In this Bible and Business video series on the eight “A’s” that kill healthy, business partnerships, Bill English, Publisher of Bible and Business, explores the fifth “A”: Addictions. This content comes from Bill’s books, “A Christian Theology of Business Ownership,” and the abridged version, “What the Bible Says About Owning and Business.” You can watch the companion video on the Bible and Business channel. Download the series slides.
[00:00:25.060] – Bill English
And welcome back. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. And today we’re still in our series on the eight as that kill healthy partnerships. These are elements that if you have a good partnership and some of these elements get introduced into your partnership, chances are really good that your partnership is not going to do well. Those elements include anger, apathy, affairs, abuse, addictions, arrogance, ambiguity, and being an autocrat or being autocratic.
[00:00:58.840] – Bill English
I think I have it here on the screen. So this information, by the way, is taken from my book a Christian Theology of Business Ownership an Introduction for Christian Entrepreneurs and what the Bible Says About Owning a Business. And you can also pick up a condensed or an abridged version of my theology book under the title what the Bible Says About Owning a Business. Both of these are available through Amazon. Just a note on this.
[00:01:28.560] – Bill English
Of these eight as, if one or more are persistent in your partnership, it’ll just take some additional cycles to have a great partnership, but it probably will work two or more as it’ll be very difficult. Three or more don’t even try. The partnership isn’t going to work. It doesn’t really matter which three you choose or which two you choose. These are elements that tend to kill partnerships.
[00:01:54.510] – Bill English
And incidentally, these are also elements that tend to kill marriages. So it’s not surprising that if they have a negative effect in marriages, they’re also going to have a negative effect in business partnerships. But before we get started. I’d like to ask you to head over to Bibleandbusiness.com. Take a look at my articles and podcasts.
[00:02:15.090] – Bill English
Participate in some of the surveys. And I’ll also ask that you just subscribe to this YouTube channel. If you would. Please. And that will help me get the word out to all the Christian business owners we can about what the Bible has to say about owning a business.
[00:02:31.910] – Bill English
Okay, so let’s take a look at addictions and see what we can learn today. First of all, addiction as a concept is commonly thought of in terms of unwanted repetitive actions or thoughts are also known as compulsions. They can be persistent, sin, they can be attitudinal as well as actional. And addictions may be both wanted and under my control. One I may even like and enjoy one’s sin.
[00:03:04.660] – Bill English
And so these two statements at the bottom of the slide here, the issue cannot stop, even if you want to. And then I’m saying that they may be both wanted and under my control. The under my control is a bit of an illusion.
[00:03:20.060] – Bill English
Let’s say that I really enjoy pornography. I like it. I mean, I don’t, but I’m just using this as a metaphor. Let’s just say that I really like pornography and so I engage in it and I could stop any time. And it’s kind of this delusion that I have.
[00:03:37.540] – Bill English
But once I actually try to stop, then I find that I really can’t. I can’t stop even if I want to stop. Let’s say that I like alcohol and I enjoy getting a buzz and sometimes getting drunk. Well, maybe when I try to stop, I find that I can’t. So there is this idea that I can be under the delusion that I can stop and that I like this sin, I like this addiction, but it really becomes an addiction when I try to stop and I can’t.
[00:04:12.190] – Bill English
Now, there’s a lot of acceptable addictions in evangelical circles today. Constantly working to the point of exhaustion is one we praise people who are busy. Oh, you’re so busy. But really busyness is not all it’s cracked up to be and is not always a godly thing. Using the Lord’s name in vain or just using coarse language to express strong emotions.
[00:04:38.890] – Bill English
Enjoying a sport to the point of neglecting time with your loved ones. How many men this fall I’m recording this just as the NFL season is getting ready to start how many men this fall are going to neglect their families so they can watch a football game or two or three? Right? That’s what I mean by that. Eating to the point where you’re overweight or obese, kind of the inability to say no to certain foods.
[00:05:08.310] – Bill English
I love chocolates, I love ice cream. Or maybe you’re not a sweet person, but you’re a salty person. You love those chips with the salts or something like that. But eating to the point where you’ve lost control having to wear the latest fashion. Some people just love wearing the latest clothes and they will spend a lot of money to look great in the latest fashions.
