What does it mean to be Christian?  We teach our children that it means being nice, being kind, and that’s a good place to begin.  But I worry when adults take that childhood teaching about nice Christianity and use it to enable others.  Codependency is not a Christian virtue.

When I have preached on Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son to those living on the streets, the story offers the good news of redemption.  But how is the story heard by those of us who work hard and live by the rules and miss out on the party?  Actually that was Jesus’ intended audience: scribes and Pharisees.  We are called to welcome the lost and to drop our judgmental attitude in favor of mercy.  But we are not called by Jesus to become doormats and let others walk all over us.

Addiction plagues our communities.  Whether someone is addicted to alcohol or opiates, it is a family disease.  Addiction can attach to all sorts of substances: food or pornography or even one’s work.  And the presence of addiction in whatever form it takes indicates spiritual brokenness.  There is a God-shaped hole in every soul which only God can fill.  When someone tries to feel better by filling that hole with a substance to which he or she is addicted, the family begins to spin. What does it look like to stand in the centered place of showing mercy to the one who is broken while keeping firm one’s own boundaries?  That is the true way of Jesus.