Addiction is man’s failed attempt to build heaven on earth. Because, let’s face it, this world is broken. It is filled with death, suffering, disease, aging, accidents, poverty, famine, natural disasters, hopelessness, depression, suicide, cancer, unemployment, discouragement, failed relationships, cheating spouses, failing grades, terrible bosses, dead-end jobs, rush-hour traffic, oppressive taxes, debt, insurance companies, war, terrorist attacks, slavery, evil governments, criminals, gambling, stealing, substance abuse, economic crashes, homelessness, and obesity. We know inherently that this was not the way it was meant to be. We were made for so much more than this. The evil that exists in the world is caused by man’s rebellion against God and his perfect law. We are broken because of sin and are born into a world at war with God. We turn to idols in a fallen world thinking that they can bring us lasting satisfaction and joy when only God can. Addiction is a coping mechanism to numb the pain of life and the consequences of our sins rather than repenting of them.
At its heart, addiction is an eschatological problem. Eschatology is the Christian doctrine of the future and the second coming of Christ. People fall into addiction because they believe they have no future, no hope, no purpose, no meaning in life, no friends, no family, and nothing worth living for except the release of the next high. No child ever wakes up and says to himself, “I want to become a drug addict when I grow up.” Rather, addiction develops over time as a response to the pain of life and as a way to find lasting satisfaction. As C. S. Lewis observed, human history is “the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”[1] The first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem and stop trying to find something apart from God that will give you perfect happiness.
Living as a Hikikomori
A hikikomori is a person who withdraws from the rest of the world and isolates himself from others. There are thousands of hikikomori living in Japan who are paralyzed by fear of the future. They choose to stay indoors because of the anxiety of meeting others, facing failure, working at a job, or going to school. We live in a world where the youth are stressed out about the future and cannot cope with the heavy demands and expectations that are required of them. Given the diminishing prospects of finding a good job, they give up ever trying to find one. They believe their condition is hopeless and that it is futile to even try. For those who do try, they often take extreme measures to ensure success such as studying while hooked up to IVs to help their concentration.[2] Their identity is tied to their success as a student and failure is not an option.
But what happens when you do fail? If your identity as a person is determined by your grades and job prospects, then failing in them results in hopeless depression. This is why many teenagers commit suicide because they believe their life is a failure because they do not meet the arbitrary standards that have been placed on them.[3] Others, instead of killing themselves, withdraw from society and become hikikomori. They may still be alive, but they are dead to the world. Video game addiction is often associated with this withdrawal because it gives them a sense of satisfaction that they cannot get from the real world which they believe has rejected them.
I know firsthand what this feels like. After graduating from seminary, I was paralyzed by the fear of never being able to find a ministry position because I am not married. The competition for pastoral positions is extremely competitive with the average church going through eighty resumes over the period of eight months before finding a pastor. Why would any church ever hire me when there are multitudes of people with more experience than me who are married? If two pastoral candidates are equally qualified and one is married and the other is not, the one who is married is almost always going to get the job. So many pastors have fallen into sexual immorality that singleness is seen as too great a risk for churches to take.
Even after I knew I wanted to write a book on video game addiction, I have been rejected many times because I am not married. Two weeks before I was scheduled to preach in view of a call at a church in Kansas, the church voted to reject my candidacy because I am not married. Even though they did not know me personally, they were afraid that I could not handle myself appropriately around the single women of their community.
When I was in college, a professor once said to me after I told her that I wanted to go into the ministry, “Well, you’re going to be as poor as a church mouse aren’t you.” And here I was, without a job and living in an apartment with cockroaches despite my amazing academic achievements. Before I was called to preach to others, I wanted to be a medical doctor. Imagine how much money I could be making and how much I could give away to support world missions! In my sinfulness, I was bitter toward God and frustrated with myself which only made me more unhappy, anxious, and depressed. This created in me a fear of godly men for my laziness and lack of love for others. I did not want to be rebuked for my sin and did not believe that anyone could help me.
