In the news yesterday was a warning about “CrackBerrys,” or people addicted to their BlackBerry devices.

“Employers rightfully provide programs to help workers with chemical or substance addictions,” a researcher with Rutgers University School of Business was quoted saying in an article posted to ScienceDaily.com. “Addiction to technology can be equally damaging to the mental health of the worker.”

I can tell you that here in Manhattan there is an apparent vast addiction to cell phones. One of the places I really notice it is in Starbucks. Invariably, someone will sit down next to me after they’ve just ordered a coffee and immediately reach into their purse or briefcase for their phone. Then the calling and/or checking of messages begins. At no point do they seem conscious at all of anything outside of their own conversation.

As an editor for Vogue magazine is quoted saying in yesterday’s New York Post, “Personally, I find this new BlackBerry culture annoying to the point of exasperation.”

Here’s a great passage on addiction from an old sermon by my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.:

“Anything you continually depend on for purpose and meaning in life is going to control you. If you depend on the Spirit of God for purpose and meaning in life. . . Paul says, ‘And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’ To be filled is to be controlled by something. . . How can a little drug, a little pill get control? It doesn’t have any will. It doesn’t say, ‘I want to possess you; I’ve got to have you!’ It just sits on the table. It doesn’t have any emotions. It doesn’t love you. And yet it can take absolute control over your life. You can get so addicted to it that you can’t live without it. Booze can do that. Pride can do that. Envy can do it.

“You take that pill and you want to feel a certain way. You begin to depend on that pill to make you feel that way. And you begin to depend on that pill to give you meaning and purpose in life, and pretty soon that pill becomes your source of that, and it gets control.

“So if you’ll depend on who God says you are (in Romans through Philemon), you know what’s going to control your life? God’s going to control it. To be filled with the Spirit requires your positive volition. It takes your faith choice to rely upon the sufficiency that God has given you in Christ and nothing else.”

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Yesterday, I passed a teen-aged girl wearing a pink t-shirt that had written on it in white letters, “Pay Me Attention.”

The other day, in walking past a Times Square restaurant I noticed an 8-10 year-old girl sitting at a window booth who had a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. I couldn’t tell whether it was permanent or not, but it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if it was.

Here’s another passage on addiction in which my pastor talks about people’s desire for tattoos.

“With young people it’s sort of a status symbol, but it also can come from the issue of exhibitionism. Somebody’s saying, ‘Please look at me, here I am, I’m trying to get your attention.’ More often than not, it’s somebody who feels bad about themselves; feels unworthy. They castigate themselves. And they say, ‘See, I’m not worth looking at anyway; I need to look like a freak and I’ll look like a freak so you think I’m a freak because that’s really what I think of myself.’

“Exhibitionism is universally an expression of the struggle against depression. Sexual promiscuity is a reflection against the battle against depression. So is profanity, obscene speech.

“Another one is clinging, hanging on. “One of the fascinating things about how deceptive our heart can be is in excessive generosity—where someone is making an attempt to make themselves indispensable by their giving, and attaching themselves to the obligations of, ‘Look at all I’ve done for you.’

“Incessant conversation is another clinging characteristic. So is attacking. Either aggression against someone who’s rejected you, or more frequently, the attack on yourself. And the way the attacking part of it works is, first you attack others, but soon enough you begin to turn that attack on yourself, and those kinds of things make up what clinically are described as characteristics of depression.

“When there’s the tendency in depression to withdraw from others that’s the result of a loss of affection; ambivalence. The person’s unwilling to risk loving, or not loving something and being caught between it. There’s withdrawal and self-occupation.”