“Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending.” ~ Francis Chan
Most of us enter into the rooms of recovery in our weakest, most desperate moment. It is there where we begin awakening to the idea that life on our terms had utterly failed us, finding ourselves at a very crucial crossroad upon which a decision must be made.
A directional sign pointing to the left reads, “Alcoholic Purgatory” and the sign pointing to the right, “Life on God’s Terms.”
Many of us see AA as a last resort, and even then as a temporary solution to what some of us refuse to see as a terminal illness. Depending on the severity of the destruction that our alcoholism has brought upon our lives, a few of us may seem more willing than others to begin trying to discover who God is.
Pride, in all its infamous glory, has really put us between a rock and a hard place. We want no part of either road, but there is no turning back. This is where nearly every alcoholic eventually lands. But if we are to ever recover from this insidious disease, we have no other reasonable recourse but to come to grips with a personal, workable concept of God.
In the 4th chapter of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, we are reminded that we ourselves had no solution to our alcoholic problem. At the bottom of page 44 and the top of page 55, it reads, “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 us utterly.
Because of this prideful hesitance to even consider the premise that a Power greater than themselves exists, many will undoubtedly succumb to the disease of alcoholism. Some will claim certain biases against the church, while others aren’t willing to separate the science from the Scientist. Whatever the excuse, therein lies a deep-seated fear that is veiled by faulty, illogical reasoning and false pride.
They would rather die than surrender. And sadly, many do.
But for those of us who are desperate enough to find some willingness to be openminded, we learn that we don’t have to eat the entire elephant with one huge bite. AA’s aren’t forced to write personal dissertations about their personal precepts of who they believe God to be, nor are they required to accept another’s conceptualization of Him. In fact, many of us who’ve spent considerable time in recovery have shifted our own perceptions and understandings of God as we began going through the life-changing steps of AA and helped others to do the same over the years.
Perhaps that’s it in a nutshell… our understanding of God, however expansive or narrow that understanding may be in the beginning, only gets broader and deeper as we diligently work each step and try to become kinder and more forgiving human beings. But it all starts with willingness.
Our understanding of God, or lack thereof, shouldn’t be a barrier to sobriety. After all – those of us who have enjoyed the peaceful joy of sobriety for many years have come to realize that our primary problem was never alcohol.
Our inability to relate to others on a spiritual level; that was our problem all along.
Former Blackout Artist 