THE moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers
are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one.
How often have we heard them cry out, “Look what you
people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are
alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced
us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now
declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession.
Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and
still others who do believe that God exists have no faith
whatever He will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got us
over the barrel, all right— but where do we go from here?”
Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't
believe— the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which
can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of
life, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough,
he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But
now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with
something really impossible. How he does cherish the
thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in
the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and
therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce
all this to save himself?
At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This,
the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the
beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end
of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a
new one. His sponsor probably says, “Take it easy. The
hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you
think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who
was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society,
but he got through with room to spare.”
“Well,” says the newcomer, “I know you're telling me
the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A, is full of people who
once believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances,
does a fellow 'take it easy'? That's what I want to know.”
“That,” agrees the sponsor, “is a very good question indeed.
I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't
have to work at it very hard, either. Listen, if you will, to
these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous does
not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve
Steps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay
sober, you don't have to swallow all of Step Two right now.
Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal myself. Third,
all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the
debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep
questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came
first. Again I say, all you need is the open mind.”
The sponsor continues, “Take, for example, my own
case. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected,
venerated, even worshiped science. As a matter of fact, I
still do— all except the worship part. Time after time, my
instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific
progress: search and research, again and again, always with
the open mind. When I first looked at A.A., my reaction
was just like yours. This A.A, business, I thought, is totally
unscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't consider
such nonsense.
“Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A, showed results,
prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding
these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A, that
had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing,
I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two
gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can't
say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe
in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief
now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and
practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I
could.
“This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience,
of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s
tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don't
care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover
one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like
you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution.
You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your
'higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who
have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are
certainly a power greater than you, who have not even
come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them.
Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find
many members who have crossed the threshold just this
way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith
broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession,
their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to
believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk
of God.”
Consider next the plight of those who once had faith,
but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted into
indifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cut
themselves off, those who have become prejudiced against
religion, and those who are downright defiant because God
has failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tell
all these they may still find a faith that works?
Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lost
or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all,
for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting.
They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.
Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they
have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go.
The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency,
prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and
formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced
agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says
the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it
can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence
of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer
from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself
lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain
in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic,
or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.
Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, “Yes, we
were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfi-
dence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we were
glad that good home and religious training had given us
certain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly
honest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious and
hardworking. We became convinced that such simple rules
of fair play and decency would be enough.
“As material success founded upon no more than these
ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were
winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it
made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological
abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our
souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good
enough for us. The will to win would carry us through. But
then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when
all our score cards read 'zero,' and we saw that one more
strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look
for our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it. And
so can you.”
Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually
self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s
can say, “Yes, we were like you— far too smart for our own
good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used
our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons,
though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly,
we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our
brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was
nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect
could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than
most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be
ours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God
of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas.
We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into alltime
losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We
found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They
helped us to get down to our right size. By their example
they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible,
provided we placed humility first. When we began to
do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.
This faith is for you, too.”
Another crowd of A.A.'s says: “We were plumb disgusted
with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said,
was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and
we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats.' In spots its
morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly
bad. But it was the morality of the religionists
themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the
hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that
clung to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best. How
we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the
'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in
the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had
substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to
A.A., we had to recognize that this trait had been an egofeeding
proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious
people, we could feel superior to all of them.
Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own
shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very thing that we
had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting
evil. This phony form of respectability was our
undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven
to A.A., we learned better.
“As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the
outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not
strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God
Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us
the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child
m makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often,
though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to
our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The
girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God
that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for
healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or
none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none
came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were
taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became
drunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened.
This was the unkindest cut of all. 'Damn this faith
business!' we said.
“When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance
was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's
will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it
ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and
defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A,
we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared
from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and
transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly
accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to
recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that
worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever
price in humility we must pay, we would pay.”
Now let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking of
alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance
is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects
that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and
more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but
acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alcohol,
imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What,
then, can be the matter?
To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic
who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking
riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of us
who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's
answer. This answer has to do with the quality of faith
rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We
supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed
we had been serious about religious practices when,
upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial.
Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in
emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling.
In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing.
The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the
grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no
deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves,
made amends to those we had harmed, or freely
given to any other human being without any demand for reward.
We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said,
“Grant me my wishes” instead of “Thy will be done.” The
love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore
we remained self-deceived, and so incapable of receiving
enough grace to restore us to sanity.
Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any
idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can
bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves
“problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that
they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness
by a world which does not understand the difference
between sane drinking and alcoholism. “Sanity” is defined
as “soundness of mind.” Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing
his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on
the dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim
“soundness of mind” for himself.
Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us.
Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand
together on this Step. True humility and an open mind can
lead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance that
God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to
Him.