Phronema & Addiction: The Great Mercy of God

Hi, I'm Zach. I'm an Alcoholic.

In October 2020 i went to rehab after a long battle with alcohol and marijuana. Forty days later I came home and, I didn't know it then, but my life would be forever changed as a result of this experience. God willing, on October 2, 2025 I will have been sober for five years. By the grace of God I have been able to string together 24 hour for quite a while. By the grace of God.

This post isn't meant to be long, as I intend for blog posts to be longer versions of what I used to post on facebook. There is something, however, that I want to share.

Five years ago, when I went in to rehab, I went in as a Catholic. A Catholic who had converted to Catholicism from growing up fundamentalist baptist turned reformed protestant. On October 2, 2023 which marked my 3-year sobriety anniversary and was the day before my 8-year wedding anniversary, I became Eastern Orthodox along with my wife and two children.

Why is any of that important?

Eastern Orthodox Christianity is not just different conclusions about theological matters and a different way to "do church." Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a completely different mindset, a Phronema, than Western Christianity. This isn't the post where i am trying to exrapolate everything that means. What I want to convey, however, is how a mindset...a Phronema... impacts our lives.

For many years, I experienced what I call a 'Shame Cycle' with my guilt. I was guilty of hiding things, lying, and being lazy. Instead of dealing with that guilt through repentance and restoration, I turned it into shame. I felt not only guilty but also ashamed, much like Adam and Eve in the Garden. They were guilty of eating the forbidden fruit, and instead of confessing their sin and seeking restoration, they hid and exacerbated the problem. This was the same pattern I found myself in for many years.

For many years I took a theology to heart. Total Depravity. Man is completely and utterly depraved. a Dung hill, in the words of Martin Luther. The Just God, who cannot look on sin, sent His Son as a substitute. A substitute to pay the penalty for my guilt, the penalty of death, so that I could believe in Christ and be forgiven. But - since I was still a sinner, when Christ dies as our substitute and we believe in Jesus, God does not see me - the repentant sinner - when he looks at me. The Father sees the Son, standing in front of me, because I am still a dung hill. I was still depraved, totally, because even if i did good things the motivation was tainted. Even if I had the outward appearance of virtue - my thoughts were not pure. I still, in Christ, had thoughts of shame, guilt, and sinful thoughts. These thoughts, this theology goes, are evidence of that "old man inside" (Romans 7:15-20) and those thoughts could not be purified.

Because i had these thoughts - i continued in shame and guilt. Even in Christ I was a piece of crap.

Then, when I met my wife, i became Catholic. Quite honestly, i didn't want to become Catholic. What I was confronted with, however, was early Church Fathers. I had never read them before - except for a few quotes by Augustine. I read Justin Martyr, Cyprian of Carthage, Ambrose of Milan, Athanasius, Theodoret, Tertullian, Cyril, John Chrysostom... and what I read led me to become Catholic. It was, in my opinion, irrefutable.

I didn't even know the Eastern Orthodox Church existed, or if I did, I basically thought if it as Roman Catholicism without the Pope.

There was, however, a still troubling throughline of substitutionary atonement. But, in Catholicism, there was states of grace. There was treasury of merits. There was, quite frankly, anxiety-ridden theology. This idea that if i missed mass on a sunday i was no longer in a state of grace (damned to hell) until i went to confession was terrifying to say the least. Most Catholic don't functionally live that way - but the dogma of the Church is explicit. If you are not in a state of grace you are cut off from God.

Here, also, arose the thoughts of Guilt... of Shame. The thoughts still burdened me. I was constantly in a state of panic as to where I would go if I died. Had I done confession correctly? Was I actually forgiven? I did the confession but the thoughts of sin, the shame of sin...they were all still present.

These two Phronema, Reformed Protestant and Catholic, share a common assumption. Not only about guilt of original sin - but about thoughts. Thoughts, in both "camps" are essentially the internal monologue of a person. That is, if I have a thought, that was me having the thought and thinking about that sin... about that drink... about that drug... about that lust...about that hatred... etc.,

In the Orthodox phronema, what I found was startling. Thoughts are like light. They are something we receive. What we DO with the thoughts is what matters. We receive thoughts from a variety of places. But what do we do with those thoughts? This is what Saint Paul is talking about when he says to "take captive every thought to obey Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).

In Orthodoxy, we constantly talk about acquiring the Orthodox Mind... the Mind of Christ. That does not mean that the thoughts that flash through are OURS. What it means is that the Orthodox mind is like a sentry at the gate. What is allowed in, to penetrate our being and affect our action, and what is kept out, is a battle in and of itself. This "sentry" of the mind must be strengthened and formed over the course of our lives. But the thought is not what makes a man. The action makes the man. An Orthodox Phronema, explains Dr Eugenia Constantinou, is both thinking and acting. An unseparated mentality that exists, not in theory, but in action.

Again... why is any of that important?

It is because this Orthodox Phronema, meant that the bad thoughts did not make me a dung hill. It meant that I was not, in Christ, totally depraved. It means that there is ACTUAL CHANGE in Christ, of thought AND action. It means that there is not a single thought or action that removes me from the grace of God. It means that what God seeks is to make me fully human, in Christ who was fully God and fully man, and not leave me as a backdrop for Christ to stand in front of...because God can't actually look at me and be just be giving me eternal life. It means that receiving the grace of God is not passive but active. God gave the whole land to descendant sof Abraham, as He promised (Joshua 21:43) but the Israelites never occupied it because they didn't receive the gift. Nonetheless, the promise of God was fulfilled.

It means that I could actually live out life. That I need not be ashamed of my guilt when I sin because, in Christ, there is actual repentance and not just a forensic judgment of innocence because God got all of his anger out on Christ.

It means that every day at 2:00pm when I got the urge to drink because I had it with the day... i didn't have to. I didn't have to because the thought was not my own and there was a battle to be had with that thought. The thought could either be allowed in to the nous and impact my actions - or the sentry of the mind could disarm that thought and send it on it's way.

This way of thinking Orthodox changed my life. It meant that when God actually works in me it is because he wants me, Zach, to look more like His Son in how I act... to become what God intended humans to be. That God actually calls me a child of His and delights in looking at me, in all of my messiness, because of Christ in me (not in front of me) helping me grow closer to Him one moment at a time. This is, for me, the great gift of grace. That I no longer need to hide in the shame of my guiilt but can seek repentance and restoration when I sin - knowing that God is not a God who delights in punishment but in mercy.

That was a lot longer than I expected, but I hope it effectively shares my journey and offers encouragement to others. May it glorify Glod and inspire you to seek His great mercy.

In Christ.

Zach