My depression because of my circumstances displayed an incredible lack of trust in God. The irony here is that I was a strong believer in the sovereignty of God over all things. If God had called me into ministry, he would provide a way for me and it was my obligation to pursue the use of means to accomplish that end. God’s sovereignty, rightly understood, is one of the greatest blessings for the Christian. I should have sought out the wisdom and counsel of others instead of isolating myself and listening to the lies of Satan that kept me depressed and without hope for change. But today, I am a doctor of souls as I serve as a missionary and pastor in Nevada. In comparison to others, I may be as poor as a church mouse, but I have become rich beyond all splendor in Christ.
The Allure of Video Game Addiction
And here’s where video game addiction comes in: gaming provided an outlet for me to achieve a temporary sense of satisfaction in spite of circumstances that I believed were beyond my control. I could not control what search committees and employers thought of me, but I could control my destiny in the games I played. Completing achievements, increasing my gamerscore, and beating games on the hardest difficulty temporarily filled the void in my soul that longed for satisfaction and identity. The release of dopamine that corresponded with accomplishing goals in the games I was playing numbed the pain of my lack of fulfillment.
Video games gave me an identity with a unique gamertag and virtual trophies for which I could be proud. But addiction to video games is a vicious cycle: the joy caused by the release of dopamine wears off and the addict must go in search of new games to play in a vain attempt to find lasting satisfaction. This makes gaming an expensive hobby because in order to play the best games, you must own every game console since each console has games that are exclusive to it. Every addiction has its price and some are more expensive than others. The pleasure that comes from drugs is so powerful that people are willing to blow thousands of dollars on them in a single day. All sin is irrational and self-destructive. The drugs that promise us pleasure end up killing us or leaving us empty. While video game addiction may not be as expensive as drug addiction, it kills time which is the most valuable thing we have.
Video Games Save Lives
One night when I was staying up late playing Gears of War 2, I received a message from one of my friends on Xbox Live telling me that he was going to kill himself because his girlfriend had broken up with him and that there was no point in keeping him on my friends list. In a state of panic, I sent him a message telling him that I wanted to talk. He replied and I gave him a listening ear as he told me his story. His girlfriend had told him to “kill himself” and he decided to do it out of spite as a way to get back at her. This woman had been his life and now he didn’t know how he could live without her. I told him that one day he would look back on this moment and laugh at how silly the idea of killing himself was when there are so many other women out there. I reminded him of all the people who loved him, warned him of hell, told him about Jesus, and instructed him to contact a Christian pastor who could help him. At the end of the conversation, he told me that he was not going to kill himself and we have played together many times since that day.
But here’s the thing, if I had not been addicted to video games at that moment, I would have been asleep because gaming was destroying my sleeping schedule. If I had not been playing video games at that time, my friend might be dead now. Does that mean video game addiction is a good thing? No, it means that even in the midst of my sin God still wanted to use me. We cannot comprehend the providence of God and are called to be faithful to the revealed will of God in Scripture. It is true that if I had never fallen into video game addiction this book would not exist, but that is no excuse for my sin. The same is true for others who have overcome their addictions and are using their experience to help others who are in bondage to the same sins they once were.
Video Games and Depression
The relationship between video games and depression is paradoxical. On the one hand, there are many testimonies from people who have overcome depression because of video games. Gaming gave them confidence to meet others, conquer challenges in real life, and do hard things. On the other hand, video game addiction can exacerbate the depression by allowing people to ignore the root cause of the depression. Video games both attract people who are depressed and cause depression for those who become addicted to them.[4]
We see a similar phenomenon in the explosion of adult coloring books. Entertainment allows people to take the focus off their problems and forget about the pain of life. While consuming these fun activities, they can empty their minds and not worry about tomorrow. But we are not called to forget about our pain, but to bring our pain and suffering to God in prayer (Ps 50:15). He alone can take the burden off our back and give us purpose and meaning in life. Entertainment cannot give us lasting satisfaction because we must go back to it again and again after the high wears off.