[00:05:34.310] – Bill English
Another acceptable addiction is hoarding holding onto material things when you clearly do not need them. I know people who have things that have been in their house for ten years and they’ve never once to use them, but they won’t get rid of them because those things are sentimental. They represent a memory of somebody in the past. And yet really is that something that we need to hold on to, having a strong need to be right? You’ll find this especially in academic circles and in theological circles and sometimes in other professional circles.
[00:06:11.190] – Bill English
They will argue and argue and argue because they just have a strong need to be right. And they will argue to win just because they want to be right. And that is, I think, clearly can be common addiction where they can’t stop, they have to be right. Measuring yourself worth based on material gain, prestige, winning education and so forth. In other words, who I am is defined by what I have and what I accomplished rather than defined by who Christ says that I am in Him.
[00:06:44.660] – Bill English
Those kinds of things can be an addiction. Embellishing the truth with exaggeration and lies. I have one friend who is just always over the top, effusive with compliments and embellishments about how great something is or someone is, and it just kind of makes you feel uncomfortable because I don’t think he can stop. It’s almost to the point of an addiction. Others trusting and believing yourself more than you’re trusting God.
[00:07:15.880] – Bill English
This is something our culture says we ought to do. Trust in yourself, believe in yourself. And yet Jeremiah is clear that those who trust in themselves and believe in themselves bring a curse upon themselves. And you might want to go look that up. Stealing from God by not being as fully generous as possible with your money.
[00:07:37.840] – Bill English
So you have money here and you really want to buy this other thing, but you know you need to give to God and who’s going to get the money and what are you going to do? And sometimes buying things and not giving to God, that can end up being something that you can’t stop. And it becomes an addiction rationalizing that you don’t have to give money to God because you’re not earning enough or because you work at church a lot. The time replaces the money. And of course, in my book, A Christian Theology, a Business Ownership, I show how that’s a heresy and a lie and is something that is just not biblically based.
[00:08:17.960] – Bill English
Being so adamant about your political ideas that your allegiance to a political party or your country overshadows your allegiance to God. I know a number of people who believe that a person cannot be a Christian and be a Democrat. I know others who believe that a person cannot be a Christian and be a Republican. And their allegiance to their political ideology is so strong that it really comes across to me as an addiction. It’s not good.
[00:08:47.800] – Bill English
It’s not good. Our allegiance to God needs to be number one. Political parties are going to come and go. Political philosophies are going to come and go. But God’s word never fails.
[00:08:58.590] – Bill English
And our allegiance to God should never fail either. Being lazy about spending time with God or reading His Word or praying, this is more an addiction of omission. Right? I just never get around to reading the Bible. It’s just so hard for me to sit down and pray.
[00:09:14.740] – Bill English
I don’t do it very often. That lack of discipline in your life can actually become something that you can’t stop. You can’t stop not doing prayer, and that is not a good thing. Seeing a need and know you can meet that need, but not acting to do so might be another one. So there’s a number of ways that we do addictions.
[00:09:41.740] – Bill English
It’s not just overconsumption of alcohol or tobacco or drugs or sex or pornography or gambling, which are really kind of the common addictions that everybody thinks about. I don’t use this word addiction in a medical model. I use it in a spiritual model where a number of things that we do, we find that it’s really hard to change. It’s really hard to stop doing them or it’s really hard to start doing what we know we should be doing. And I put that generally, broadly under the category of addictions.
[00:10:16.090] – Bill English
Now, how do addictions harm? Partnerships might be just a really good focus for us to look at here. First of all, when one or more partners has an addiction it consumes partner energy, time and resources. It can diminish a partner’s effectiveness, especially if it’s chemically based or sexually based. Partners who have sexual or chemical addictions really don’t do well in life and so they can’t live up to their full potential.
[00:10:47.770] – Bill English
And when a partner doesn’t live up to their full potential that partner is detracting from their effectiveness within the partner and they’re diminishing all that. The partnership could be because they’re spending too many cycles doing other things. Addictions often create distance and conflict in partners professional and personal relationships. And you’ll see this over time. A partner who is addicted to something, maybe they’re addicted to going to sporting events or golfing during the summer.
[00:11:21.910] – Bill English
If they spend too much time at it then they’re probably not spending enough time with customers or employees or vendors or fulfilling their other duties. That’s going to create conflicts in the professional relationships and probably also they’re not spending enough time with their spouse or kids or at church that’ll create conflict in the personal relationships. Sometimes if these addictions get out, if they become public knowledge, it can harm the professional reputation of the other partners and the firm itself. And so you just want to be aware of that. What do you do about addictions?
