Addicted to Christ. Helena Hansen
not humid; typical of January in Puerto Rico, and the yellow sunlight filtering through the mango trees matched Juan’s energetic walk to meet me at the gates.
I passed a test today, with an “A.” I feel so happy. I realize it’s my decision to do or no. . . . Last night I sang, when I sing I’m flying. When I’m not singing I have to put my feet on the floor again. I felt Jesus very special.
At culto Juan had been called to the altar to receive a healing prayer from the pastor.
I had a vision. I saw big hands. The Holy Spirit said look at this: it’s a fruit. On the outside it was not very clean, but when the hands peeled it, it was beautiful inside. Preacher said come here—he answered all the questions I had for God. He said feel my love, don’t try to understand me because you can’t. You know I need you, gonna use you. You’ll live your life in my hands.
This feeling of forgiveness through God’s grace was one that Juan found habit forming. “I wanna feel like I feel now every time. Bible says watch yourself—think of God all the time. God is going to put a piece of God inside of you.”
Trying out a theory that Juan’s words brought to mind, I asked, “So you were feeling fortified this afternoon when you were tested?” Juan replied,
The Bible says free will: you have to learn to say yes or no. It’s like a fight inside of you. God says “don’t do it, if you wanna feel [good] like that.” I say it’s like that? I laugh I’m so happy. I feel like the first time I met Him. I failed Him, I have to start up again. I’m under construction.
Juan’s explanation reflected the complexity of Pentecostal ideas about agency and free will. Although becoming saved meant giving one’s life over to the will of God, this required actively listening and looking in order to know what God was asking, through prayer, Bible study, meditation, and fasting. That is, converts had to cultivate their communion with God. They had to do so regularly, such that they became a habit, and replaced the old habits that had left them vulnerable to evil spirits in their addiction. In this logic, personal agency and its opposite, addiction, link habit—the product of a series of willful acts—to the forces of spirits, which originate outside of the person; an individual is responsible for cultivating the interior environment for good spirits to dominate. Tests were reminders to be vigilant of one’s inner state, to maximize unity with God.
Juan elaborated on his tests during a life-history interview that he granted me in his “office,” the small stucco building in which he did intake interviews with new clients. He picked up where he left off. His father had died when he was twelve, leaving him, his mother, and eleven siblings to fend for themselves.
I was mostly away from the house, working various jobs. I wasn’t using drugs at work, but Friday and Saturday—wow! I made friends with the dealers at drug-copping spots. One of my hobbies was washing cars. I was meticulous—I used Q-tips to clean the air conditioning filter. The dealers liked that and hired me. I met a woman, 31 years old with three kids, when I was 21. I lived with her 7 years. [When] she met me [I was] smoking marijuana. I met the person selling marijuana, then through him the person selling heroin, then through him the person selling cocaine. . . . I had to leave her because of my problem. She’s a beautiful woman, not a drug user.
Juan bit his lips in regret.
God knows everything. I came back to my mother’s house. When she learned I used crack she was so hurt. My clothes on the porch—“You have to go.” I said I don’t have no place to go. [I] dismantled the car of a friend. When I came home the police were waiting. The friend knew it was me and called the police. That night I wanted to die. One month in jail. My sister said “You’re leaving here but going to this place [Restoration House].” When I left [Restoration House] I was very blessed—I studied at the University, worked. I went to church, I had rose-colored glasses. Didn’t know that [people in the church] have defects too. On that test I got an “F.” I left church and went 6 months without drugs, then used drugs 2 months and came back here. God didn’t leave me alone.
I asked, “What happened when you turned away from the church?”
When I left here [for the first time] I practiced everything I learned here. But I believed everyone was good people. I met a girl, but I didn’t talk with her. One day I say God that’s the woman you have in mind for me? The preacher said [during culto] “I don’t know why I say this, but she’s not the one.” He said it 3 times [while preaching], “No.” One day she said she’s in love with me. I said how you in love with me, I don’t talk to you. She said “Because I see in inside you—have a beautiful heart.” She said let’s pray. I forgot that God had told me “No” before. Then her mother, her friends rejected me. I didn’t understand people [who had been] in church 30 years acting like that. She is still a woman of God. The problem was obedience. When you meet God, have to do what He say.
I wanted clarification: “You stopped going to church because they rejected you?”
Satan is intelligent too. When I was praying he said look how they treat you. I felt hurt. Satan used a person, a good person, not drugs. I changed churches, but I felt bad there too, because I have to pass a test when I get it.
Concerned that I was dredging up painful memories, I said, “I imagine it feels bad to look back.”
No—to the contrary. I learn from that. It’s like taking a test about life. You know you’ll have to pass a bigger one on the same theme later [drawing a staircase in my notebook], and again, an even bigger test. . . . When we pass any test we’re closer to God. . . . God is a pottery maker, molding me.
Juan made hand motions of spinning a pottery wheel. He pointed to the fog surrounding the mountains. “Look how beautiful the mist, the water. Everybody needs it.”
The tape recorder stopped because the cassette was full. Juan nodded knowingly. “See, God knows when story is stopped.”
I came to see, though conversations with many converts, that tests were a continuous part of Christian practice. The tests were not only of Juan’s resolve to follow God’s commands, but also of his ability to reinterpret the world around him in a manner pleasing to God. They tested the acuity of his spiritual eyes and ears; that is, knowing to whom he should listen, whether they were acting as God’s agents or Satan’s agents, and when to see events as signs from God. Listening and interpretation were abilities cultivated in prayer, meditation, and Bible study.
To prepare for God’s tests, Juan undertook small, everyday acts of faith. They developed his ability to discern God’s will and to maintain a transcendent perspective, abilities that over time, he hoped, would free him from earthly desires.
CHOICE AND POWER
The tension between obedience, choice, and freedom implied by Juan’s tests is common to both Pentecostalism and other Protestant-derived North American approaches to addiction such as Alcoholics Anonymous. As Valverde (1998) points out, they define freedom not as absence of external control but rather as the presence of internal controls; internal controls that are built by the exercise of willpower in small, everyday practices that (re)form habits. They are rooted in an ideal of ascetic self-sacrifice; as Margaret Mead said that she learned in childhood, “virtue was distinguished by pain followed by pleasure, vice was pleasure followed by pain” (Mead 1973: 178). They reflect an ambivalent Protestant view of willpower which tries to reconcile the tension between the Calvinist doctrine of human frailty, and the liberal belief in every individual’s limitless capacity to empower him or herself (Valverde 1998: 34).
Pentecostal concepts of addiction center on power: addiction as due to the unconverted individual’s vulnerability to malignant spiritual forces. Addicted people can align themselves with a more powerful force, through fusion with the Holy Spirit, in which the frail, human subject channels tremendous transcendental power. Individuals must continuously renew this fusion in order to rise above the toxic influences to which they are exposed.
This is a concept of addiction that acknowledges its social nature. It problematizes everyday social relations that trap individuals into cycles of consumption and debt or withdrawal, and it calls for a social