Fighting Spiritual ADD/ADHD

 How often does something like this happen to you? You are on your way out the door, planning on leaving early to get to an appointment on time. You walk by the computer, look at the clock and see you have a few extra minutes, so you decide to check your email. You get an email about a meeting next week, so you decide to go check the calendar. Before you write the meeting on the calendar that just happens to be on the refrigerator, you decide you would like something to drink. On your way to the cabinet to get a glass, you notice that the backdoor isn't locked. Before you lock the door, you notice that the cat hasn't been put up. So you grab the cat, put her in the carrier...realize you should have left five minutes ago to get to your meeting on time and head out the door, knowing you are going to be late... your meeting for next week is not on the calendar...you never had anything to drink...and the back door is still unlocked. You ask various professionals, you get various answers...from doctors to teachers to psychologists to parents to the parents of other kids to the adults who have never had kids. ADD and ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) diagnoses have been some of the most widely debated over the years. I would like to suggest that almost everyone here this evening either knows someone directly or indirectly that struggles with either ADD or ADHD. What is ADD and ADHD? Both ADD and ADHD are marked by children, youth, and even adults who have difficulty in maintaining attention to a task, either at school, at work, or at home. They have trouble focusing and are easily distracted from what they are supposed to be focusing on. The hyperactivity comes in when some of the folks with ADD are also prone to impulsive behaviors and impulsive restlessness.1 Most often the disorders are treated with medication. Sometimes, for the children and youth in school, modifications are made to their testing, classwork, and homework areas. For example, I know children and adults who are on medication and it aids them in their ability to focus and concentrate, and in cases of hyperactivity, gives them an aid in controlling their behaviors. I also have assisted in End of Grade Testing in a different school system where I proctored testing with kids who had to be pulled out of the classroom and put in a room by themselves to be able to concentrate and focus on the test. Most of you by now are wondering what in the world all of this has to do with Paul's letter to the Corinthians and his dialogue on whether to get married or not get married. Well, my friends, it has everything to do with it. Some folks have read this passage and concluded that Paul was very down on marriage and that people ought to stay single-that it was wrong to marry. However, that is not the case, just look at verse 36: "If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his fiancée, if his passions are strong, and so it has to be, let him marry as he wishes; it is no sin. Let them marry." So you see Paul was not anti-marriage. What we have to realize is that as Paul was writing the Corinthians, they were expecting Jesus to come back at any moment. They were awaiting his return, thinking it would be in the next day, week, or at the most, in just a few months. Paul's concern was not whether marriage is right or wrong, but that the people did not have time to worry about getting married. His concern is that getting married would be a distraction, and would keep them from focusing on getting their lives right for Christ's return. Let me see a show of hands. How many of you have gotten married, been planning a wedding, or know someone who has gotten married in the last year? Okay. How much of their time, say in the six months before the wedding, was spent focusing on getting ready for the wedding? I can tell you from my own personal experience, especially in navigating the complexities of a wedding in the midst of COVID, that it can take a good bit of your attention, more and more so as you get closer to the actual day. It is obvious that time spent focusing on an upcoming wedding takes away from time concentrating on work and schooling, and time away from family and friends, and, as Paul would suggest, time taken away from getting one's life right with Christ. Paul suggested that even after the marriage, there is distraction. A husband has to be concerned with pleasing his wife. Understand that guys (if you haven't already figured it out) a big part of your married life is supposed to be about pleasing your wife, keeping her happy. As Jeff Allen would remind us, if we have forgotten or don't know it, "Happy Wife, Happy Life." However, ladies, Paul also suggests that a married woman has to be concerned about pleasing her husband. A married couple also has to worry about the ways of the world, because they are no longer only providing for themselves. They have to be concerned about taking care of their spouse. I am not going to suggestion children, because Paul and his contemporaries felt like Jesus would be back in less time it than it takes a baby to come to term. However, being pregnant would be another distraction in the life of the couple. All of this, Paul suggests, takes away from the time that they could spend preparing their lives for Christ's return. Yet, Paul also suggests that not getting married may prove to be a distraction for some. And he declares, if desiring to be married continuously distracts them from getting their focus on Christ, then let them get married and get that distraction out of the way. Paul doesn't simply single out relationships