And people are not just addicted to video games, they are addicted to breaking news about new games that are coming out. When a new game is announced, game forums and comment sections go crazy in anticipation of playing it. But when the game finally comes out, it rarely lives up to the hype and expectations surrounding it. After the game has been fully consumed and all the achievements have been completed, a pervading feeling of emptiness comes over the addict. Then people complain about the game and reminisce in the nostalgia of the previous games in the franchise and how they were so much better than the new one (Eccles 7:10).[5]
The Shame of Video Game Addiction
Video game addiction brings with it a unique form of shame. I do not believe there is anything shameful in video games themselves, but gaming is shameful when it becomes an obsession and interferes with real-world responsibilities. Gaming accomplishments, whether they be virtual or real, are not worth sacrificing your family or job for. Video game achievements can’t be put on a résumé unless you are applying to be a video game reviewer. Why should something so trivial consume your life?
There is an awkwardness when adults play video games because we think that video games are just toys for children. It would be awkward to see a thirty-year-old playing with toys designed for toddlers for hours on end. When children play games that are made for them, there is no shame in it. Gaming has evolved beyond being toys for children and now games are made specifically for people who do not have the time they once had to have their life consumed by them. This can promote a kind of extended adolescence where the maturation of the content in the games is designed to blunt the force of the awkwardness that comes from adults playing them for extended periods of time.
But Christians are called to be mature in their faith and conduct. As Paul says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor 13:11). As mature men and women, we do not have the time to waste our lives by indulging in entertainment that takes our focus off the calling we have been given by God. If we are seeking to find our treasure, joy, and happiness in any form of entertainment, we have made our pleasure an idol that we must turn from in repentance. All sin brings with it shame, guilt, and fear. And each type of sin has a unique manifestation of these three consequences of sin.
Jesus perfectly embodied what it means to be a man and demonstrated true headship by serving others and laying down his life to provide eternal life for all who follow him. Jesus made provision for his bride by his death and we as men are called to provide for others by working hard and dying to our own self-interests. We are called to deny ourselves and follow after Christ who served others gladly in perfect obedience to his Father (Matt 16:24). If that means we have to put away video games to focus on providing for and loving our family, then so be it.
God has created us to work. Through our labor, we accomplish goals and find satisfaction in using our gifts to fulfill the calling God has given us. We are therefore miserable unless we are actively working to fulfill the calling God has given to us. To do otherwise is to live contrary to the purpose for which we were made. Living outside of God’s purpose for us can never bring lasting joy or satisfaction. When we are unable or unwilling to work, we create replacement callings to numb the misery we are experiencing from not working to provide for ourselves. And even if we are working, if our work is not satisfying to us, video games offer the promise of satisfaction through completing artificial tasks and challenges that we make for ourselves. In the land of video games, we can be our own boss, set our own schedule, and choose for ourselves which challenges to tackle to maximize that sense of accomplishment we so desperately crave.
A Real Drug Addiction
I have learned much about addiction from the time I have spent preaching the gospel to homeless men and women in Houston, TX. Contrary to popular belief, most homeless people who are drug addicts did not become homeless because of a drug addiction, but they became drug addicts after becoming homeless to numb the pain of their seemingly hopeless condition. It is the same with mental illness. It is not so much that people become homeless because of mental illness, but that they develop mental illnesses because of the horrible condition they find themselves in. The drugs and mental illness are a result of a loss of purpose and identity. And the same was true with me except that I replaced drugs with compulsive gaming.
The difference was I didn’t realize that I was suffering from a drug addiction. The dopamine released from accomplishing goals in gaming was my drug to fill the emptiness I was experiencing. But the lack of lasting satisfaction only fueled a greater addiction for playing more games. The wide variety of games to choose from is like the variety found in the different types of drugs you can buy. Each gamer has a different taste in what games bring him the highest release of dopamine. Discovering which game franchises and genres bring the most satisfaction is part of the draw of video game addiction. When you get bored of one type of game, you can just move on to another. By constantly alternating between games, it is possible to never get bored.
