven, but we can be moving into greater freedom from it as we live in this world. Peter tells us that God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. And I believe a godly life will not be under the control of addictions." 

 

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