as a distraction. In verse 30, Paul says "let those who mourn, [act] as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as thought they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world, as though they had no dealings with it." Why? Because Paul and his contemporaries believed that "the appointed time [had] grown short,"...and that the "present form of this world [was] passing away." Paul was battling Spiritual ADD/ADHD with his people. He wanted them to stay focused, to concentrate on getting their lives ready for Christ's return and not be distracted by the other things going on in their lives and in the world around them. My brothers and sisters, as we are close to two millennia from Paul's writing and are still waiting on Christ's return, and with that, I think there are more of us in the world that struggle with a Spiritual form of ADD/ADHD than there are people who struggle with the regular form. How often do we let things distract us from staying on task with what God would have us to do? God, though Christ, has given us two great tasks: The Great Commandments: "love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves"; and The Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." How often has that been our primary focus, in our own lives and in our lives as a congregation? What kind of things do we allow to distract us? What kind of things cause us to go off-task? What do we allow to draw our attention away from loving God and loving our neighbor? What do we allow to cause us to fail to go out and make disciples of all nations and teaching them to live by Christ's Word? The answer is that we allow the same things that were distracting the folks in Corinth to distract us. We let making others happy distract us from doing what God would have us do. Sometimes it is a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a colleague, a buddy, or just a group we want to fit in with, but we try to please them at the expense of not pleasing God. Think about it. Let me offer a couple of examples. How many times have we known teenagers or even adults, concede their convictions about not having sex outside of marriage, and sleep with someone before marrying them to try to prove their love or hold on to them? In doing so, they have allowed that person to distract them from loving God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. How often has a friend or colleague told a racist joke or we listen them make some disparaging remark about someone who is mentally disabled, and we don't stop them, simply because we want to fit in or we want them to like us? We have allowed pleasing that friend or colleague to distract us from loving our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes we let grief: whether it is mourning the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, our failing health, or some other loss, to interfere and distract us from making disciples. For when we only focus on the sorrow of our loss, where do folks see in us the joy in a Risen Savior who has promised resurrection and eternal life. Where do folks see fulfillment in all that God has given us? On the flip side of that, if we are only rejoicing, saying that only good things are happening and ignoring those who struggle, not weeping with those who weep, we are distracted from offering compassion for those who are struggling to find joy in their lives. Sometimes we allow concern over finances to interfere with the tasks that Christ has given us. We fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, because we would rather spend our money on ourselves rather than helping a person in need. We worry about holding on to funds for a "rainy day" that may never come, rather than spending the money to provide "shelter" for those already in the midst of the storms of life. Sometimes we allow the thinking of the world to distract us from loving neighbor and making disciples of all nations. The world tells us that a person's age matters; the world tells us that it matters whether a person is male or female; the world tells us that we should be concerned about the color of a person's skin; the world tells us that a person's education is important; and the world tells us to make note of a person's political party. The world tells us that we should only desire and respect those who are the same age, the same sex, the same color, the same education, and who have the same political views as we do, and let the other people stick with their own. When we do this, we allow dealings with the world and putting people into its categories to distract us from making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and welcoming them our brothers and sisters who stand on level ground with us before the throne of God. My brothers and sisters, are we struggling with Spiritual ADD/ADHD? There are wonderful medications that God has allowed pharmaceuticals to develop and doctors to prescribe to help kids and adults with ADD/ADHD when it is affecting their school or work. What do we have to fight the Spiritual form? We have God's Word; we have worship; we will soon return to Sunday School and Bible Study; we have Baptism and Holy Communion; we have works of mercy; we have Christian Fellowship; we have prayer; we have fasting and self-denial. God has given us plenty of to ward off this disorder affecting our Spiritual lives. Truth be known, we all have the disorder. Are we taking our meds? In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 1 http://www.add.org/help/faqs.html#10 --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ 2 Fighting Spiritual ADD/ADHD 1st Corinthians 7:25-38