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 GRACE IN
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 GRACE IN
ADDICTION
The Good News of Alcoholics
Anonymous for Everybody

JOHN Z.

MOCKINGBIRD
MOCKINGBIRD
Copyright © 2012 by Mockingbird Ministries
Mockingbird Ministries
100 West Jefferson Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
www.mbird.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews.

Cover design by Stephanie Fishwick. Editing and book design by William

McDavid. Published 2012 and printed by Createspace.com in the United States
of America.

ISBN-13: 978-1479313815

ISBN-10; 1479313815

DISCLAIMER

MOCKINGBIRD MINISTRIES ("MOCKINGBIRD") IS AN INDEPENDENT NOT-FOR-PROFIT

MINISTRY SEEKING TO CONNECT, COMMENT UPON AND EXPLORE THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
WITH AND THROUGH CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. MOCKINGBIRD FULLY DISCLAIMS ANY
SPONSORSHIP, ASSOCIATION, OR CONNECTION WITH ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
("AA"). LIKEWISE, MOCKINGBIRD HAS NO AFFILIATION, SPONSORSHIP OR CONNECTION
WITH ANY OF THE AUTHOR(S), ARTIST(S) OR PUBLICATIONS QUOTED OR REFERENCED
HEREIN. THE CONTENT IS INTENDED FOR THE PURPOSE OF COMMENTARY, STUDY,
DISCUSSION, AND LITERARY OR RELIGIOUS CRITIQUE. FINALLY, MOCKINGBIRD
DISCLAIMS ANY AFFILIATION, SPONSORSHIP OR CONNECTION WITH ANY OTHER ENTITY
USING THE WORDS "MOCKINGBIRD" AND "MINISTRIES" ALONE OR IN COMBINATION
This book is dedicated to Chuck T. of Cleveland/Danville, Ohio
(1933 — 2006). The quintessential AA sage, half rapscallion and
half genius, Chuck was born (a twin) in Akron, Ohio, AA’s
birthplace. Due to severe dyslexia, he did not learn to read until he
was 35. He sobered up in Cleveland, “the cradle of AA’, and
spent much of his sobriety working in the Holy Family Home as a
nurse, providing hospice like care to the greater Cleveland area.
On one occasion, he met Bill W, AA’s famous founder. Chuck
retired to a house at the end of a dirt road in rural Danville, Ohio,
surrounded by Amish neighbors. He attended thousands of AA
meetings, started groups in Cleveland and Mount Vernon, and
helped countless members of AA find sobriety. I have never met a
wiser, more insightful counselor. He died with 39 years of sobriety
His obituary stated accurately: “He helped many people, and was
loved by many.”
 \

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 Acknowledgements

This book was born out of a talk given at the 2009 NYC
Mockingbird Conference at Calvary/St. George’s Episcopal
Church, where AA co-founder Sam Shoemaker served as Rector
in the 1930s. A second talk, given at the 2010 M’bird Conference
in Pensacola, also influenced the book.

Without the effort and encouragement of Mockingbird’s team, a

full-length version of GIA never would have come to fruition. In
particular, the incredibly gifted Will McDavid has been invaluable
to the creation of this book, serving tirelessly as my editor and
sounding board. Enough thanks cannot be offered to him for his
insight and patience. David Zahl, too, gave up endless hours of his
time in helping to shape and improve the work.

Tom B helped me to put these ideas together, and many of them

originate from conversations we have shared over our many years
of friendship.
Similarly, my family have given much of themselves (including
sweat and graying hair) to the shaping of this material as it has
played out in our lives together. We are so blessed to have each
other, a family of advocates, second to none I know.

The Women of The Cathedral Church of the Advent in

Birmingham, Alabama were thoughtful enough to support this
work from the moment of its conception. Likewise, huge thanks
ate due to the wonderful people of Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island,
who allowed me to test out this material on them, week in and
week out over the past five years.

I have been fortunate to experience expressions of AA in Ohio,

Alabama, New York City, Oxford, England, and Charleston,
South Carolina. In each place I have met life-saving friends,
sponsors, sponsees, and many of the people I most respect in this
world. “The Kenyon Hellraisers” deserve singular mention for,
among other things, driving me to all of my first meetings.

And finally, there are the two most special people of all, my wife
and daughter. D is a constant example of beauty and grace, while
Little D has become my muse. Her anticipated arrival prompted
me to write each day for the 7 months that ultimately led to her
birth. The result is this book...and a very happy father.
 Contents.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Twelve Steps

Part |. Shaving the Enemy

Step 1 Admitted We Were Powerless
Step 2 Came to Believe
Step 3 Made a Decision

Part Il. | The Heart of the Matter

Step 4 Made a Searching and Fearless
Moral Inventory of Ourselves
Step 5 Admitted to God, to Ourselves,
And to Another Human Being
Step 6 Were Entirely Ready 125
Step 7 Humbly Asked 141
Step 8 Became Willing to Make Amends 165
Step 9 Made Direct Amends 175

Part Ill. © Growing Into Grace

Step 10 Continued to Take Personal 195
Inventory
Step 11 Conscious Contact 209
Step 12 Having Had a Spiritual Awakening 220

Conclusion pig)

Epilogue 25),
Appendix I: Mortimers and Lulus 265
Appendix II: Mingling with Alcohol in Sobriety 271
Appendix III: The Serenity Prayer Pair
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 Introduction

On a Friday night in late 2011, in a small nightclub in Charleston,

South Carolina, I witnessed a crowd’s exuberant reaction when the
DJ put on an old disco record called “I Don’t Want to Be a Freak
(But I Can’t Help Myself)” by Dynasty. With its whispering voices,
infectious funky hook and sizzling Cuban percussion, the track
sounded amazing. The crowd of dancers gathered on the floor
practically exploded with enthusiasm the moment the chorus
circled back around. Onlookers rushed to join the frenzy. Soon
the entire group of more than fifty club-goers was singing along to
the refrain en masse with their arms raised in the air: “I don’t wanna
be a freak, but I can’t help-my-self...I don’t wanna be a freak, but
I can’t help-my-self...”
“T Don’t Want to Be a Freak” was recorded in Los Angeles
in 1979 at the height of the disco craze. That same year it reached
#20 in the UK Singles charts. Not long after that, disco took a

11
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

serious nosedive in the US, becoming the epitome of un-cool. Yet

here we were, more than 30 years later in the Southern Low
Country, very far from Los Angeles and even further from
London, and this little record was finding a second wind. It may
have been one of many disco tracks played that night, but “I
Don’t Want to Be a Freak” stood out because of the crescendo
reaction it received from the primarily twenty-something audience.
A few interesting things were going on in that little moment.
First, an old song was finding fresh life with a whole new
generation of dancers. The song was as much their song in the 21*
century as it had been their parents’ in the late 1970s. Second, the
lyrical content made an impression. The inability to help oneself
seems hardly an appropriate occasion for conviviality. But these
young people were connecting nith a seemingly downbeat message with a
surprising amount of eagerness, the result of which, surprisingly, was joy and
dancing — the thing that one associates with celebration and freedom.
I see this same dynamic at play in the world of twelve-step
recovery. In owning their defeat—through the infamous 1s Step:
‘We admitted we were powerless...that our lives had become unmanageable’
defeated people find a pathway to hope, freedom, and exuberant
joy. A tragic diagnosis opens the door to all of the things that its
verdict seemed to deny. As Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics
Anonymous, wrote in 1955, “The principle that we shall find no
enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main
taproot from which our whole society has sprung and flowered.”
Alcoholics Anonymous and the various recovery programs it has
spawned display a practical spirituality whose fruits are undeniable
and far-reaching. Their insights are worthy of study.
The peculiarity of AA’s approach is apparent right from the
outset, its foundation being an ever-unpopular skepticism
concerning human willpower. David Brooks drew attention to this
aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous in a 2010 New York Times
editorial entitled “Bi// Wilson’s Gospe?’: “In a culture that generally

ip
 INTRODUCTION

celebrates empowerment and self-esteem, AA begins with

disempowerment. The goal is to get people to gain control over
their lives, but it all begins with an act of surrender and an
admission of weakness.”
I have been reflecting upon these matters since becoming a
member of AA in 1996 during my freshmen year of college,
following a three-week stay in an in-patient rehabilitative hospital
in West Georgia.

“I’m Also a Member” (Hair Club for Men)

I started drinking and smoking pot when I was 12. I was a typical
pothead teenager, full of artistic inclinations and rebellious
temperament. I remember arguing with my mother after I was
pulled aside for a security check at an airport in Stuttgart. Never
mind the fact that I had my hair in pigtails and was sporting a T-
shirt that featured a three-eyed, three-eared, one-legged Mickey
Mouse — who did they think they were, judging a book by its
cover?! They don’t know me! Of course, I now see that they were
looking in the right place if they wanted to keep drug
paraphernalia off of their airplanes.
In getting drunk and high I found short-term relief from all
of the confusion that I now associate with my experience of
puberty. I was a late bloomer and felt especially insecure. The fact
that my father was living in Europe for a stint, which led to my
having to attend three different high schools, probably
exacerbated the situation. But the taste for excess seemed be in my
blood from the very beginning. It is probably worth noting that _
my family tree is spattered with the wreckage of a long line of
alcoholism.

13
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

Despite my behavior and the damage it caused, getting into

trouble was never very effective in dissuading me from abusing. If
anything, it inspired me to be more crafty and deceitful. My
loyalty, first and foremost, was to escapism in the form of mind-
altering substances. They soon became a necessity: a self-
prescribed medication, or at least a requirement for coping in an
oppressive world. Not surprisingly, I soon experienced
suspensions from school, an arrest, legal trouble, and the complete
collapse of my relationship with my family. On my senior
yeatbook page, I included a photo of myself leaning my head
against a trash can, along with the following quote from The Cure:
“The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care
about how much further away I get.”
I was full of blame, convinced that everyone was conspiring
against me. Perhaps school was my problem. After a three-month
hiatus in Bolivia, however, I absurdly concluded that my problem
was not so much school, but rather the United States of America.
A year later, on the way to my intervention, I told my
mother that, “af everyone would just leave me alone, ’'d be okay!”
It was less than 24 hours later, in the confines of a hospital bed,
that it occurred to me for the first time that I had gotten way off
track. “How is it,” I wondered, “that P’ve gotten to the point that I
love drugs and alcohol more than my own mother?” These and
other similar thoughts led me into the world of AA — kicking and
Vyscreaming, but beaten nonetheless. As an AA newcomer once
said, “I’m giving up fun forever.” I could sympathize.
And so began my journey into the world of recovery
through the Twelve Steps. “You don’t slide in i on a rainbow” is
another AA adage that proved true.
Four years of sobriety later, and in wake of a painful
breakup, this same journey led me back into the Church. At one of
the initial services I attended, I remember reading for the first time
in over ten years the words of confession from the Book of Common

14
 INTRODUCTION

Prayer. “We-have.erced
and strayedfrom
Thy ways like lost sheep.
We have
followed
toomuchthe devices. and desiresofour own hearts.” I remembered
the lines from my childhood. I remembered how abstract and
irrelevant the whole religious endeavor had seemed to me in my
youth. But now, in that low moment, I found in them a more
complete understanding of myself than I had known in years. It
was another crucial moment for me, the beginning of a re-
conversion. And it was my experience of sobriety in AA that
paved the way for me to connect the dots between my life and
Christianity.
In keeping with the aforementioned extremist tendencies, if
I was going to become a Christian, then I was going all the way.
After three years of seminary at Oxford, I was ordained to the
ministry in 2007. I continue to participate in the fellowship of
Alcoholics Anonymous.

