Should We Go Easy On the God Stuff?

I did not change any wording here... but pretty easy for a CG or any area to just substitute YOUR addiction / thanks, BEE

(the following is from the Grapevine site.. lots more neat stuff there!)

In a recent on-line AA meeting I participated in, someone posed the question, "Why do we hear, 'Go easy on the God stuff at AA meetings, so we don't scare off the new person?'" After all, he reasoned, if AA is all about God, why should we soft-peddle AA's core principle? Here's my response to this topic.

Bill W.'s first draft of the Twelve Steps - which originally numbered only six steps - spoke of God without the expansive descriptions "as we understand Him" or "a power greater than ourselves." I am convinced that if Bill had not subsequently qualified God as "a power greater than ourselves," and "God as we understood him," Alcoholics Anonymous may very well have become the alcoholic squadron of the Oxford Group instead of a worldwide movement embraced by people of all religious traditions in over 150 countries. In the 1920s, the Oxford Group counted about one million members worldwide. Try reaching the closest chapter of the Oxford Group on the phone today.

I am equally convinced that a twelve-step program based exclusively on Christianity, or with any similar sectarian underpinning, would be of limited value to the still-suffering alcoholic. Organized religion, especially in the West, cannot help being structurally sectarian because it must distinguish between its ultimate truths and the beliefs of other faiths.

Several years ago, an alcoholic told me that he had stopped attending AA meetings because our program felt like recycled Christianity. I think that this person's spirituality was rooted in Hinduism, or at least in Raja Yoga, and he was put off by the frequent references to the Christian deity in meetings. At the time, I took exception to the idea that AA was a Christian organization, but I have come to appreciate how he formed such an opinion.

Where I live, in southeastern Virginia, it seems that the people in meetings most interested in talking about their God are fundamentalist Christians - many of whom fervently believe they possess the exclusive ticket to salvation, and that you are doomed unless you share their beliefs. Fundamentalists feel compelled to witness in the hope of saving those who might otherwise miss the salvation express. Their parochial presentation of God lacks the ecumenical view outlined by Bill W. that is the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

While the Hindu tradition has literally hundreds of gods, there are other widely held spiritual beliefs that are nondeistic they do not put forth belief in a deity as essential to the faith. Taoism and Buddhism are two such examples. Our basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous, talks about people from different religious and spiritual traditions in Chapter 4, "We Agnostics":

"When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book."

In chapter 7, "Working With Others," the Big Book gives sage advice that directly speaks to the question of what to tell newcomers about God and spirituality:

"Tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a Power greater than himself and that he live by spiritual principles."

All that AA suggests is that someone be willing to believe in a power greater than one's self and be willing to live by spiritual principles. The Big Book outlines our straightforward choice: "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." If AA had required that I believe in the God of my childhood, I would have been thoroughly screwed because, for me, that notion of God died long ago. Thanks to AA, my personal spirituality is the vital center of my life today. I believe that there are innumerable paths to God - including all the sects of the Christian faith.

Bill W.'s personal story in the Big Book informs us that, after reading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, he was still unable to make the essential spiritual connection due to lingering antipathy for his childhood God. It was only when Ebby suggested what seemed like a novel idea - "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?" -that Bill W. was open to receive the sunlight of the spirit: "That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.

"It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!"

Like Bill W., when I came into the Fellowship, I was just barely capable of sweeping generalities about a higher power, like Universal Mind, Spirit of Nature, or First Cause; however, these limited conceptions were sufficient to establish a beachhead from which to start the spiritual journey of recovery. If I were to come to AA today for the first time and hear a lot of talk about Jesus versus a power greater than myself, I don't know if I'd stay around for the miracle. Thanks for encouraging me to follow my personal spiritual path since 1982.

Doug B.  Newport News, Virginia   © AA Grapevine, Inc. April 2002

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