Addictions: New Ways of Seeing, New Ways of Walking Free

In this article, Ed Welch argues that addictions counseling has been dominated by the disease metaphor. Welch maintains that Scripture gives us many ways of making sense of the addictive experience: idolatry, adultery, foolishness, attack by a beast, and disease. Welch argues that an addiction is like a disease in that it affects our entire being, it is painful, it leads to death, and it is absolutely tragic. Yet there are also ways in which sin is not like a disease. It is something we do rather than catch, we confess it rather than treat it. Welch maintains that the Bible addresses addictions by calling us to a holy violence and war against our own desires. He concludes that the change process is a progressive sanctification.