Strangers Are Just Friends Who Haven't Met Yet

The world of AA closely resembles a church. People from all

different backgrounds gather together on a regular basis. Prayer is
encouraged. Many of the members talk about God, how He has
changed their lives and enabled them to do that which they could
never have done before. Plus, in AA there is an obvious social
energy. Long-standing friendships are often formed. Alcoholics
Anonymous offers a massive support network, has no fees, and
hugely emphasizes outreach. It all sounds suspiciously familiar.
The recovery community, however, is often quick to Va
distance itself from “organized religion.” While AA meetings may
resemble religious services, it is stated at the outset of every
meeting that “AA is not allied with any sect, denomination,
politics, organization or institution...” So while it may function in

15
GRACE IN ADDICTION

the lives of its members in a way that looks like church, the idea
that it actually és church is staunchly denied. This train of thought
has roots extending all the way back to its earliest days. The goal
was and is to avoid controversy at all costs, for the sake of unity.
Thus, AA has only one officially stated purpose: helping alcoholics
to find sobriety. Such driving instincts have given AA an
opportunity to blossom and thrive in a world where similar
endeavors often fail.
In moving from AA into the Christian Church, I have
nevertheless been surprised to see how well the two do in fact
relate to each other. At their best, the two have so much to teach
each other. The AA text that deals with the 11% Step is especially
positive on involvement with religious institutions, but that aspect
of the literature is rarely mentioned.
The wall of separation between AA andthe Christian
Church is unfortunate. It’s as though they are looking at each
other from across the street, assuming the worst about each other,
rather than hoping they might become friends. I hope this book
will serve to help build such a bridge, or at least reveal that this
apparent disconnect is ultimately insubstantial.
I am not the first to attempt to wed the worlds of
Christianity and Twelve Step recovery. A well-known example
called “Celebrate Recovery” started at Rick Warren’s (author of
The Purpose Driven Life) Saddleback Church. It now runs in
churches all over America and greatly resembles other Twelve
Step groups. Unfortunately, like many Christian approaches to
addiction, this program often contains an excessively optimistic
view of the believer’s ability to move towards God.! In doing so, it
has unwittingly undone the entire foundation of the 1st Step —

' Another popular book on Christianity and the Twelve Steps is_A Hunger for
Heakng by J. Keith Miller, and it exhibits problems similar to those of
“Celebrate Recovery.”

16
 INTRODUCTION

admission of total powerlessness — upon which the world of

recovery is built.
Yet there are Christian theological traditions that begin with
a realistic view of human nature. These traditions begin, at least in
theory, with an emphasis on the comprehensive nature of human
limitation and sin, and as such they are often better equipped to
speak about addiction in general, and AA in particular? But for
whatever reason, as far as I’m aware, none have done so. This
present work seeks to take a step in that direction, showing how
See nee

—— ea

most part, been lost in both secular and sacred spheres.

My thesis is simple: AA and traditional Reformation Christianity é
make sense of fe in a way that is relevant to every person. 1 have tried to a
show what this angle on life actually looks like, how it views the
world, and how it changes a person for the better.
It may surprise many AAs to discover that there are
churches that actually agree with them about the nature of life in
God’s world. They might also be surprised to hear that AA
actually inherited much of its worldview directly from Christianity.
Conversely, many Christians may find that familiarizing
themselves with old-fashioned Protestant theology, as it’s
brilliantly expressed in AA, will enrich and deepen their own self-
understanding. Like Dynasty’s hit from 1979, we hope that a great
song from the past will find a second life in the pages of this book ,
and in the hearts and minds of its readers.
Finally, it is my sincere hope that this material will even
inspire you to try working the Twelve Steps for yourself. In the

2 This is true especially of the denominations rooted in the Protestant

Reformation, such as the Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church, and
formative strands of the Anglican Communion. Such denominations openly
acknowledge the primary problem of the “bound will” in the individual, and
they view humans, apart from being moved by God, as incapable of
choosing the things necessary for their salvation. For them, faith comes as a
gift and not an individual choice.

ce
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

chapters that involve taking particular actions (such as steps 3; 43.9,

and 10), I have tried my best to offer clear directions on how to do
the associated work.

When my parents placed me in pre-school at Calvary Episcopal

Church in Manhattan in the late 70s, they had no idea that they
were exposing me to the roots of AA. I did not choose my
college because it was located just a few miles from the birthplace
of AA in Ohio, although it was. Pure coincidence perhaps, but
also perhaps not. And then there’s the fact that I am now ordained
in a traditional Protestant denomination, as well as a grateful
member of AA. It occurs to me that I am positioned, even
uniquely so, to comment on the myriad points of connection
between Christianity and AA. Indeed, “I can’t help-my-self.”
Please do not be discouraged if you find some of the initial
material to be off-putting. Given a chance, you may soon find that
it inspires the spiritual equivalent of dancing. You might even do
well to wonder if the DJ mentioned at the beginning of this
section was yours truly.

I lift my cup of coffee to you,

JAZ
Charleston, South Carolina
June 11, 2012

y 3 Calvary Episcopal Church’s rector in the 1930s was Sam Shoemak

er, Bill
Wilson’s dear friend and advisor. It was in Shoemaker’s office that Steps 4 —
Ne 9 were first written down.
ey et

18
 The Twelve Steps

“AA's Twelve Steps are a group ofprinciples, spiritual in their nature,

which, ifpracticed as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and
enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole...Many people,
nonalcoholics, report that as a result of the practice ofAA’s Twelve Steps,
they have been able to meet other difficulties of life. They think that the
Twelve Steps can mean more than sobriety for problem drinkers. They see in
them a way to happy and effective living for many, alcohoke or not”

The problem of addiction compels any observer to re-examine her

view of human nature and, consequently, God. Things that seem
to be true for the addict often challenge and contradict our
comfortable assumptions about reality. Indeed, addiction presents
an impasse that must be reckoned with. Its victims are countless
and most treatments have little long-term impact. Alcoholics

4 Bill Wilson, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: AA World
Services, 1953), 15. This book makes use of two main texts for AA: Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, abbreviated “12 ¢ 12”, and Akohokcs Anonymous,
abbreviated “Big Book.” Unless otherwise noted, citations will be from the
Big Book.

19
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

Anonymous and the Twelve Steps represent one of the only rays
of hope on an otherwise dark horizon, having consistently helped
turn around truly devastated lives. It is not surprising that courts
and schools continue to mandate that addicts attend Twelve Step
programs; their success is undeniable.
The success of AA cannot be divorced from its core
understanding of human beings and their need for God. Indeed,
the Twelve Step approach is based on claims about the
relationship between God and man, claims which may be implicit
ca‘in Christianity but are not usually stressed in so singular a fashion.
r Of coutse, Christianity is significantly more complicated
[than AA and carries with it 2000 years of history — and
3 | cottesponding baggage. AA is less than 80 years old. Imagine a
/ grandfather sitting with his 2-year-old granddaughter. She can only
say few words, and while directly descended from him, her picture
of life is simpler and fresher by comparison. Such is the
relationship of AA to Christianity. For whatever reason, the basics
“of faith that are stressed in every meeting of AA do not usually
seem to govern or characterize modern day church life.
The chief concern of Twelve Step recovery is redemption,
pure and simple. The sober alcoholic who has found joyful release
from alcohol epitomizes the “wretch saved by grace,” and
therefore, the hope of the Church. If “redeeming love is [indeed
their] theme” (W. Cowper), Christians might begin to give the
flourishing world of recovery more attention. It sometimes seems
as though God cut out a substantial portion of His heart in the late
1930s and hid it in church basements and community centers
across the country and the world. There, in every AA meeting, it
continues to beat loudly and healthily — despite the buckets of bad
coffee and parking lots full of cigarettes.
Some Christians worry. that Twelve Step programs do not
use the word ‘Jesus’ very often. AA is quick to say that it is not a
church. On a very basic level, complaining that AA does not talk

20
 THE TWELVE STEPS

enough Jesus is like complaining that churches do not spend

enough time teaching computer science. Or, perhaps better, like
critiquing Habitat for Humanity for spending too much time
building houses and not enough in worship. Bm.
Yet, as outlined above, in AA there isonly talk about.God s
as the rescuer of troubled people. This particular understanding of. 4.
God’Ss ‘character. as simultaneously, intervening..and. unfailingly \
merciful not_
n ool, isSumauel, Christian, but also itfinds its full }

vane may also Rat to> AA?s somewhat vague notion

of “spirituality.” For the many alcoholics disillusioned by
Christianity, however, the broadness of a “spiritual” life allows
them an entryway into the Christian message that might not
otherwise exist. Think of it in terms of a romantic analogy.
Perhaps, as a college student, you develop a crush on a girl
that you see around campus without knowing her name. After a
few run-ins, which leave you excited and preoccupied, you begin
to date. Instead of giving you her real name, however, she gives
you a nickname, explaining that her family is well-known and that
her real name carries with it many associations, some of them
negative. She wishes for your impressions not to be swayed by her
reputation. Of course, as the relationship develops in intimacy, her
true identity must eventually be divulged; that is simply part of
knowing her more deeply. This analogy may be overly generous,
but it helps explain why so many AAs become devout Christians.
While Christianity, and religion more broadly, often carry negative |
associations, Alcoholics Anonymous allows many people an
entryway into religion which may not otherwise exist. The two |
worlds of AA and Christianity, therefore, could learn from each |
other immensely.

Zt
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Human Nature through the Lens of Addiction

“Those who are predisposed to fall into despondency as well as to rise into the
ecstasy may be able to view reality from an angle different from that of
ordinary folk. Yet it is a true angle; and when the problem or the religious
object has been once so viewed, others less sensitive will be able to look from a
new vantage point and testify that the insight is valid.” ?
-Roland Bainton

Bainton appears to be saying that one person’s extremity may

reveal an aspect of truth that applies to all people. Such is the case
with addiction, which paints a portrait of the human condition in
vety stark brush strokes. As such, it offers considerably more
insight than the picture we typically find in Hollywood, on the
news, of in our own heads — where we all too often hear that we
ate free agents making choices, and that life is a matter of
performance and accomplishment. Instead, addiction echoes the
biblical portrait of original sin, where man is in conflict with God
and unable to surrender his prerogatives.
To be clear, as far as the Twelve Steps are concerned,
alcoholics are not free to choose sobriety. Bishop FitzSimons
Allison once said, “The amazing thing about the alcoholic is that
he can choose between gin and beer and whiskey, but he can’t
choose not to drink.” This is the same view of humanity that we
see played out in the GardenofEden — that man is free to choose
everything except the one thing he should be choosing: God, over
and above himself. In traditional Protestant (or “Reformational”)
Christian doctrine, this idea is called the bound will. While the

> Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life Of Martin Luther (New York: Signet
Press, 1955), 283. Luthet’s psychological landscape, as Bainton portrays it,
was fraught with the sort of extreme, in some ways manic tendencies that we
sometimes see in alcoholics.

22
 THE TWELVE STEPS

unfree human will finds painfully clear expression in alcoholism,

Christianity would claim that the problem is universal.
Any kind of behavior that willpower has proven insufficient
in controlling or curbing — workaholism, manic depression,
compulsive exercise, obsessive parenting, or road rage, to name
just a few — offers a relevant glimpse into the problem of life
which both AA and Christianity seek to address. Regardless of
whether society views these proclivities positively or negatively,
worldly accomplishment can indicate neurotic preoccupation as.
much as dire failure can. Our failure to control many of our own |
habits and inclinations makes the problem of addiction one which |
is, in some sense, universal. In that sense, this book is for \
everyone.

Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (Aretha Franklin, 1985)

An important issue for Alcoholics Anonymous is the problem of

agency: in other words, is the emphasis placed on the individual’s
initiative or on God’s work upon the individual?
- For starters, it should be understood that the “work-related”
terminology of the Twelve Steps can just as easily be interpreted as
a descriptive tool, rather than a prescriptive one. In other words,
the working of the Twelve Steps is what happens # the person
who finds God’s grace, rather than something that precedes the
attainment of grace. ‘Grace’ here simply refers to a wholly
undeserved gift, one which provides an irresistible and radical
reorientation of the recipient’s life. The movement of grace often.
but it never happens on our initiative.
happens with our consent,
Perhaps an analogy will help to make the point:
Imagine that you are riding on the deck of a cruise liner in
the middle of the night. Suddenly, you slip on the slick flooring

23
GRACE IN ADDICTION

and find yourself tumbling overboard, into the cold dark waters
below. You begin to flail in the choppy sea, kicking and trying to
scteam for help. Unfortunately, you’re a poor swimmer and can
barely keep your head above water, much less get your voice to
project enough to be heard by the passengers and crew still on
board. Miraculously, one of your shipmates spots you and yells to
the captain, “Man overboard!” The crew makes the proper
adjustments, and after not too long the ship pulls within reach of
you. A life preserver ring attached to a rope is thrown from the
deck, and it mercifully lands in front of you, just as your strength is
failing.
You grab onto it with both arms, finding immediate relief in
its buoyancy. The crew then draws the line into the boat and hoist
you onto the deck where you lie, coughing the water out of your
lungs, completely exhausted, befuddled, and grateful. The
passengers and crew wrap you in blankets and carry you to the
infirmary.
Imagine now that you finally have gotten your voice back.
You motion that you wish to make a brief announcement to the
onlookers. Here is what you say:

“Did you see how I grabbed onto that lifepreserver like an expert?
Did you notice the strength of my biceps and the dexterity in my
wrists? I was all over that thing!”

Would not the people hearing this think you had lost your mind?
Your statement misses the entire thrust of what had just occurred,
which was — pure and simple — a rescue.6 Would not gratitude and
humility be a more fitting and natural response to the whole
situation?

: The theological study of God as the rescuer of people is known as

‘soteriology.” It is fair to say that AA’s understanding of the spiritual life is
unavoidably soteriological in its angling.

24
 THE TWELVE STEPS

And yet, sadly enough, some form of the above tends to be

our fesponse to most of the good things that happen to us,
Winners of poker games always believe they won by skill; losers
tend to believe they were the victim of bad luck. Our careers, out
children, our relationships: the human race has an incredible talent
for focusing on its own role in the good things of life and
minimizing its culpability in negative things. Religious people are!
not exempt from this phenomenon. In my experience, while
Christians often talk loudly about God’s power and grace, their
rhetoric just as often betrays a secret belief that their own initiative
and willpower played the decisive role — “did you see the way I grabbed
onto that hfepreserver?”
In Alcoholics Anonymous, we have been disabused
of our
romance with our own willpower. The manner in which it failed
us was dramatic, poignant, and explicit. As much as the Twelve
Steps ostensibly emphasize action, the entire process is
conditioned by profound dependence upon grace. Most alcoholics
end up in AA after years of trying to cure themselves with self-
help — indeed, self-help’s failure is a starting-point for AA. In this
sense, it is desperation and not virtue that fuels one’s engagement
with the AA Program. The step-‘work’ happens reflexively in the
one who knows his need for rescue. To the extent that we
honestly recognize our powerlessness to rescue ourselves, the
message of grace breaks through by assuring us that we don’t have
to save ourselves. Indeed, this idea permeates all Twelve Steps of
AA.
It is hard to imagine the drowning man rejecting the life
preserver unless he were in some way deluded about the severity
of his situation. Yet in the world of AA we find many such people
— people who know themselves to be drowning in alcoholism and
yet, somehow, still believe they can effect sobriety by exerting their
willpower more effectively. These people rarely stay sober for
long, but they often return years later with an entirely different

25
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

understanding of their problem. This is why “powerlessness” is so

heavily emphasized as the beginning of a sober life. Indeed, it is
where Step 1 begins.

26
 The Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives

had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could

restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the

exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of

character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except

when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were

wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only
for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,

we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.

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|
I: SHAVING THE ENEMY
 Step 1

“We Admitted We Were Powerless...That Our

Lives Had Become Unmanageable.”

“A death blow is a life blow to some,

Who ‘til they died did not alive become.
Who had they hved had died.
But when they died vitality begun.”
-Emily Dickinson, Poem 816
ve,

ad

also happens to be the day of her older sister’s wedding. Poor

Claire quickly realizes that her family has completely forgotten
about her birthday. No gifts await her; no one tells her “Happy
birthday.” And so the worst day of her life begins.
As the movie unfolds, her self-pity transforms from anger to
apathy, and finally from apathy into despair. Despite this
downward spiral, the viewer soon realizes that a second, more

SH
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

important plot is afoot. It involves Jake, the young man she has a
crush on. She doesn’t think that he even knows of her existence,
but Claire is luckily mistaken — he knows exactly who she is. By
the end of the film, through an amazing series of tragic and
hilarious events, she finds herself celebrating her sixteenth birthday
alone with Jake. When she finally blows out the candles on her
cake, she doesn’t have to make a wish because her wish has come
true—it is sitting across from her! The worst day of her life has
become the best.
The first of the Twelve Steps follows a similar pattern. It
draws attention to the darkest aspects of life and, in so doing,
opens the door to a second, unexpected narrative that is full of
hope and promise.
One mote movie illustration before we move on. Japanese
director Akira Kurosawa made a film in 1952 called’Thirueit‘begins
with the ominous image of an X-ray of a man’s stomach. Te is
a noticeable irregularity against the lower wall of the stomach’s
lining, which the voiceover narrator acknowledges as he
introduces the plot: “here we see our protagonist’s stomach, As
you. can tell from that tumor, he is very sick... But he ill have to ket a
lot worse before he can get better.” The film’s opening offers a perfect
~ description of the dynamic that is at play in the 1st Step of the AA
program.
As bad as things may be looking for the alcoholic who
unexpectedly finds himself in an AA meeting one day, the reality is
that whatever his particular set of troubles, they are probably only
the tip of the iceberg. Whatever the presenting symptoms of “a life
unmanageable” may be, they almost always point back in upon
| themselves to a deeper cancer at the root of our being, a cancer
that must be exposed and confronted before there can be any talk
of the symptoms improving, The fact that spiritual and personal
awakenings must begin on such a depressing note might seem
unfortunate, but if we had a more upbeat alternative to suggest,

$2
 STEP 1

then we would offer it now. After all, it is only when the more
attractive options have failed us that we become open to the kind
of help that the Twelve Steps offer. They are the makeover that
nobody wants to> admit they need, but who wouldn’t benefit from
‘amakeover?

The Theology of AA: God Meets People at Their Point of

Need

‘Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every

natural instinct cries out against the idea ofpersonal powerlessness.”
-12 & 12 (21)

Right off the bat, it should be noted that the spiritual experience offered J
in AA does not begin nith talk of God. One does not have to affirm
any kind of faith, or even believe anything at all. The entire focus
at the beginning of the Twelve Step approach centers upon the
state ofthe individual. In other words, AA’s theology is existential.
It starts at the bottom, with the self and the facts on the ground,
and only then does it look upward.
Of course, no one likes to look at themselves from the angle
of failure or limitation. In fact, we often go to extremes to avoid
doing so. I was employed for a time as a counselor at the New
York City Rescue Mission, the city’s oldest men’s shelter. My job
was to counsel men who had recently come off of the streets and
to handle their intake into a nine-month Twelve Step rehabilitative
program, which was designed to help them get back on their feet
after long stints of homelessness and substance abuse. I met with
every new man that came into the program for a year, and it was
my job to ask each of them a certain series of questions. The
answers were always the same:

33
GRACE IN ADDICTION

John: “Hi, I'm John, how are you doing?”

Everyman: ‘T'm doin’ great! I'm glad to finally be off the streets
and getting my life in order. I want to make something ofmy life,
and 1 know that it’s time. Thanks be to Jesus!”

John: ‘What brings you here to our program?”

Everyman: ‘Well, I had some tough times. I got messed up... but
we don’t need to talk about that any more, now that I'm here.
Thanks be to Jesus!”

John: ‘T hope you don’t mind, but I need to ask_you a few more
specific questions about your history. Were drugs or alcohol big
factors inyour hfe before you got here?”

Everyman: ‘Well, yes, I got a little messed up with drugs and

alcohol... but I'm done with that now, thanks be to Jesus!

John: “Did you say that you used to smoke crack?”

Everyman: “Yeah, you know, I messed around with that stuff

some... Jesus, Jesus, JESUS!”

In every instance, the newcomer had a severe history with drug

addiction, alcoholism, or mental illness, always to the point where
his addiction had taken precedence over all other aspects_of his
life. After a period of homelessness while he pursued his addiction
headlong, he would eventually arrive at the shelter in a devastated
state. When asked about their hardships, however, not one of
them was forthright in sharing their struggles. Instead, they

34
 STEP

attempted to hide or divert attention from the seriousness of their

situation, often employing spiritual lingo to do so.’
The inability to look sin in the eye is active, even to the
broken man who has lost everything but his own life! This
dilemma was perfectly summarized by FitzSimons Allison in 1962:
“A lot of nonsense is talked about our seeking after God, when
actually the exact opposite is the case.”8 Sure, we may want God’s
help — just not in the area where we actually need it. Like a dog in
a veterinarian’s office trying to avoid having a cast put on its
broken leg, we struggle against the very thing we need to heal us.
The first of the Twelve Steps requires the “admission of
powerlessness”; the addict cannot access sobriety without traveling r

through that ugly door. sense,.this-means.that

In a_practical the _ j
Py

addict who is notina state.of. despair about hetplight must be \/

made to feel worse if she is to findlasting sobriety.°

Different Pictures of the Same Person

“The only difference between men and rats is that rats learn from their
mistakes.” -B, F. Skinner

Consider this recent headline from 2010: “Guy Shoots Himself

While Sleepwalking.” The reporter writes:

7 A theological term for this mindset is “total depravity”, or the idea that
humans ate both fundamentally sinful and unwilling to recognize their
sinfulness. This idea was formulated by Augustine and emphasized by John
Calvin during the Protestant Reformation. _
8 C. FitzSimons Allison, Fear, Love, and Worship (Vancouver, British
Columbia: Regent College Publishing, 1962), 12.
9 This need-based model finds its closest theological parallel in the world of
traditional Lutheranism, where the sinner must be crushed by his inability to
meet God’s demand (Law) before he will turn to appreciate the Gospel.

aD
GRACE IN ADDICTION

“Why do people keep loaded guns near their bed while

they sleep? For every crime in progress this stops,
another three ot four guys probably shoot themselves
while sleepwalking.” Like this man, who shot himself in the
knee. According to the Boulder Daily Camera, sixty-
three year old Sanford Rothman woke up at around 2:00
a.m. to a loud ‘Bang!’ He’d shot himself in the knee with
the nine-millimeter handgun he keeps by his bed.
Rothman was treated at a local hospital and released.’””!°

This is not a satirical article from The Onzon—it is a real article

about a teal person—and we offer it as an amusing portrait of
human nature as we have come to see it through the lens of the
Twelve Steps. This somewhat darkly tinted view is not only
espoused by AA, but also by the worlds of contemporary
psychology and, intriguingly, traditional Christian theology.
A classic example of this position comes from the
wonderful letter that St Paul wrote to the Galatian church. Paul
writes: “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spirit,
and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in
conflict with each other, so that yow do not do what you want? (5:17).11
The landscape described looks like a battlefield, full of ongoing
conflict in which the bad tends to win out over the good, vaguely
reminiscent of the Disney image of Donald Duck with an angel on
one shoulder and a devil on the other.!2 Again, we think of
Dynasty: “I Don’t Wanna Be a Freak (But I Can’t Help Myself).”
In reflecting on ourselves, we can see two people in the
same shell: there is the person we aspire to become, and then there
is the person who watches too much television, the one who nevet

10 Adrian Chen, “Guy Shoots Himself While Sleepwalking’, Gawker,

October 27, 2010, http://www.gawker.com/.
"| Except where otherwise noted, emphasis in quotes is added by the author.
12 Tt is worth noting that the devil beats the angel in every one of these
classic cartoon debates.

