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Step 12
Step Two
"Came
to believe
that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
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 worshipped
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 overconfidence 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 all-time 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 ego feeding 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 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.
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