Our society is medicating itself to death and each addict has his own drug of choice. Pharmaceutical companies are making a killing off selling antidepressants that never address the real reason behind the depression.[6] The thing about pain numbing is that there is no incentive to try it if everything in your life is going great. But when hardship comes, our real self is exposed. How we respond to adversity reveals the true condition of our heart. Will we flee from God to drugs or will we flee from sin to God? All addiction is sinful because it is enslaving and controlling. To be enslaved by anything is sinful in God’s sight (1 Cor 6:12). Addiction is a self-inflicted wound that can only bring us harm.[7] As Jeffrey D. Johnson elaborates:
“We have traded hope for despondency, life for death, meaning for emptiness, truth for nihilism, love for selfishness, and God for a bowl of Esau’s soup. But the exchange cost us everything. We wanted to be left alone, and now we have discovered the desolation of our own isolation. We were naïve to think we could travel alone and not feel lonely and miserable when we finally arrived at our destination. But here we are – addicted to our psychotropic, antidepressant medications. . . . With God pushed aside, external values and meaning are pushed aside as well. How to live and what to live for are not questions that have external answers. Mankind is left alone to discover or create these answers. ‘If God is dead,’ then, Muggeridge concluded, ‘somebody is going to have to take his pace. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure.'”[8]
Video games provide the illusion of power and pleasure. Unlike passive forms of entertainment like movies, television, and music, I am in control of the gaming experience. This is even more true in competitive multiplayer where I have complete control of my character. The end of the story has not been written yet. Because this is my story, I have the power to decide my own fate. But when this happens, human dignity suffers as well because this addiction takes the place of God. And without God, there can be no image of God and thus no basis for human dignity. The real world is replaced by a virtual one which seems even more real than the one we live in now. The people we play against online are not seen as real people, but only exist for our satisfaction when we get a killing spree on them. It is no coincidence that B. F. Skinner, whose psychology has been hugely influential on the gaming industry, also wrote a book called Beyond Freedom and Dignity where he makes the case that we are biological machines whose behaviors are determined by our conditioning.
The Purpose for Our Pain
Pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man into sin. But pain is also part of the providence of God because he is planning to bring a greater good out of the pain of this world. Christians believe by faith that God has a good purpose for the suffering of this world and that one day he will do away with all suffering and evil when Christ returns. The mistake of the “problem of evil” as used against Christian theism is in demanding that God must abolish all evil right now instead of allowing him to do it in his timing.[9] The Bible teaches that both good and bad come from God (Lam 3:37-38). God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11). Christians know “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). If suffering and death had never existed, then Jesus never could have been crucified for sinners. And the cross of Christ is the eternal plan of God and the theme of heaven and earth (Eph 1:3-7; 3:11; 1 Pet 1:20; Rev 5:9).
God uses suffering to test us and grow our faith in him. As Job was tested and came out with an even greater faith in God, we are called to imitate his faith in the midst of suffering. After the death of his children and the destruction of his property, he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). As the Puritan Thomas Brooks noted, “If God’s hand be not seen in the affliction, the heart will do nothing but fret and rage under affliction.”[10] God uses suffering as a means to discipline us for our good that we may share in his holiness (Heb 12:10). The testing of our faith in suffering is a means God uses to grow our faith in him (Jas 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7). In the midst of your suffering, remember that this life is the closest unbelievers will ever get to heaven, and the closest Christians will ever get to hell.[11] The addict is getting his heaven on earth now while the Christian looks forward to heaven while denying himself sinful pleasures.
Suffering exists to remind us that we live in a fallen and broken world (Job 36:15). As Lewis says in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[12] Every death points to the evil of sin. But it is not just this world that is broken, we are broken by our own sin. We must be weaned from the world and its pleasures so that we can take greater pleasure in worshiping God and working to build his kingdom. Because affliction is a tool used by God to wean us from our love for this world that is passing away, those who are in rebellion against God try to numb this pain through sinful pleasure rather than using it as a means to see their need of salvation. The world seeks to silence the voice of God in suffering instead of putting sin to death by trusting in Christ.