36
 STEP

makes use of the gym membership. These two people live

discordantly in the same body, and their tense interplay tells much
of the story of what it means to be human. William Faulkner had
the same insight when, in his Nobel Prize speech, he claimed that
all
itself” se humanitor
good literature concerns “the heart in conflict with
eee eeenn’

Understanding life’s dilemmas in this way is crucial if the

problem of alcoholism is to be properly addressed. The Big Book,
which is the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous, makes the same
point with a classic illustration about a jaywalker:

“Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with

respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a
passion, say, for jaywalking. He gets a thrill out of
skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles. He enjoys
himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up
to this point you would label him as a foolish chap
having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him and he
is slightly injured several times in succession. You would
expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Presently he
is hit again and this time has a fractured skull. Within a
week after leaving the hospital a fast-moving trolley car
breaks his arm. He tells you he has decided to stop
jaywalking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both
legs.
On through the years this conduct continues,
accompanied by his continual promises to be careful or
to keep off the streets altogether. Finally, he can no
longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to
ridicule. He tries every known means to get the
jaywalking idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in
an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he
comes out he races in front of a fire engine, which

Bi
GRACE IN ADDICTION

breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t

he?
You may think our illustration is too ridiculous.
But is it? We, who have been through the wringer, have
to admit if we substituted alcoholism for jaywalking, the
illustration would fit exactly. However intelligent we
may have been in other respects, where alcohol has
been involved, we have been strangely insane.”!

Let us now turn to the account of human behavior found in the

New Testament. The disciples who accompanied Jesus to the
gatden of Gethsemane exhibit undeniably jaywalker-like
tendencies. In fact, the description of how Jesus’ closest friends
acted in the moments tight before he was arrested and crucified is
nothing short of devastating. The events take place after Jesus had
finished three years of full-time ministry:

“They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus

said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took
Peter, James, and John along with him and he began to
be deeply distressed and troubled.
‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the
point of death’, he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep
watch.’
Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and
prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.

‘Abba, Fathet’, he said, ‘everything is possible for

you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but
what you will.’

13 Bill Wilson and Robert Smith, ; Asoholics Anon nymous (New York, NY:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc., 2001), 37-38. :

38
 STEP 1

Then he returned to his disciples and found them

sleeping.
‘Simon’, he said to Peter, ‘are you asleep?
Couldn’t keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray, so
that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is
willing, but the flesh is weak.’
Once more he went away and prayed the same
thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping,
because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what
to say to him.
Returning the third time, he said to them, ‘Are
you s#// sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has
come.””!4

What are we to say of Jesus’ final impressions of human nature in

the hours before he was taken away to be crucified? One wonders
if, had just one disciple been awake upon his return, Jesus
wouldn’t have said, “Phew, I don’t have to go through with this.
There’s hope for these folks yet.” But that does not happen. Right, |
up until the end, the people closest to Jesus did not seem to have
other than disappoint him.
the power to doanything aoe
It is worth pointing out that here, in this classic bit of
Lenten Scripture, we find two understandings of human nature.
There is the inaccurate one held by the disciples about themselves,
and then there is the one that is empirically true. Just as Peter had
earlier. promised he would never deny Jesus, here too the disciples
think they are capable of obeying their Lord, of controlling their
behavior, and of following through with their intentions. But they
ate not. That notion turns out to be what Socrates would call “a
wind egg” — a useless notion, a nonstarter. Their romantic

14 Mk 14:32-42. All Bible quotes are from the NIV translation. After the
disciples had fallen asleep, Peter then fumbles a second time. After swearing
his allegiance and loyalty, he denies Jesus three times in rapid succession.

39
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

impressions of themselves cannot account for their behavior. The

text, however, accounts for it completely. It sees through human
nature, and it understands the crucifixion as a direct response to
the disciples’ state of weakness and self-delusion.
The historical narrative remains identical, from the 1939
account of alcoholism all the way back to the report of what
happened 2000 years ago in the Garden of Gethsemane.'> Human
beings ate driven by their self-defeating chemistry; the narrative of
"wise decision-making does not bear out in reality. Like~the
paintings of Botero that caticature their subjects in obese
proportions, we find an uncomfortable ugliness when we look
below the surface of our lives.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), we do not have to look
exclusively to the past to find ourselves described accurately — we
may also look to the world of psychology. Sigmund Freud
famously pitted the idagainst the’superego’in a way that perfectly
maps onto the material being discussed. And tecent years have
witnessed a deluge of social psychology studies that draw similar
conclusions from empirical data.!° The following excerpt, for
example, comes from an article written by David McRaney about
the way people choose which movies to watch on Netflix:!7

“If you have Netflix, especially if you stream it to your

TV, you tend to gradually accumulate a cache of
hundreds of films you think you'll watch one day. This
is a bigger deal than you think. Take a look at your

15 For those interested in biblical criticism, the Bible’s deliberate parallel

between Genesis and Gethsemane makes this exact point: placed in ideal
conditions, we will always replicate our Fall.
16 See Daniel Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will ot David Eagleman’s
Incognito: The Secret Lives ofthe Brain:
‘7 For those who don’t use Netflix, it’s a subscription website that mails
DVDs to its users each month or allows them to watch movies online. The
queue is a personal list of films that the user plans to watch through Netflix.

40
 STEP 1

queue. Why ate there so many documentaries and

dramatic epics collecting virtual dust in there?
...A study conducted in 1999 by Read,
Loewenstein and Kalyanaraman had people pick three
movies out of a selection of twenty-four. Some were
lowbrow, like “Sleepless in Seattle” or “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
Some were highbrow, like “Schindler’s List.” In other
words, it was a choice between movies which promised
to fun and forgettable or would be memorable but
would require more effort to absorb...Most people
picked “Schindlet’s List” as one of their three. They
knew it was a great movie because all their friends said it
was. All of the reviews were glowing, and it earned
dozens of the highest awards. Most didn’t, however,
choose to watch it on the first day... This is sometimes
called “present bias”, being unableto grasp thatwhat
you.swant_will change over time. And what you want
now isn’t the same thing you will want later. Present bias
explains why you buy lettuce and bananas only to throw
them out later when you forget to eat them.
Present bias is why you’ve made the same
resolution ten years in a row but this time—you “mean
it.’ You ate going to lose weight and forge a six-pack of
abs so tipped you could deflect arrows...One day, you
have the choice between running around the block or
watching a movie. You choose a movie. Another day
you're out with friends and have a choice between a
cheeseburger and a salad. You choose the cheeseburger.
The slips become more frequent. But you keep saying
you'll get around to it. You'll start again on Monday,
which becomes a week from Monday. Your will
succumbs to a death by a thousand cuts...
You can try to fight it back. You can buy a daily
planner and a to-do list application for your phone. You

41
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

can write yourself notes and fill out schedules. You can
become a productivity junkie surrounded by
instruments to make life more efficient, but these tools
alone will not help, because the problem is not that you are a bad
a bad tachcaninthe war inside
manager ofyour time.
See a Youec areSe i EB

Throughout all of history, from the prophets of Baal to the

writings of Rousseau, from Thomas Jefferson to Oprah Winfrey,
we have wanted something different to be true. But the story has
not changed, nor will it. Indeed, until the guillotine-like reality is
acknowledged with all of its attendant implications, little spiritual
headway is ever made. The realization ofpowerlessness that hes at the
heart of the 1% Step comes to those who have lost confidence in themselves
through a string ofsuccessive defeats. It isthe last stop on the bus.
Simply put, the Twelve Steps are not appealing at the outset.
They are only ever completed by those who grasp their necessity.
Step 1 hammers home the final nail in the coffin of our naive hope
in our own abilities.

Powerlessness: “Where do | start, where do I begin?”

(The Chemical Brothers)

é \ "The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right
but by doing it wrong!"
-R. Rohr

A newcomer to AA spoke up in a meeting. She claimed that when

she finally understood the 1st Step — the fact that she was an
alcoholic — she “got a warm feeling all over. I finally knew that
everything was going to be’ okay.” A wise old-timer (someone
who’s been in the program a long time, often one with many years

42
 STEP 1

of sobriety) responded to her comment, saying in turn that “the

only warm feeling I got when I understood the 1st Step came from
the piss that was running down my leg.” It’s a rather crass way of
making the point, but it affirms that the initial truth of the 1st Step
is bad news, not good news. In and of itself, the 1st Step offers no
encouragement. In fact, it discourages. It pulls the rug out from
under us, and an appropriate response to this personal checkmate
is fear. The 1st Step is the recognition that our faculties are
insufficient to surmount the internal and external obstacles that we
encounter in a fallen world.
In spite of how human wiring for self-preservation stands in
unending opposition to weakness, the first of the Twelve Steps
requires the “admission of powerlessness.” As we mentioned
earlier, sometimes the addict must be made to feel worse before
recovery can begin. I remember the story of a wise AA named
Chuck T., who was asked to visit the penthouse apartment of a
man who had called an AA hotline. Chuck drove to a high-rise
apartment building on the fancier side of Cleveland, an area called
“the Gold Coast” with which he was not at all familiar. He took
the elevator to the top floor. When the door opened, Chuck
stepped into plush shag carpeting that came up to his ankles. The
whole apartment was lined with windows, and he couldn’t help
but notice the incredible view of the entire city at night. He walked
into the living room, where he found an ill-tempered man sitting
on a white leather couch, with a martini glass in his hand.
Chuck introduced himself: “I’m here from AA.” The man
looked Chuck up and down and said, “I want to kill myself.”
“Do you have a pen and paper handy?” asked Chuck in
response.
“Didn’t you hear me? I want to kill myself!’
Chuck answered, “Yes, I heard you. Did you hear me? I
need a pen and a piece of paper.” The agitated fellow pointed back
toward the kitchen and muttered something. Chuck left the room,

43
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

but he returned a few moments later with a pen and paper in

hand.
Chuck placed them on the coffee table in front of the guy,
and then he said,
“Tf you sign all of this over to me, I'll push you.” The man
was completely undone by this unanticipated suggestion. It
opened the door to a very important conversation. And so another
member of AA began his walk into sobriety.
This tale illustrates the great spiritual insight that lies on the
front end of AA’s understanding of spiritual growth —_that_it
begins with defeat. Chuck’s offer to push the man drove him in
the direction of appatent hopelessness, but it was precisely there
that the man found counterintuitive hope and the beginnings of
recovery. The brilliant insight at the core of AA’s theology 1isthis: 2a
A,
sao person finds real hope by being directed avayfrom false hope.
The idea itself is not foreign to traditional Christian thought.
The nineteenth-century Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard was
fond of trying to inspire the same kind of reaction in his readers.
Attempting to make a similar point, he once wrote an essay
entitled “Thoughts That Wound from Behind — for Upbuilding.”
He also famously described the sometimes-constructive roles of
despair and anxiety in Christian life. Along the same lines, in his
book Grace in Practice, Paul Zahl points out that “theology does not
start from the top; itbegins from thebottom...It begins with our
enmeshed and constricted need.”18 Tt isdoubtful that Chuck T
ever read any of these pieces, but these same truths of human life
have been observed and articulated by many different people.
By emphasizing weakness in Step 1, AA is actually teaching
us something theological: The Twelve Steps posit that God is
found ee) in | the midst oR F weakness. — not in strength,"He
Cy coarse emirtee