[00:11:57.240] – Bill English
Like the last one on abuse? You don’t manage abuse. You don’t manage addictions. You have to end them. The addictions simply have to stop.
[00:12:07.630] – Bill English
You cannot manage an addiction now while you’re healing from it. There are effects of the addictions that you can manage and there might be things that you have to do for yourself to manage yourself. Well, you know, in terms of coming out of an addiction. But the addiction itself, if you just let it go unfettered you can’t manage that. It’s going to have to be ended in order to improve your partnership.
[00:12:35.970] – Bill English
What does it take to overcome an addiction? This is not an easy list. This is not an easy button here. But let me just say, first of all, there is no easy button. There is no easy way to heal from an addiction.
[00:12:48.400] – Bill English
And notice I’m using the word healing as opposed to overcoming. I like the idea of healing from an addiction because usually an addiction represents some kind of pain or hurt or something in the person’s past which is giving rise to that addiction. So for example, you might find a person who is sexually abused as a child ends up becoming addicted to pornography. And so the porn addiction didn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to kind of understand what happened back in the childhood and the sexual abuse, the messages they received about themselves and about life, the beliefs that they developed and how those beliefs propel them to consume pornography to a point where they can’t stop.
[00:13:36.670] – Bill English
So there is no easy button here. Secondly, you have to admit that you have an addiction. And then thirdly, and this is really the big part, you ask God to transform you and heal you in ways you cannot. We really cannot fix ourselves. There are so many things that we wish we could change about ourselves that we can’t.
[00:14:00.340] – Bill English
And so we go to God and we say, god, would you please fix me in this way? Because I cannot fix myself, I cannot heal myself. I need you to heal me. Please transform me and heal me. Do on the inside whatever it is you need to do to change me and to transform me supernaturally.
[00:14:22.540] – Bill English
Next, you’re going to need support. You’re going to need people around you who understand what you’re going through and that you’re trying to overcome this particular aspect in your life. And then if it’s an addiction of omission I’m sorry, commission where you’re committing a repeated act, you’re just going to have to learn how to say no to that act probably a thousand or more times I know of there’s a very dear man at church who, when he turned 40, he gave up alcohol. And before he was 40, he was drunk most of his life. And even in his mid 70s, he will tell me if the topic comes up, he will tell me every day I have to commit myself to saying no to alcohol, I cannot drink it, I can’t be around it, so forth and so on.
[00:15:13.810] – Bill English
So saying no many, many times over is part of the healing process. And I think that as you find freedom over time, you won’t want to go back. You’ll like your new life better. There will be this relief out in the open and now I can deal with this and I can get past it and beyond it. And that’s really something that a lot of people coming out of addictions really like about that process, is they find freedom, they find relief, and now they can live their life to the fullest.
[00:15:50.810] – Bill English
So addictions, in terms of review, the core issue is that you can’t stop even if you want to. If you enjoy the addictions and you think that you can stop, you’re probably deluding yourself, you probably can’t. Addictions harm business partnerships in significant ways and they make it difficult for the partnership to be all it can be. Probably they’re making it difficult for the firm or the company to be all it can be. Addictions cannot be managed.
[00:16:20.680] – Bill English
They need to be ended. And healing from addictions includes support, transformation from the Lord, and making the same choice over and over to do the right thing. Remember that our choices today, this just came to my mind. Our choices today affect us in the future, sometimes not just weeks or months, but years down the road. So a choice today can affect me 2030 years down the road.
[00:16:49.500] – Bill English
There is a particular trajectory that our choices place us on. And when we make good choices, we are placed on a trajectory towards God’s blessings and a good life. But when we make bad choices and we make addictional choices and we make sinful choices, those choices place us on a trajectory that could place us under God’s curses and could place us in a place where we’re not going to do very well in life, in business, or personally. So making that same good choice over and over really puts a direction on your life that cannot be overstated. Now, next week, next episode, we’re going to look at arrogance, another a that kills business partnerships.
[00:17:42.460] – Bill English
Arrogance, where one of one or more of the partners is just so arrogant that it’s really difficult to work with them. And we’re going to unpack how that damages business partnerships in the next episode. So until then, I want to thank you for joining me today. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. Again, I invite you to head over to Bible and Business.com and check out the articles and the other resources we have for Christians who own businesses.
[00:18:11.500] – Bill English
So until our next episode, I hope you go out and make it a great day. Take care.