I was reading an interesting article on CNN.com and it got me wondering. What is the difference between sin and addiction? Is all addiction sin? Is all sin addiction? Is there an overlap between the two? To what degree are people responsible for sin that results from addiction?

So many questions that get to the heart of the nature of sin and our broken nature. There are so many addictions – gambling, alcohol, drugs, porn, smoking, gossip, lying, spending, violence etc. While all addictions seem to start with a willful act on the part of the addict something about the addict and their wiring/environment compels them into addiction where others are not.

I can stand in a casino for hours with no compulsion to gamble, even dropping the odd loonie into a slot machine while all around me there are people on the verge of losing homes and businesses to an addiction.

When we talk of sin we talk of two things at once – we are speaking of the willful act of rebellion against God and we are speaking of our very nature which drives us to those willful acts. Are we addicted to sin?

What is the response to an addiction? Is it different than the response to a willful act of rebellion? Do we treat them the same? We catch a child with a cigarette in a moment of curious experimentation and we discipline them to drive home the fact that the decision to smoke is wrong because it harms both yourself and others. Do we take that same person 12 years later who has become an addict and continue to discipline them? Does it work to do so? Is our response to sin any different?

The thing with sin is that discipline may prevent certain expressions of it in the future but it will not prevent it as an addiction from taking over every person’s life to one degree or another – it is the nature of the broken human. So how do we deal with something endemic to who we are?

Now I am aware of our need to rely upon the grace, love and atoning forgiveness of Christ in relation to our sin and our relationship with God. I am not, in this instance, speaking of our response to and from God so much as our response to and from one-another (as if they can be separated). How are we to respond to the reality of the sin addiction in one another?

How does the heroin junkie respond to and help the morphine addict? How does the gambling addict respond to and help the gossip addict? Are we to discipline and punish one-another for our addictions or is there perhaps another way?

Just some things to ponder.