18 Paul F.M. Zahl, Grace in Practice:_A Theology of Everyday Life (Grand Rapid
MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 94. of Everyday Life ( apids,

44
 STEP 1

saves people primarily from themselves. In this respect, He is

rightly understood to be a “savior.” Of course, rescue is also the
thrust of the Bible’s message and the heart of the Christian
Gospel.
It is unfortunate that this simple catch-22 — that the only
way you can find God is if you desperately need Him — stands in
direct opposition to the widespread, even dominant notion in
today’s churches that the spiritual life begins with bold decision
and virtuous intention, usually a personal choice to believe in God
or to live a morally sound lifestyle. People in contemporaty
churches occasionally talk of God as redeemer, but there is also an
enormous amount of rhetoric about God as teacher, friend,
inspiration, or coach. In AA, there is only one thing: God is whoyou.
need to save you. And if you do not find Him, you are in serious
trouble — in exactly the way the jaywalking example illustrates.
Gerhard Forde modeled his understanding of spirituality on
the same view of human nature which AA affirms. Using the
realities of addiction as a tool for understanding our spiritual
predicament, he writes:

“T use the analogy of addiction throughout the book in

the attempt to demonstrate the difference between the
theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross. The
theologian of glory is like one who considers curing
addiction by optimistic exhortation. The theologian of
the cross knows that the cure is much mote drastic...
[Theologians of the cross] operate on the assumption
that there must be — to use the language of treatment
for addicts — a ‘bottoming out’ or an ‘intervention.’
That is to say, there is no cure for the addict on hus own.
In theological terms, we must come to confess that we
are addicted to sin, addicted to self, whatever form that
may take, pious or impious...‘The remedy for curing

45
GRACE IN ADDICTION

desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it.

>

The cross does the extinguishing. The cross is the death

of sin, and the sinner. The cross does the ‘bottoming
out.’ The cross is the ‘intervention’...“For a resurrection 10 ty
happen, there must first be a death. The truth must be heatd--
and confessed; then there is hope. A new life can begin,
and with it a new sense of self-worth can blossom. For
in the end we arrive, as we shall see, at the love of God,
which creates anew out of nothing. So we begin the
journey.”!

If Forde is right, then AA possesses a profound understanding of

some of the deeper and more elusive spiritual ideas that lie at the
heart of the Christian faith. For the spiritually hungry AA member
looking to explore more deeply the gut-level material he has
encountered in the program, church history will provide a rich
harvest.
At the same time, contemporary churches aren’t always
entirely faithful to the Christian tradition — especially in their view
of human nature. AA, therefore, can help the Church recover
parts of its own history. The spiritual dynamics of the 1st Step
could be a welcome influence in mainstream evangelical culture.
Imagine, for example, that you’re walking into a church. To be
admitted through the front door, you’re forced to sign a waiver
that says, "I’m a sinnet and by stepping into the room today I
acknowledge that fact." Though it would probably make you
uncomfortable and nervous at the door, it would ultimately be
comforting, and it would communicate an honest view of
ourselves and others, one that might dispel the feelings of pressure

19 Gerhard O} Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's

Heidelberg Disputation,1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 15-17, 19.

46
 STEP 1

and moral judgment which have repelled many from the church’s
doors.
Of course, you can come into church these days and sign up
for any number of identities: casual Christmas and Easter
churchgoer, devout and “good” Christian, intellectual believer with
all the right answers — the list goes on, but the simple (and,
incidentally, biblical) label of “sinner” is not one we usually wish to
assume. This church environment often disillusions church
regulars, repels potential members, and can cripple people’s ability
to be honest about their shortcomings. To be just a sinner, plain
and simple, is often foreign to the practical, daily culture of
churches, even though this identity is the foundational one in
classic Christianity.?°
InAA, onthe other hand, there isonlythe
theoption
¢ of sinner. nN geinn

It is sometimes said in AA that‘‘aperson doesn’t attend AA in

order to stay sober; they attend inorder to remember t
that
at
they are
drunks.” In this sense, AA’s view of human nature and its
ae

corresponding view of sanctification are closely intertwined. We

see this clearly in the Twelve Steps’ repeated theme that a person
Nil,

changes byekonsitlesing one’s reluctance to change. When ‘God

allows an individual to se€ the (agly) trath about human nature
and agency, genuine transformation naturally follows. When God
allows a group to see these truths, an environment of compassion,
honesty, and openness prevails.

These ideas aren’t foreign to Christianity; indeed, they’re dertved

from it. In three of the four Gospel accounts, for example, Jesus
plainly addresses the concern of inwardness: “Nothing that enters |
a person from the outside can defile him...what comes out of a

20 In 1 Timothy, Paul writes that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners — of whom I am the worst” (1:15). His own identity of “sinner” is
fundamental for Paul’s understanding of Jesus as rescuer.

47
GRACE IN ADDICTION

person is what defiles him’ (Mk 7:18-20) External conduct does

little to help someone; Jesus compares the most outwardly
respectable people to “whitewashed tombs” (Mt 23:27). Like
Jesus oe Age eras) external problems by dealing first with the

one’s illusion £ self-reliance, so that “whoever loses their

RSlifefor
me will save it” (Lk 9:24), This backhanded movement of recovery
defines AA. Again, this knowledge of our own limitations and its
attendant humility prepares the way for true spirituality: “Iti
isnot
the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. [Jesus did not}come
to call the righteous, but.sinners” (Mk 2:17). And so Step 1
expresses, itt a beautiful way, a fundamental point of Christian
doctrine.
For both the Church and for AA newcomers, this idea of
our own limitations is unattractive. AA’s ingredients of
desperation and disillusionment with willpower force alcoholics to
acknowledge the truth that they are sick, limited, internally sinful.
And yet it’s still a hard truth to sell. A Franciscan monk named
Richard Rohr voiced the frustration inherent in sharing this
sobering viewpoint with others:

"How do you make attractive that which is not? How

do you sell nonsuccess? How do you talk descent when
verything is about ascent? How do you talk about
dying to a church trying to appear perfect?... This is not
going to work (which might be my first step).’”21

So how does this theological bent apply directly to the life of the
non-alcoholic individual?

21 Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New Yor
NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2003), 26. oa ies ‘

48
 STEP 1

Step 1 for Everyone: Life Unmanageable

"Everyone either has a problem, is a problem, or lives with a problem."

-Sam Shoemaker

One might ask where the non-alcoholic is to find a foothold in the

1st Step without taking up a rather rigorous program of drinking
and substance abuse. This dilemma has been present in AA ever
since its inception: it was first thought that only severe alcoholics
were able to gain access to the program of recovery because of the
“bottoming out” required to motivate someone to work the
Twelve Steps. The necessary ingredient was described as “the gift
of desperation.”
Needless to say, AAs soon discovered that a bottom could
be raised to the point where it would hit a potential alcoholic as
long as the evidence of a problem was already manifesting itself. A
person did not have to hit the low depths that many had reached
in order to begin recovery. She only had to come to view the
symptoms of her problem in relation to the same underlying
problems suffered by alcoholics: addiction, powerlessness, defeat,
unmanageability, or limitation.??
We can say with great confidence that the only person
lacking desperation is the one who does not know herself very
well. Usually a few examples of typical, universal human difficulty
are enough to “raise the bottgm” to the point where the idea of
powerlessness will cofinect with any layperson. Let’s explore some
of these.

22 “Tt was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to
the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking
histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of
control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the
beginning of a fatal progression” (72 ¢ 72, 23).

49
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Commonplace Powerlessness in the Non-Alcoholic

‘Left to my own devices (1probably would)” -Pet Shop Boys

Every person lives a life rife with powerlessness. Whether or not

they ate reticent to face their own weaknesses in no way
determines whether or not they have them. Soren Kierkegaard
posited as much in his book Szckness unto Death when he wrote:

“Tt makes no difference whether the person in despair ts ignorant

that his condition is despair — he is in despair just the
same...Compated with the person who is conscious of
his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of
his despair is simply a negativity further away from the
truth and deliverance...This form of despair (ignorance
of it) is the most common in the world.’”3

Step 1 allows individuals to reflect upon the “unmanageable”

aspects of their lives, developing the sort of honesty which
Kierkegaard espoused.
Like Swiss cheese, people are full of holes. The Twelve Step
approach is quick to draw attention to those holes, rather than try
to dodge, cover, or counterbalance them. So which weaknesses
tend to be present universally? The Big Book provides its own list:

“We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn’t apply to

out human problems this same readiness to change our
point of view. We wete having trouble with personal
relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures,
we were prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t
make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were

*3 Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980), 44-45.

50
 STEP 1

full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of

real help to other people...” (52)

I have yet to meet the person who cannot identify with a least one
of the items on that list. Who, for example, is a stranger to fear?
Jesus offered a similar list in his famous Sermon on the Mount,
but his list also included anger, lust, and anxiety. These are the
“classics”, and they account for much of the content of the day-to-
day experience of being human.?4
Using similar logic, AA would liken sin to sickness. R. C.
Sproul voiced this sentiment when he wrote, “We are not sinners
because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.” We would happily
extrapolate along those same lines: “we are not alcoholics because
we drink uncontrollably; we drink uncontrollably because we are
alcoholics.” Have you ever thought of misdoing as a kind of
illness? Like an allergy or a virus, self-centeredness cannot easily be
mastered or controlled. The good news is that our negative
attributes can become a bedrock upon which effective spirituality
can be built. Without them, there is no hope for spiritual
rejuvenation; in the place of health, there is apparently no need for
recovery.
The realization of our own weakness is so counterintuitive
to human nature that the revelation can be rightly ascribed to the
divine. A Christian would ascribe this work to the Holy Spirit. The
old-fashioned word for it is repentance.?5

24 At this point in the reading, you might pause for five minutes, and ask
yourself: where is my life unmanageable? What things am I afraid of (even
though I know better)? Am I angry at anyone? What makes me angry? What
makes me anxious? What are my worst personality traits according to others?
Do they have a point? Do I have any tendencies that tend to get in the way
of my relationships with other people? In what ways, if any, do I try to justify
these traits and tendencies? What are my worst problems in life?
25 Along similar lines, a passage from Scripture comes to mind. “Godly
sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret...” (2
Cor 7:10).

Dil
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

And so it is with the entire progression of AA’s Twelve

Steps. As the ego is deflated and self-confidence is discouraged at
every turn, something called “faith”, or “God-confidence”
miraculously beginsto take its place — although it doesn’t appear
that way to the subject at first. In Step 12, AA refers to the fruit of
this faith as “‘a spiritual awakening.”
We close this section on Step 1 with an incisive quote from
the sixteenth-century English theologian Richard Hooker:

"My eager protestations, made in the glory of my ghostly

strength, I am ashamed of; but those crystal tears, wherewith my
sin and weakness was bewailed, have procured my endless joy;
my strength hath been my ruin, and my fall my stay."

22
 Step 2

“Came to Believe That a Power Greater Than

Ourselves Could Restore Us to Sanity.”

“Of course we must beheve; but only because there is nothing leftfor us to do
but beheve.”
-Robert Farrar Capon \
(we }
“First you ‘come.’ Then_you ‘come to.’ Then you ‘come to believe.””
-AA slogan

Have you heard the one about the broke farmer? He decided that
he would have to sell his prize female pigs in order to keep his
business afloat. So he loaded his pigs into the back of his truck and
headed to the State Fair. When he got there, he met another
farmer who was in a very similar position, only he was in
possession of a bunch of prize male pigs. And so the two of them
hatched a plan: rather than selling their pigs, they would mate
them and sell off the piglets.

