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Cigarettes are not bad for you. 


Caffeine is not bad for you.


Alcohol is not bad for you.

The thing that makes the above bad is excess.

We do too much in our culture to excess, and whenever we do something that way, we suffer.  In the East they recognize it as living out of balance. 

Alcoholics both ask for God's help, and agree not to touch alcohol in order to heal.  If I am a workaholic, does that mean I get to stop working?

The reason we overdo it is because we are running away.


From what?  Think.  What do you run away from?






We are running away from what is inside.  We have so much junk trapped inside that we get crazy and compulsive frenzying outside just so we don't have to look inside.

When our behavior outside matches our dim sense of the pain inside, we feel a semblance of harmony.   Angry, tortured music may bring you solace at some points in your life.


When we look directly inside, we see and feel our junk, and it doesn't feel good.  So we want to run away.

But there is something also great, buried beneath that junk.  It is inviolable.  It heals all.  When you feel it, you will know.


But if you run away from the inside, you will never find it.   Everything you run away to in the end -smoking, drinking, work, material gain -- even a sense of God who is removed and distant from you, before whom you should feel guilty and punish yourself-  also becomes bad for you, because we so desperately want for it to make us feel better.  We pursue it to excess.    In the end, where will you run?

If you read the bible, this is what it means by 'idolatry.'   Running for solace to things that cannot save us.  Living out of balance, without the source at the center.    Without connecting to that source, planted in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31),  everything we do is a form of running.   Only when we connect to the source can we finally "be still, and know that I am God.' 

If you do not know it as "God,"  I am fine with that.  But don't let that keep you from knowing it.  Without words, you can feel it.

Don't be afraid of the stuff inside.  It is there, and you are surviving.  The power exists in you to clean it out.  You may have to pray.  You may have to ask for help.  But you can do that. 

Your path through the crap is also being dug from the inside.   Meet the digger.

With your honesty, you will dissolve it. 

With courage, you will encounter the relationship
that will heal you and make you whole.