Affliction teaches us that this word cannot satisfy. We respond to suffering by either running to the kingdom of Christ or by trying to escape into another one of our own making. In this fictional world of fantasy and pleasure, we never have to confront the evil that is in us. But the truth is there is more evil in the least sin than the greatest affliction (Job 36:21).[13] Suffering and pain should drive us to change. With David, we should say, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Ps 119:71). The pain you are experiencing may be the result of your sinful decisions. Without this pain, you would have no motivation to change. But the pain you are experiencing now is not the pain you deserve.[14] Each of us deserve to be in hell right now for our sins because we have sinned against an infinitely holy God (Rom 3:23). The pain you are experiencing could be so much worse. And by sinning in response to your suffering, you will only make your situation worse. As Brooks explains:
“For by attempting to sin yourselves out of your trouble, you will sin yourself into many troubles, as Jonah and Jacob did; and by labouring to sin yourselves out of less troubles, you will sin yourselves into greater troubles, as Saul did; and by endeavouring to sin yourselves from under outward troubles, you will sin yourselves under inward troubles.”[15]
Afflictions give rise to temptation. They are an occasion to doubt the promises of God. By sinning, you are attempting to get back at God for not giving you what you think you deserve. Emotional pain, mental illness, and depression are often the result of turning from God and trying to live independently of him. They are the consequences of our rebellion against God which result in fear of judgment for our sin. That is why we must look to Christ in faith believing that he has perfectly satisfied the justice and wrath of God for all who trust in him. We do not need to fear God or other Christians or excuse or lie about our sin because it has been dealt with at the cross. We are crucified rebels. His death was our death and his life is our life. You may feel that you are “weary of living, and yet afraid of dying.”[16] But in Christ, we have more than enough hope because he gives us the strength to face tomorrow (Rom 15:13).
This fallen world is not our home. And we glorify God by yearning for the one to come in which there will be no more pain or sadness (Rev 21:4). But the pain you experience now is an opportunity to put to death those secret sins which lie closest to you. Seek deliverance for these sins from the one who has overcome death. When we compare the pleasure of sin to the glory of Christ, the deceptive allure of sin is seen for what it truly is. The Christian world is filled with many testimonies from those who have come out of the bondage to sin, and I pray that your voice will be one of them.[17] In the next chapter, we will look at why video game addiction is so difficult to overcome.
[1]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 49.
[2]See the story “Chinese Students Use IV Amino Acids to Study for High-Stakes Tests” at https://www.washingtonpost.com.
[3]See the article “Why Do So Many Japanese Schoolchildren Kill Themselves?” at http://www.newsweek.com.
[4]For an example of this, see the video “Draw My Life” by Boogie2988 on YouTube.
[5]This phenomenon is known as the Call of Duty cycle: 1. Go crazy over how good the new CoD is; 2. Enjoy the game; 3. Hate the game like everybody else; 4. Say that the older game is now the best game; 5. Go crazy about the next CoD trailer.
[6]See the video “If Antidepressant Commercials Were Honest – Honest Ads” by Cracked on YouTube.
[7]For an illustration of this, see the story “Doctors Remove 40 Knives from Man’s Stomach in India” at http://www.cnn.com.
[8]Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief: A Worldview Apologetic of the Christian Faith (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2016), 198-99, 205.
[9]For the best treatment of the problem of evil, see Randy Alcorn, If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2009).
[10]Thomas Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 19.
[11]See the article “Perspectives for Those Who Are Suffering and Feel They’re Going Through Hell” by Randy Alcorn at http://www.epm.org.
[12]C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 91.
[13]Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 39.
[14]Ibid., 49.
[15]Ibid., 44.
[16]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 311.
[17]For some examples of testimonies from those who have been freed from the bondage of sin, see the videos “Why I Am a Christian” by David Wood, “The Plot: Ninja Turtle/Mortal Kombat Star Gets Saved” by Jeff Durbin, and “A Liar and a Coward” by Paul Washer.
James Attebury 