53
GRACE IN ADDICTION

The only problem was finding a place where the pigs could
mate, as their farms were sixty miles apart. After some discussion,
they decided to meet at a field about thirty miles from each of
their farms.
The next morning, the farmer drove his pigs to the
rendezvous point and sent them off into the field to mate with the
males. While they waited together, he asked his new buddy, “How
will I know when they’re pregnant?” The farmer replied, “The
easiest way is this: when you get up in the morning, if your pigs are
out grazing in the meadow, then they’re pregnant. If your pigs are
playing around in the mud, then they’re not pregnant.”
So the next morning the farmer woke up early and ran to
the window to watch his pigs. They were all in the mud, so he
hosed them off, loaded them into the back of the truck, and drove
to the meeting point. The next morning he woke up, and again he
found the same thing: the pigs were not in the field but in the
mud. So each day he continued to drive them to meet the males.
Things continued this way for a few exhausting weeks, until
one morning he slept through his alarm. His wife came upstairs to
wake him.
He said, “Oh, I overslept. Will you just do me a quick favor
and look out the window to see if the pigs are in the mud or in the
field?”
She walked over and looked out the window.
“Neither”, she said. “They’te in the back of the truck and
one of them is in the front, honking the horn.”

It’s a silly story, but it points to the idea that oftentimes there is a
difference between what we think has been happening and what
has actually been happening. The early portion of the Twelve
Steps understands this. The first few steps offer a person the
opportunity to look back over his life and recent events. What he
often finds is that there are different ways to make sense of his

54
 STEP 2

past, and his prior explanations are not always sufficient to explain
his self-destructive behavior. .
Step 2 advocates that people “come to believe in a power
greater than themselves.” In the last chapter, we spoke at some
length about the backhanded movement of the AA method, that
the Twelve Steps bring a person to where they need to be by
drawing attention not to the ideal, but rather to the individual’s
distance from that ideal. Step 2 continues in this vein, beginning
with a reflection on one’s own reluctance towards belief.

Hairballs and Personal Religious History

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
-John 3:5

A few years ago a movie called Junebug was released. It tells the
story of a worldly, sophisticated New Yorker who falls in love
with and marries a successful art dealer. He is originally from rural
North Carolina and slightly embarrassed about his humble roots.
Nonetheless, when business brings them to the vicinity, he decides
to introduce his new bride to his family. During the visit, they find
themselves attending a pancake supper at the church he grew up
in, where he used to sing in the choir. The pastor twists his arm
into singing once again for the congregation. It’s a moving scene,
and we see that his new wife finds the moment quite stirring. The
lead is reengaging with a side of his past that he’s spent a lot of
time trying to bury. This reengagement is an accurate portrait of
many people’s experience with Step 2.
~Many.
of us.only-beeome.wwilling tobelieve insomething
new
after.we-have.first realized our hesitation to do so. As a parallel,
people tend to become more open- -minded_ only after they have

55
GRACE IN ADDICTION

examined their closed-mindedness. Step 2 seeks to trigger spiritual

growth with a similar approach.
An AA old-timer once observed that “Step 2 is all about
defiance.” People who need to change must become awate of the
ways in which they are opposed to changing or have failed to do
so. When it comes to spiritual conviction, people often have a
block of bad memories, expetiences, or justifications for their old
way of life, much like hairballs in a cat’s throat. If the hairball
becomes too large, it cannot be digested and must instead be
coughed up before new food can be consumed. Step 2 begins this
process of coughing up one’s past through personal reflection.
The primary author of the Big Book and cofounder of AA,
Bill Wilson, relayed his equivalent of coughing up a hairball in a
portion of the text entitled “Bill’s Story”. Apparently Bill was just
starting to think about religious ideas afresh when a former
drinking buddy appeared on his doorstep, sober and having “got
religion” (9). As Bill spoke with his friend, he found himself
thinking about the old ideas, impressions, and memories he had
carried with him for so many years. We'll let him speak for
himself:

“[My friend] had come to pass his experience along to

me — if I cared to have it. Iwas shocked, but interested.
Certainly I was interested. I had to be,for Iwas hopeless.
...I had always believed in a Power greater than
myself. I had often pondered these things... But that
was as far as I had gone.
With ministers, and the world’s religions, I parted
right there. When they talked of a God personal to me,
who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I
became irritated and my mind snapped shut against
such a theory.

56
 STEP)2,

But my friend sat before me, and he made the

point-blank declaration that God had done for him
what he could not do for himself. His human will had
failed. Doctors pronounced him incurable. Society was
about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted
complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised
from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a
level of life better than the best he had ever known!
Had this power originated in him? Obviously it
had not. There had been no more power in him than
there was in me at that minute; and this was none at
all...
Despite the living example of my friend there
remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The
word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the
thought was expressed that there might be a God
personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn’t like
the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative
Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I
resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however
loving His sway might be. I have since talked with
scores of men who felt the same way.” (9-12)

Most of us are just like Bill in this regard. We harbor a religious

history, usually one which stands in the way of immediate spiritual
progress. It is must be “coughed up” before any forward
movement can occur.2° The amazing thing is that no other
seeking, apart from these types of reflections, seems to be required
to begin spiritual growth. The subject te-engages with his past and
reflects on the extent to which he’s been reluctant to consider

26 Practically, AAs often do this by talking over the material with another
person, one who is not antagonistic toward such ideas.

bY,
GRACE IN ADDICTION

anything new. Again, someone “comes to believe” by

acknowledging the extent to which he has been unwilling to do so.
It is astonishing that nothing has to be done, that things
simply have to be voiced—as they are—in order for new changes
to begin. The individual does not have to come to God. Instead,
people begin coughing up religious hairballs once they are forced
to acknowledge their powerlessness in Step 1. Because the
alcoholic cannot save himself, he must look outside himself by re-
examining his religious history. Coming to believe, as the opening
AA slogan expresses, is merely a product of the now-familiar mix
of meetings, desperation, humility, and honesty about oneself. As
this mix pushes someone toward spiritual self-examination, belief
naturally develops. God, in other words, comes to us.

Working Step 2

When I was a boy, my mother used to make disparaging

comments about bubblegum chewing, especially when it was
audible. For her, the sound of people “smacking their gum’’ was
just about the worst thing in the world, and needless to say, her
little sermons on the issue permanently shaped my own view of
bubblegum. In a similar light, sometimes our past experience
colors the way we evaluate new things. The Big Book is quick to
warn us about such biased assessments of the world:

“Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual
terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they
mean to you...we often found ourselves handicapped
by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice.
Many of us have been so touchy that even casual
reference to spiritual things made us bristle with

58
 STEP 2

antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be

abandoned.” (47-48)

At this point, you might pause to reflect upon your personal

history with spirituality and religion: On a scale of 1 to 10, how
willing are you to explore new ideas about spiritualitye Did you
have any experience with religion when you were growing up?
What do you remember of it? What do you think about religion in
general? Do you have any “scripts” about religious people that you
have recited on more than one occasion? Perhaps you’ve decided
that religious people are phonies because “actions speaking louder
than words.” If you’ve known religious people who have
mistreated you or others, then perhaps you believe, as one AA
newcomer said, that “the proof with religious people is in the
pudding...and I have yet to taste any good religious pudding.”
Have you had any negative experiences with Christians? What
happened? What events have helped define your position on
spiritual matters? Have you ever had any positive spiritual
experiences? Again, what happened?
These kinds of questions can help us to be more objective in
our consideration of spiritual matters. They enable a person to
work Step 2.

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 Step 3

“Made a Decision to Turn Our Will and Our

Lives Over to the Care of God As We
Understood Him.”

“Tf I could hve my hfe over again I'd change every single thing I’ve ever done.”
-Ray Davies, lead singer of The Kinks

“Every morning I wake up, look the enemy dead in the eye...and then I shave
him.
-AA saying

The animated film Finding Nemo tells the story of a young fish
named Nemo and his father.?” At the beginning of the movie, we
learn that when Nemo was just an infant, his mother was eaten by

27 Many of these insights about Finding Nemo came from Nick Lannon’s
entry in Mockingbird’s The Gospel According to Pixar (Charlottesville, VA:
Mockingbird, 2010).

61
GRACE IN ADDICTION

a shark. Nemo’s father, Marlin, blames himself for his wife’s death,
believing that he abandoned her at that crucial moment. As a
result, Marlin becomes incredibly over-protective, the aquatic
version of a hovering “helicopter parent.” So much so, in fact, that
he tefuses to let Nemo attend school, even though his son is of
kindergarten age. Marlin cannot relinquish the reigns of his son’s
care to anyone for fear that something terrible will happen. Nemo
naturally becomes frustrated by his father’s paranoia and starts to
rebel.
Soon, in spite of Marlin’s best attempts to maintain control
of his son’s well-being, Nemo is caught in a fisherman’s net and
taken to live in an aquarium. A devastated Marlin becomes even
more fearful and controlling, his neurosis driven by a deep love for
his son. And so he sets out in search of Nemo, embarking on a
journey which takes him into many unsettling and dangerous
situations. At a crucial moment in the movie, Marlin and his light-
hearted (and seemingly unintelligent) friend Dory are sucked into
the mouth of a whale and trapped there.
After a few minutes, the water begins to drain into the
whale’s belly, leaving huge pockets of air in its wake. Dory tells
Marlin, “It’s okay, I speak whale... He says we should swim to the
back of his throat.” Paralyzed with fear, Marlin replies, “No way!
Of course that’s what he wants; he wants to eat us!” Dory urges
him to reconsider and then swims to the back of the whale’s
mouth without him. Marlin desperately grabs onto one of the
protruding taste buds on the whale’s tongue so that he won’t be
swallowed. But soon the water line recedes, and Marlin is left
grasping the taste bud, holding his breath because he is now out of
the water.
To the world of AA, Marlin’s actions represent the opposite
of all spirituality. Marlin, in’ attempting to hold onto a sense of
personal control and autonomy, only manages to hurt himself. The

62
 SERS

exact actions that Marlin believes will save him are actually the things that will
kill him. :
Eventually, Marlin can hold his breath no longer. He loses
his grip and falls to the back of the dark whale mouth, where Dory
is waiting for him. Suddenly there is a tremendous surge of water,
and they are expelled through the creature’s blowhole into
freedom in the open sea. When he comes to himself, Marlin
realizes that Dory was right about the whale, that his approach had
only created anxiety and, finally, that the whale knew better than
he did.
Moments later Marlin finds Nemo, who is thrilled to be
reunited with his father. On top of that, Marlin is overjoyed about
his second chance at fathering his son. This story provides us with
a helpful vantage point for making sense of Step 3, where “we
made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of
God.”
AAs frequently claim that God and the alcoholic are at odds
with each other. They talk about the alcoholic who “takes his will
back.” This inability to permanently acquiesce once and for all to
the will of God keeps a sober alcoholic in a never-ending state of
working the Twelve Steps. The premise here is that God’s will
typically stands in opposition to the inclination of the alcoholic’s
self-centered will.28 The church historian Karl Holl describes how
Martin Luther perfectly understood this spiritual dynamic: “For
domestic life, [Luther] gave the advice sober people have always
given: in case ofdoubt choose what is contrary to_your natural inchnations.”2°
One wise AA member put it like this: “I_neverlet go of anything

28 This is not just the case for newcomers, but for old-timers too. “You
never graduate from having to work the Twelve Steps.”
29 Karl Holl, The Reconstruction ofMorality, ed. James Luther Adams and Walter
F. Bense (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg publishing House, 1979). Another
great example comes from the TV show Seinfeld, in an episode whete a
perennially jobless and lonely George decides that the path to success is
doing the opposite of everything he would normally do.

