When we reflect back on the nature of our problems that brought us to Alcoholics Anonymous, we find commonality with others in our fellowship. We don’t see these at first, since the pain we are experiencing overrides most of our thinking processes. It takes time for the pain to subside enough to allow for the emergence of thoughts that show signs of sound thinking. As we progress in recovery, we will eventually reach the state where we can agree that we were stricken with what the book Alcoholics Anonymous (affectionately called the Big Book), calls the bedevilments. From Chapter 4, page 52 of same book, we see this definition of our ills: “We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people.”
As we were coming to the reality of a bottom, alcohol no longer provided relief for the emotional pain we were experiencing. Pain is God’s way of telling us we are traveling the wrong road. It is the emotional pain that brought us to A.A., in hopes of being set free from it. In A.A. we learned that we had been held captive by our addictions, emotions, and misbeliefs. We had been blind to the reality of our alcoholic dilemma and desperately needed to be set free from our delusions and mental anguish. We needed to be set free from the bedevilments. With the practicing of spiritual principles in the 12-Step program, we began to grow emotionally, and for many of us we were moving towards accepting spiritual truth. There is no doubt we were being set free from old ideas, misbeliefs, and bad behaviors through the application of spiritual principles. In other words, the 12-Step process was instrumental in setting us free, and we began seeing a better way to live.
Many of us eventually claimed some or all of the promises, a set of freedoms that override the bedevilments. From Chapter 6, Pages 83-84 of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, we read “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”
The A.A. process itself is the personal application of the Steps, a set of principles defined as spiritual in nature in the book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, affectionately known as the “Twelve and Twelve.” The book dedicates a chapter to each Step and each Tradition and explains the 24 basic principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. The book provides an interpretation of these principles for personal recovery by the 12 Steps, and the organization of the group by the 12 Traditions.
The definition of a principle as we use it in Alcoholics Anonymous is a rule or code of conduct. Spiritual principles are laws, guides, or rules by which we live. They are not necessarily religious, but do represent meaningful values, morals and ethical practices. Spiritual principles are fundamental truths that are universally acceptable. Listen to this carefully. Spiritual principles are in opposition to what humanity wants to naturally do, since we all lean towards self-centered behavior. Selfishness usually inhibits the development of spiritual principles in a person. This self-centeredness is in all of humanity, not just alcoholics. Extreme selfishness will produce the bad results identified as “the bedevilments.” The spiritual principles offered by the A.A. process, if practiced, produce right behavior which offsets to some degree the thinking and behavior that drives the bedevilments. Have you ever wondered why that happens?
The founders of A.A. were members of a Christian movement called the Oxford Group. It was widely known that Its members practiced absolute surrender, guidance by the Holy Spirit, sharing in fellowship, life-changing faith, quiet time, and prayer. Additional principles came from the Bible. These are the four absolutes of unselfishness, love, honesty, and purity, and the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount, 1st Corinthians Chapter 13, and the book of James. These and other truths were the principles talked about and studied in great depth in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous. Initially, alcoholics were included as part of the Oxford Group, but prior to the publishing of the Big Book had migrated to their own fellowship.
As Bill W. was writing the 12 Steps, he consulted with Sam Shoemaker, the leader of the Oxford Group in the United States and the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, bottom line of page 38, Bill Wilson, speaking of Sam Shoemaker, said: “It was from him that Dr. Bob and I in the beginning had absorbed most of the principles that were afterward embodied in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, steps that express the heart of A.A.’s way of life. Dr. Silkworth gave us the needed knowledge of our illness, but Sam Shoemaker had given us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about it. One showed us the mysteries of the lock that held us in prison; the other passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated.”
Bill continues (last paragraph of page 39): The basic principles which the Oxford Groupers had taught were ancient and universal ones, the common property of mankind. He further stated: But the important thing is this: Early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else.
These spiritual principles then were biblical principles derived from the Judeo-Christian Bible. That’s clear and undisputed. The practice of these principles will give us good results regardless of our religious beliefs, but the full biblical set of principles will give us even more. It is truth that conditions us to be set free. However, in our fellowship we know there is more to this than meets the eye. From Chapter 4, pages 44-45 of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, we read: “If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?”
On Page 55 it is mentioned that deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God, and throughout history, there have been miraculous demonstrations of that Power in human lives. These are historical based facts and are as old as man himself. We are also given a further clue from the statement that we find on page 87 of Chapter 6: “be quick to see that religious people are right.” To understand why these passages are included in the Big Book, we need to reflect back to the idea of God in the time period when A.A. was in its early founding between 1935 and 1939, before the Big Book was published. Religion, during that period in the United States predominantly derived their practices from the Holy Bible. The idea of God was nothing less than the biblical God and it was only the Christian belief that taught the idea of a God who comes into a person’s heart and performs a spiritual transformation within them. Religious people knew and practiced that. These folks used the Bible to learn God’s Truth. And that is what the founders mean by the expression “be quick to see that religious people are right.”
