Lookin' in all the wrong places

Okay, so way back in January, I quoted 2 Corinthians 1:3, where the Bible says: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort . . .”

From this I get the idea that comfort is a good thing. Preacher types are often fond of saying that Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. I think that is defensible, but it isn't a bible verse, by any means. Clearly, the bible intends to be telling us that comfort is a part of what God is about in this world.

The problem begins when we seek our comfort inappropriately. There are many places to go, but it can be summed up as, we often seek our comfort in whatever we find our pleasure.

For some of us, that can be food. That surely became my struggle, and I have spent many, many hours in self-examination to see where the problems lie. I know that there is power over this (that's a subject or two for the future), but part of the power is learning what is making me feel the need for the comfort. Naming the problem increases our power over the problem. At the very least, it gives us something specific to go to the throne of grace with.

As the Proverbial Wife pointed out recently, food as a comfort mechanism can be an obviously besetting problem. Some of us wear it around the waist. Others are a little trickier, and starve themselves, or purge themselves to hide their need for comfort, and their mechanism for seeking comfort. Others have comfort mechanisms that aren't quite as obvious, at least not immediately.

I would suggest that pretty much any addictive behavior probably started out as a comfort mechanism. Drug taking may have started out from peer pressure, but isn't that the reaction to an uncomfortable situation? Someone with a very strong self-image would have walked away from the friends that were pushing him to try a bit of pot, or another drug. Then, while under the drug's influence, they felt good.

That's a comfort mechanism. Something that makes us feel good. It can be eating. It can be meth-amphetines. It can be pot. It can be alcohol, work, sex, exercise . . . you get the picture. Everyone has one thing or another that they particularly enjoy, that makes them feel better. Some have built in physical reinforcements -- sex comes to mind here -- others are more tied to an emotional satisfaction.

The problem is, all these things will not satisfy. They are temporary at best. They will quite likely lead to misuse of perfectly good things, through what I call the Comfort Spiral. The Comfort Spiral will be the next post.