63
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

that didn’t have claw marks on it.” We are like Marlin fighting the
current in the whale’s moutlt, or like Jacob in the Old Testament
as he wrestled with God throughout the night.
In the life of faith, we undergo the painful experience of
losing what we want in order to find what God would instead
offer. We lose the old way of doing things to find a new way. The
experience of losing # God is one that ultimately brings joy.*° God
is much more powerful (and sneakier) than any individual’s ability
to dodge Him. God can even trick us into wanting the thing He
wants for us. This is the case both in the initial encounter and in
the fresh re-encounter with God.
ae Step 3 also has a baptismal vibe. The person who takes Step
3 desires to discover a new version of life. She prays a prayer
asking God to take over. In this way, Step 3 ends in the loss of an
old, failed life, suggesting that at some point a new life will be
found or, rather, it will find you. In Christian terms, this step
involves the death of the “old self’ in hopes that God will
resurtrect someone anew.?! As the Big Book puts it, “We were
reborn” (63).

How it Works: Janet Jackson and “Control”

“Let me give you a truth that can make all the difference in the world:
almost everything you think, about doing to make something better is wrong
and will only make that something worse...Trying harder doesn’t work.”
-Steve Brown, Three Free Sins

30 We think this is an accurate assessment, though maybe it’s more accurate

to say that AA’s approach brings less agony than any other approach.
31 Theologically, this is the death of the “Old Adam” — the man who’s
con obsessed with his own priorities and desire for mastery over his
world.

64
 STEP 3

Again, Step 3 calls for a confrontation with the “unspiritual” life

and the motivations that drive it, and as such, it is the first time
that the program explicitly highlights the overarching and
indissoluble tension between God and the self. As we find in one
of the Big Book’s more infamous passages: “Selfishness and self-
centeredness. That, we think, is the primary root of all our
troubles. [We are] driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion
and self-seeking” (62). How do these factors play out in the
human heart, and what is their role in perpetuating our doubts
about God’s better will for our lives?
In 1987, Janet Jackson released the hit single “Control.” She
sang, “Control, never gonna stop/ Control, to get what I want/
Control, got to have a lot.” The song is a perfect encapsulation of
the Marlin mentality. How many of us think that the key to |
=

individual success and happiness has to do with effort and internal |

volition? How many of us believe that willpower is the crucial
factor in giving ourselves a life that is worth living? Popular
advertising urges us to “never give up” or “just do it” or “make it |
happen”, and pop culture constantly emphasizes “action” as the \
\
way forward. These slogans not only exist in our culture, but also i

they seem wired into the DNA of human existence — and this is a
dire problem. The Big Book puts it like this: {|

“Most people try to live by self-propulsign... Each

person is like an actor who wants to run the whole
show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet,
the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If
his arrangements would only stay put, if only people
would do as he wished, the show would be
great... What usually happens? The show doesn’t come
off very well...He decides to exert himself more” (61).

65
GRACE IN ADDICTION

What is meant by “self-propulsion”’? Propulsion is the forward

drive or inertia of an object that determines its movement from
one point to another. Think of a propeller. It spins, and the
movement enables it to push whatever it is attached to forward.
According to this analogy, the individual is trying to act as the
driving force behind her own life. Self-propulsion is the idea that I
am the one who makes myself move, or “I am the master of my
fate: I am the captain of my soul’, as the classic poem teaches
students.72
One does not have to look far to find expressions of this
philosophy. I recently saw a billboard in an airport which showed
a young Indonesian girl, standing in the midst of a rice paddy.
Next to her, in bold red letters, were the words: “I AM
POWERFUL.” The caption in no way described what I saw in the
photograph. I saw two opposing ideas next to each other, yet
separated by a vast gulf. There was assertion of power, inscribed in
bold red letters. And then there was a child, a perfect portrait of all
that is wonderful about the lack of power. I saw humility,
weakness, beauty, and joy; lots of things, but not so-called
“power.”
People that “livebyself-propulsion” understand themselves
+
earners iensnpn Sla

_to be their own source of power. Their success hinges upon their
performance. Step 3 questions the efficacy of this philosophy.3
In order to do so, the Big Book likens the addict to an actor
“who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the
lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own
way.” What is acting, and what does an actor do? Actors play the

°2 For what it’s worth, these famous words from William Earnest Henley’s
“Invictus” were quoted by Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, as his
final statement before his execution.
°° The spiritual life espoused by AA typically identifies much more strongly
with the child than with the slogan about power. Christianity, too, values the
giving up of power far more than the assertion of it.

66
 STEP:3

parts that are assigned to them. They assume the roles that are
given to them. An actor prepares for his role by strict adherence to
a script and occasional pointers from a director. But the actor we
read about in the Big Book seems confused about his job
description. If anything, he has very little interest in his own role,
but an ambitious interest in the roles of the other players. What
kind of acting is that? Bad acting at best.
There is a different name for the person who runs the show,
who arranges the lights, the choreography, the scenery and the rest
of the players. That person is called a “director.” The Big Book
metaphor describes an actor who thinks he is a director. Can you
imagine the chaos that would break out on set if one of the actors
tried suddenly to usurp the director’s job? The chaos probably
wouldn’t last very long, because the actor would soon be on his
way out the door and in search of a new job!
The actor who is trying to play the director is busy
functioning in an incorrect capacity, and no amount of effort and
good ideas on his part can change that. Similarly, charitable actions
that are motivated by self-interest are misguidedly conceived, no
matter how many warm smiles and polite gestures introduce them.
They take little actual account of the other’s well-being and,
instead, view other people — even loved ones — as means to a
personal end, which is usually an ill-conceived attempt at self-
satisfaction and comfort. It is fair to say that our agendas often
hamper our ability to be of service. In this respect, we see how
love may quickly morph into manipulation.
In AA, people ate understood to be actors, “God
and is the
director.” This is not meant as an insult so much as a
straightforward description of the natural order of creation.
Imagine further the insanity that would ensue if a// of the actors in
a show somehow got the same wrong idea about their roles, and
they a// started trying to control the production simultaneously,
each with a different idea of how the story should be written.

67
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

Would it not be like the argumentative first cousins who got into a
pushing match when their grandmother atrived for a Thanksgiving
visit? As the fight broke out, one of them screamed: “She’s not
your gtandmother; she’s mine!” Warring narratives make for bad
friendships, and a bunch of confused actors is not a pleasant
image. Do you know any confused actors?
Malcolm Gladwell commented on this problematic mindset
in an interview about his book Outhers: The Story of Success. He was
asked to what extent his book was actually an attack on the
philosophy of “rugged individualism, and the myth of American
success.” His answer was illuminating:

“In some ways this book is somewhere between a

corrective and a full-scale assault on the way Western
society in general and American society in particular has
thought about success over the last few hundred years.
You know, we have fallen in love with this notion of the
self-made man, of the rags-to-riches story, of the idea
that if you make it to the top of your profession you
deserve a salary of 20 million dollars a year because
you're the one responsible for getting to the top. Why
shouldn’t you be richly rewarded? And that idea and
that ethos has permeated virtually every way in which
we think about.achievement,.and.1.think that,that idea is
completely false; it’s worse than false, it’s dangerous!”

The respective worlds of AA and Christian theology both agree

Fe “Speke ea inee ener ee

dangerous,” still the very antithesis of spirituality. Of course, we> ~~
might take it a step further, claiming that what Gladwell considers
typical of “Western society in general and Ametican society in
particular” is in fact found’in all cultures, though perhaps with

68
 STEPR3

varying sets of emphases. The idea of the self-made man is

certainly far from unique, historically speaking.
A remarkably similar debate concerning spiritual self-
propulsion occurred in the third century between a monk named
Pelagius and a theologian named Augustine. Pelagius insisted that
God had created people in such a way that their religious well-
being was up to them. For him, everything centered on the
attributes of self-discipline and unceasing effort. Though Pelagius
admitted these traits were God-given, in practice his ideas allowed
people to follow and defend their natural inclination toward being
the masters of their souls. Augustine, like Gladwell, saw the fallacy
of this reductionist and self-oriented train of thought. He knew
that such a philosophy left little room for failure, and therefore no
room for grace and the activity of God. The self-will approach was
labeled a heresy by the early church, for it would have destroyed
the need for the absolution upon which the Christian faith
centered. Why would God, after all, create individuals in such a
way that they would no longer have any need for Him?34
Step 3 does a wonderful job of separating the spiritual wheat
from the well-intentioned but romantic chaff of the “self-made
man”. The Big Book puts it like this:

“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this

selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that
possible. And there seems no way of getting rid of self
without His aid. Many of us had moral and
philosophical convictions galore but we could not live
up to them, even though we would have liked to.
Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by

34 St, Paul himself took similar issue with a destructive group of theologians
in Galatia in the First Century. He wrote: “I do not set aside the grace of
God, for if righteousness could be gained through (obedience to) the
law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 2:21).

69
GRACE IN ADDICTION

wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have

God’s help... 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 marshaled by the will,
were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack ofpower, that was our
dilemma.” (62, 45)

As we saw in Finding Nemo, the philosophy of self-propulsion and

self-direction fails in its attempt to create happiness. In fact, it
often creates the exact opposite of the thing it intends: chaos and
tragedy instead of peace and contentment. For this reason, AAs
ate fond of saying: “My best thinking got me here [to a state of
destitution and alcoholism].”

Anything Would Be Better Than What I’ve Got

“...there was nothing left but to pick up the kit of spiritual tools that was
laid at our feet...”
-Big Book (25)

At the very end of Whit Stillman’s novelization of his film The Last
Days of Disco, one of the lead characters, Des, sees the truth about
himself for the first time:

“Do you know the Shakespearean admonition

‘To thine own self be true’?” [Des] asked.
I nodded, of course.
“Tt’s premised,” he said, “on the idea that ‘thine
own self is something pretty good, ‘being true’ to which
is ‘commendable.’ What if ‘thine own self is not so
good? What if it’s ‘pretty bad’? Wouldn’t it be better not

70
 STEPS

to be true to thine own self in that case? You see, that’s

my situation,”

Des hilariously expresses the 3% Step insight, namely, that truth

often feels more like a personal disintegration than a
breakthrough. His remark is similar to what many in AA call a
“spiritual ambush.” Perhaps it’s more like a surprise birthday
party? Either way, the 34 Step points to the idea that God's work in
the lifeofan individual is primarily
and necessarily deconstructive. er
The world desperately needs an alternative to the
philosophy of self-sufficiency, even if most of us ate too
_ belligerent to be aware of its existence. The good news we find in
AA is that we do not need to be aware of better options in order
to make spiritual progress. No understanding of the thing that lies
on the other side of the veil is required. Exhaustion is the key. As
one Church of England bishop put it, “God meets us at our point
of
need.”
When self-defeating thought collapses in on itself, a
newfound spirituality begins to seep in through the fissures. A
fancy theological word for this is “apophaticism”, or the method
of arriving at truth through the process of deconstructing false
ideas, rather than straightforwardly emphasizing true ones. In my sincrtictge,
ne

own Damascus Road experience, I simply realized that I was living ines
art

my life backwards.

True Mysticism: Life in Reality

‘Reality is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to hve there.

-AA Slogan

35 Whit Stillman, The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards
(New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000), 299.

