I’ve never met a potato chip I didn’t like. Actually, I’ve never met a potato chip that didn’t call my name from behind the pantry door until I was forced to eat it and every one of its salty companions.

So when I heard the phrase “carbohydrate addiction,” I knew nutritionists were on to something. It turns out there are foods that can actually increase your hunger when you consume them, creating an escalating, recurring need for the very substances that intensify the problem.

The reality of carb addiction is accepted more widely in popular culture than in scientific communities. But most people can verify anecdotally that some food only makes them hungrier.

It seems to me that this phenomenon symbolizes much of what plagues the human condition. We drink liquids that dehydrate us. We buy objects that require us to buy more objects. We make some money, ratchet up our lifestyle in response, and find we need more income to sustain us. The harder we work, the more work there is to do. And the harder we play, the more elusive the fun. Ask anyone working in Hollywood special effects, or in extreme sports, or in the sex trade industry, and all will tell you the same thing: Yesterday’s thrill is today’s old news. We always need more…

…May calls addiction “the spiritual disease of our time,” but it’s not an exclusively modern phenomenon. There’s a passage in Haggai that seems so shockingly current that it’s hard to believe it was written over 2,500 years ago.

Carolyn Arends graduated from Trinity Western University in Langley, BC with a degree in psychology and English. She lives in Surrey, BC with her husband Mark, and their two children, Benjamin (12) and Bethany (9). In addition to her busy concert and speaking schedule, she teaches songwriting and performance courses at Pacific Life Bible College and writes a bi-monthly column

for Christianity Today.

Read More: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/december/15.60.html