Bible truth is clear. Only the Spirit of God dwelling in us, helping us, can give us true spiritual power, a power that we need to truly apply spiritual principles in our life. It is important that unless we seek and find God, character defects will always remain an active part of our life. Only the supernatural power of God’s Spirit acting in us can remove these defects, and His Truth is essential to this process. The Bible tells us how to get His Spirit in us. Are you up to the challenge? The 12 Steps are but a beginning of a lifetime relationship that we can have with a real personal God. The same God that for centuries has been providing humanity with His Truth is still here. This is the God to grow in your understanding. Learning more about God’s Truth is a choice that has only profit for us.
Here is Truth. Believe in this. The New Testament tells us of a great teacher and Rabbi who was praised for His performing of miracles. The Bible had foretold of Him in Isaiah, a prophetic book of the Old Testament Bible, given 740 years before this Rabbi came on the scene. Isaiah was speaking about a future time identified as the year of the Lord’s favor, a period of time when men would have an opportunity to be saved from eternal punishment. A portion of the prophecy reads as “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…” This passage is found in Isaiah 61:1,2.
Jesus Christ applied this prophecy to Himself in His hometown of Nazareth. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (See Luke 4:16–21).
The recovering alcoholic should give some attention to this. Jesus Christ is the Rabbi who identifies Himself as the Son of God. In essence Luke 4 states His purpose as 1) bringing relief to the poor in spirit (such as the people who have admitted they are powerless over alcohol), 2) setting people free from self-made prisons (like the bondage of alcohol, misbeliefs, and lies), 3) removing blindness to truth and reality (like those who were blind to their character defects and bad behaviors), 4) providing a path to freedom (like the 12-Step process that helps remove defects of character), and 5) giving hope to the oppressed and depressed (through the actions that provide the promises and removes the bedevilments). It appears that the purpose of Jesus Christ has a strong resemblance to the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Yes, it is the biblical God that heals us in Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the biblical God the Big Book refers to throughout, with its many references to biblical language, parallel examples, and personal stories. It is inconceivable to believe that the understanding of God and the needed power that our founders embraced was an imaginary self-created higher power. It is the God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Power of the Holy Spirit that was setting alcoholics free from their prisons. The solution to our problem is more than just having some practical knowledge and acting on the spiritual principles of the Steps. There is motivational power in the actions found in the Steps and through the practice of spiritual principles. But by themselves they cannot overcome what our self-centered nature wants.
We, along with the entire human population, have a flawed nature and we were created to need a connection with our Creator who is Spirit. Our process and its principles help our physical and emotional sobriety which helps with our living problems. Our flawed nature needs a spiritual solution in order to live right. We admit to our defects through our process, but we have learned that we are powerless to remove them without spiritual help. That problem is due to the principle the Bible calls sin. Sin is simply a principle that lives in all of us, which, if we have no real God in us only causes us to live unto ourselves. It is a part of human nature. No one is exempt. It is only the biblical God who can give us a new nature. That way is through the process of salvation. Salvation through belief in Christ is a nature-replacing process. It comes along with God’s Spirit living within us and is the source of power to do things God’s way. This excerpt from John 3 explains how this works.
“Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. “
It is the spiritual birth that is essential to give us the needed power in A.A. to recover and give us also the gift of salvation the Bible talks about. God wants us to have both His spiritual principles, and the Holy Spirit working in us, to provide the power to overcome the resistance of applying them more fully in our life. This is the way into the Kingdom of God, as Nicodemus was told about. Theologians tell us we are still in the year of the Lord’s favor but that it is ending soon. Have you embraced Him yet? Some in our fellowship look only at the Twelve Steps of A.A. with a view that any concept of a higher power and the fellowship will provide the power they need to stay sober. But people can stay sober for long periods without having a relationship with the biblical God. We know this from agnostics and atheists, who are in the fellowship. For these folks, it is the inherent power of the fellowship, and some degree of dependence upon the 12-Step principles, along with other practical truths about life we learn in the fellowship, that helps maintain their sobriety.
How long a person can stay sober relying upon an ill-conceived notion of a power greater than themselves is questionable. It is now being questioned within A.A. circles as to why individuals with 10, 15 and 20 years or more of sobriety relapse. Could it be that they do not have the power to sustain them for life? Could it be that having an imaginary higher power that they created does not rocket them in to the fourth dimension? Could it be that there is no power at all found in the higher power that’s created out of imagination.
Ask those that went back out to drink after many years of sobriety, if they had ever embraced deeply the biblical God as the central fact of their life. Ask them if deep in their heart they have the biblical God and ask them if He was indeed miraculous and did for them the things that they could never do for themselves. Ask them if they found much of heaven and experienced being rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence, of which they had not even dreamed. Ask them if they just went along with the notion of an imaginary higher power because it was cool or easy, and doesn’t require much accountability, or whether they embraced the biblical God the founders had in the period 1935-1940.
At a personal level, It is the founders’ path you want to walk down, and that path is and always has been a narrow one. Some of you may be on that path. If you are not on that path, it is suggested that you read the article, entitled Does Your Higher Power Have Power, then decide if you want to continue in your recovery walk with an imaginary idea of your understanding of God, or operate in the TRUTH about the biblical God who actually holds the true supernatural power in A.A.. If you ask God in prayer for His Truth to be given to you about Him, He will answer.
It is your choice. And of course, choices have consequences.