Addictive Tolerance
The one who loves pleasure is a destitute person Proverbs 21:17 (Waltke)
Pleasure – Long before psychiatrists and brain chemistry researchers discovered the concept of addictive tolerance, the Bible already knew why addicts never get enough. Tolerance is the mechanism of the body that adjusts to expected levels of the addictive substance. Once the body adjusts, then the usual level of substance no longer provides the heightened experience and the addict must have more in order to achieve the desired result. By the way, tolerance is not exclusively an addict’s problem. Take too many antibiotics and they are no longer effective. Use too much decongestant and it will stop working. Eat too much candy and the next bite won’t taste quite so good. Excess in any area of life can produce the tolerance syndrome. Addicts only have identifiable tolerance conditions. All the rest of us just don’t know that we are caught in its grip.
Solomon tells us that the person who is addicted to pleasure – of any kind – is a destitute person. This is hardly what we would expect. When I pursue pleasure, I expect to find fulfillment and happiness. But life is ironic. The more I seek pleasure, the less the pleasures I find will bring me satisfaction. My pursuit ends in emptiness, perpetuating the cycle of tolerance.
Simchah is the Hebrew word for joy, mirth and gladness. Quite frequently, it is used to describe the joy of the Lord. But in this verse, it is pleasure gone astray. You see, there is only one addiction that does not produce tolerance. That is the addiction to God Himself. When the pursuit of my life is the Lord, God expands my capacity as I stretch for more of Him. Any substitute will leave me empty, now and in the future. The man who pursues pleasure in hopes of finding satisfaction discovers only too late that all this world’s pleasures are fleeting. He arrives at the end of the line with nothing in his hands but unsatisfied desire. But the man who pursues God discovers that the soul has an infinite capacity for the divine. Tolerance never sets in because I never reach the point where my soul adjusts. The soul is always hungry for God but no amount of God’s grace will ever fill it.
You and I choose our addictions. We can pursue those that produce tolerance and end up needing more and more to bring diminishing returns. Or we can pursue the Creator, the One Who built us to absorb all He gives and never reach the saturation point.
