“Praying It Away”

Out of the many things that really get my goat in conversations about sexual sin or addiction, near the top of the list is anything with the tone of “pray it away.”

The belief that an addiction can be conquered solely by spiritual means can take many forms, and we’ve probably all done it (either to someone else or ourselves). Whether it’s telling addicts to just keep going to confession, telling them they need to have “more trust” or “more hope,” or explaining Jesus will free them “in His timing,” it’s easy as devout Catholics to confuse spiritual progress with physical recovery. It’s not that our suggestions for spiritual growth are bad—they’re often helpful and necessary—but the danger comes from the idea that if someone is still struggling with addiction, they just aren’t praying hard enough.

I don’t want to diminish the role of powerful spiritual experiences in recovery—I include one in my own testimony—or unequivocally say Jesus can’t heal an addiction in a singular moment. I believe He can; He’s Jesus, after all. I just don’t believe He does it often, based on the hundreds of stories I’ve heard of women seeking healing. Only He knows the reason why, but I think it has a lot to do with how He wants us to view suffering. “Praying it away” might not just be unhelpful for addicts, it might miss the point of where prayer is supposed to bring us in the first place.

In the many Gospel accounts of Jesus healing people from illnesses or possession, we can see a pervading theme of long-term suffering. A woman hemorrhaging for 12 years; a man born blind and healed as an adult; the Gerasene demoniac isolated and alone among the tombs, for goodness knows how long. We brush over how long these people have suffered and rush to  the “good part”—when the suffering goes away. 

But the pain doesn’t actually go away. The hands that heal take the pain into Himself and carry it straight to Calvary, wearing the wounds on His body even in His risen form. Perhaps the person who’s been suffering isn’t anymore in the same way, but that doesn’t mean the suffering is  gone—it’s just taken on by Someone else. That’s why the call to discipleship is so liberating yet so very heavy: He asks us to join Him in taking up our cross. He asks us not to pray away our suffering, but to embrace it by inviting Him in. 

The true disciple is not the one who is healed of his ailment the fastest, but the one who suffers well. Addiction and its effects—whether or not we accept them—is a suffering. This doesn’t mean we can be permissive towards our sinful or compulsive behavior, but rather we take up the cross of recovery in all its arduous, exhausting, brutal glory. We imitate our Savior by not focusing so much on being “free” that we miss the true freedom suffering well can bring  us. As Romano Guardini describes in The Lord,

“...Christ did not avoid pain, as we try to. He did not ignore it. He did not insulate himself from it. He received it into his heart. Sufferer himself and realist, he took people as he found them, with all their shortcomings. Voluntarily he shared their afflictions, their blame, their need. Herein lies the immeasurable depth and breadth of Christ’s love.” (59) 

When our only approach to the suffering of addiction and recovery is to “pray harder,” we may be operating on an avoidance of suffering, where Healing Himself might be waiting for us. 

Don’t skip the 12 years or the pain of blindness and try to jump straight to the moment of healing. If an addiction has a hold on your life, He does want to heal you. But you might want to heal your relationship with suffering first. 

Often, this just looks like a switch in perspective. 

Instead of praying for the grace to stop watching porn, pray for the grace to embrace the pain of denying yourself. 

Instead of praying for the absence of a temptation to masturbate, offer the weakness you feel in temptation to Jesus and ask Him to transform it. 

Chances are, if your temptations become a place of encounter with Christ, they’ll begin to diminish anyway. Not because you prayed “correctly” or “hard enough”, but because you’re no longer trying to control. Because you’re not insulating yourself from suffering. Because you’re where He is.