71
GRACE IN ADDICTION

If we are to live a spiritually fulfilling life, there are many

misconceptions that will have to be dropped. Step 3 is the place
where this occurs, as misguided people are called back to their
senses. They are forced to reckon with reality, which usually
involves a painful philosophical reorientation that results in a
newfound humility.
Fear of the new is almost always the desire to avoid the loss
of the old and familiar. Think of the sad sack young man who’s
just been dumped at the beginning of the 1996 movie Swzngers. His
buddies try to remind him that there are other fish in the sea. But
he doesn’t want another fish. Therein lies the rub. A famous
passage in the 72 ¢» 72 gives voice to this fear: “Tl look like the
hole in the donut” (36). The truth is that when the ability to let go
finally arrives, it will come from frustration and exhaustion rather
than virtue. While this may sound pessimistic, it is not.
The primary obstacles to letting go are the now-familiar
problems of selfishness and our delusions of grandeur. Being rid
of these is deflating, but accepting the truth of our own limitations
is in fact immensely life-giving and freeing. In child psychologist
Dorothy Marttyn’s book, entitled Beyond Deserving, we tead:

“We adults do not like to face the fact that we are not
the sole directors of our thoughts and actions, because it
is a blow to our illusion of autonomy and power and
pre-eminence in the universe...Given the more realistic
understanding of the limitations of human autonomy,
what does the word “responsibility” mean? In this light,
_ tesponsibility changes its colors. We ate mote
responsible, not less so, when we are aware, of,forces”
that are working on us beyond our ability to control
them, IDenial of that truth, along with actions that do

ie
 STEP 3

not take that truth into account,. is the height of

irresponsibility.”>¢

In other words, this brand of Twelve Step spirituality enables a

person to live within the midst of the fallen world, which is —
simply put — reality.
The notion that God enables escape from problems is
common in some forms of religious thinking, Martin Luther called
such ideas “theologies of glory.” Theologies of glory will be
considerably more familiar to Christians than to those in AA. The
idea more commonly held in AA is that God enables unmediated
(i.e. sober) acceptance of problems, rather than the ability to side-
step them. Problems in no way indicate the absence of God—
instead, they point the individual toward God. The same
sentiment is rephrased nicely by the preacher T. D. Jakes: “God
won't save you from the fire; He’ll save you through the fire.”
I experienced the truth of Step 3 firsthand early on in my
ministry. I was sitting in my office one morning when I received a
phone call. The woman on the other end of the line was in tears,
telling me, “I’ve done something terrible! Can my husband and I
come in to meet with you ...as soon as possible?” They were in
my office an hour later, where she confessed to a recent affair. The
husband looked completely dumbfounded, but he said he still
loved her and wanted to try to salvage things.
Then he asked me something which put me in completely
over my head: “We’ve been going through a tough time financially
and, because of it, I’ve been reading my Bible a lot and praying
more than usual. I really believe that God spoke to me recently.
He told me: ‘I am going to bless you.’ What I want to know is...is
this the blessing?” I didn’t know how to respond, but I was eager
to separate his thinking about God from the anguish he was

36 Dorothy W. Martyn, Beyond Deserving: Children, Parents, and Responsibikty

Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007),156.

73
GRACE IN ADDICTION

experiencing in that moment. I asked him, “Does this feel like a

blessing to you?” He glazed over; I had lost his ear. I couldn’t
connect. He seemed deep in thought and far away. It didn’t take
long for me to realize I was out of my depth and too
inexperienced to properly counsel this couple.
Fortunately, one of my colleagues was a few rooms away
and willing to help. I knew for a fact that he had counseled many
couples back from the brink of divorce. I asked if we could meet
with him to seek his wisdom and he immediately made himself
available. A few minutes later, all four of us were sitting in his
office.
The couple rehashed their situation, almost word for word.
The wife was a wreck. The husband was numb and distant. After a
lot of listening, my coworker asked the husband if there was
anything he wanted to add to the story. The man repeated the
same seemingly over-spiritualized statement about his devotional
time and God’s blessing. He asked, “Do you think that my wife’s
affair is God’s blessing?”
Without missing a beat, my friend replied, “Absolutely! This is
the best thing that has ever happened to your marrage. It has brought the
two of you into reality and out of delusion. It is in that place that
God is found, and it is in that place that you will find hope for
your marriage.” I thought to myself, Whoa! There’s no way that dog
will hunt. To my surprise, the man’s posture completely changed.
All at once he seemed to relax. He was finally able to cry. It was a
powerful and deeply spiritual moment. Against my “better”
judgment, my coworker had affirmed the man’s twisted hunch,
and the man suddenly felt hope. He felt understood. They
continued to meet with this minister and are still married — and on
more solid footing — to this day. It was a great lesson for me.
In this sense, living in reality is actually mystical. Martin
Luther once asserted that “that person does not deserve to be
called a theologian [read: a spiritual person] who looks upon the

74
 STEP 3

invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in

those things that have been made.”37 Where faith is present, God
does the seeing. We shut our eyes and are glad to do so, like
children praying at bedtime.
This dynamic makes up much of the spiritual content of
AA. Perhaps it is for this reason that many AAs report that Step 3
is their “favorite step” and “the most important step.” Along these
lines, my friend and fellow minister Aaron Zimmerman once told
me the following story about himself:

“T had taken the week off work, and our kids were with
their grandparents. My wife and I were really looking
forward to our ‘staycation’: we’d get some good R&R,
and also check some things off that long to-do list every
homeowner knows all too well.
“Day one was great. Fun, restful, and productive.
But that night I found myself filled with anxiety. I
couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that my vacation
would eventually end and Id have to go back to the
office. I love my work, but I was overwhelmed thinking
about the sheer amount of stwff that loomed in my
inbox, the pile of papers on my desk, the events I had to
plan...I began to expand my worries beyond my
professional life. I began to think about the drama in my
extended family. If you have a family, you know what a
big mistake ¢his was. Eventually, I drifted into shallow
sleep, only to wake up with intense pain in my jaw. I had
been clenching my teeth all night. The same thing
happened the second night. And the third.
Apparently, it takes three days for me to teach
desperation. So, finally, I got up, went downstairs, and
knelt in my living room. As I prayed, with my eyes

37 Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 19. Trans. Forde, Gerhard O.

ih)
GRACE IN ADDICTION

closed, I saw Jesus and me. He was looking at me, and I

was looking at him. Or I was trying to. I could barely
see over an atmload of boulders I was carrying. Each
boulder represented a burden in my life, one of my
anxieties, stresses or fears. Barely able to hold them, I
heard Jesus say, ‘Give them to me.’
“T started handing over these enormous stones.
As I did, I named each one. Finally, Jesus held them all.
I looked at my empty hands. I felt light. I could stand up
straight for the first time. I could breathe again.
“When I looked back at Jesus, I noticed that he
was beginning to grow. And suddenly he was enormous.
So enormous, in fact, that these boulders—which had
not changed in size one bit#—were now little pebbles in
his hand. He casually put them in his pocket, looked at
me, smiled, and walked away. 1 opened my eyes, went |
back upstairs, and fell into a sound sleep.” |h\Je Nni

The person who takes Step 3 is like Atlas, finally removing th

world from his shoulders, handing it back to the one who holds it
upon its axis like a tiny spinning pebble. With this kind of
reorientation, the future that once seemed clear now becomes
opaque, which is as it should be. What a reliefl

“The Actual Taking” of Step 3

“A religious, or spiritual experience, is the act ofgiving up reliance on one’s

own omnipotence.”
-Dr. Harry Tiebout, psychiatrist and close friend to_.AA in its early years

It’s time for another farm story. This one involves a pig, a chicken,
and a cow, who one day decide to show their appreciation to the
farmer who takes such exceptional care of them. The pig asks,

76
 STEP 3

“What can we do for the farmer that will convey our gratitude?”
After a brief pause, the chicken replies, “I’ve got it! We'll make
him breakfast. Pll provide the eggs. Cow, you can provide the
milk. And, Pig, you provide the bacon.” The pig immediately
responds, “Hold on a second! For you two, giving eggs and milk is
not such a big deal, but for me, bacon means putting my whole life
on the line.” And so it is with the spiritual life in Step 3. There is
no room for “a little bit”. Either the whole loaf is swallowed, or it
is not. As the saying goes, “you cannot be just a little bit
pregnant.” New life necessarily brings with it the death of the old.
To clarify, the 34 Step consists of an actual prayer, one in
which an individual asks God to take over her life completely from
scratch — from top to bottom:

“God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and do

with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self
that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties
that victory over them may bear witness to those I
would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of
life. May I do Thy will always.’”38

Immediately following this famously self-annihilating prayer, the

Big Book author writes, “We thought well before taking this step,
making sure we were ready; that we could at last abandon
ourselves utterly to Him” (63). It’s a strange statement, and one
wonders if anyone can ever be completely “ready” for anything, let
alone the total abandonment of self. But again, the readiness in
question actually looks a lot more like exhaustion than preparation.
Drowning people grab on to life preservers. secret
The to “taking
Step 3” liesin_the failure of the life that has not taken it, Bill W.
pressersnacenrenevt PERDANA EH

38 Feel free to pray it if you feel so inclined, but read it over first, and
consider its implications before you try to put your heart into it.

Ut
GRACE IN ADDICTION

came to the same insight in Step 3 of Twelve Steps and Twelve

Traditions:

“Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to

contemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look
at the results normal people ate getting from self-
sufficiency. Everywhere he sees people filled with anger
and fear, society breaking up into warring fragments.
Each- pach says to the others, "We are right and you
ate wrong," Every such ptessure group, if it is strong
enough, self-righteously imposes
its will upon the. test.
And evetywhere the same thing is being done on an
individual basis. ‘The sum of all this mighty effort is less
peace __and__less brotherhood t than before._—the
philosophy of. self- sufficiency i
is notpaying off.Plainly
enough, it is a bone- crushing juggernaut whose final
SVL aeons
achievement 1is ruin.” (37)

The Pointer Sisters Know Better foe

. . 7
(Aa)
f
\
f'?

“Son, your life ain’t none ofyour damn business.” \. VY

-

eal

-Alabama AA old-timer

As children grow up, their baby teeth fall out. But before they
come out, they become loose, which can be irritating for the child.
Sometimes parents suggest tying the loose tooth to a door handle
using a piece of floss. The parent then tells the child, “Now count
to ten. Then I'll slam the door closed and your tooth will be out.”
The nervous child starts to count (hesitantly) “one...two...three”
— when SLAM, Dad pushes the door closed early. The kid
screams, “You said you would wait until I counted to 10!” But the
parents know that the child never would have gotten there. In a

78
 STEP 3

similar way, God often uses Step 3 to curtail the life of self-
centeredness that, except in the most-severe cases, will work its
way Out to the very end of someone’s life.
The grace of God, in this respect, comes like a thief in the
night. It pulls the tablecloth out from under the table settings
before much of anything has been put away. God intervenes. He is
not a gentleman; He is a parent. God is not accepted; he becomes
irresistible. Like rowers in a boat filled with holes, the passengers
soon find themselves swimming.
Old-timer Chucky T. once said that “people don’t change
until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of
changing.” We recall the pig we read about at the beginning of this
section, which depicts people’s reluctance to lay their “will and
life’? on the line. Once this reluctance is overcome, however, a
realignment of our perspective occurs. As the Big Book observes,
“we become less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans
and designs” (63). We are reminded of another great hit from the
80s, this one by the Pointer Sisters: “I’m so excited, ’'m so excited!
I’m about to lose control and I think I like it.”

“God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and do mith me

as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better
do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them
may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love,
and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always.”
-Step 3 Prayer

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 Step 4

“Made a Searching and Fearless Moral

Inventory of Ourselves.”

“Forgive everyone your sins.”

-Jack Kerouac

‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no },
attention to the plank in_your own eye?...First take the plank out ofyour
own eye.”
-Matthew 7:3-5

Just as the Twelve Steps started with a recognition of our

powerlessness over addiction, so too the 4% Step encourages a
brutally honest self-examination of our life on a broader scale. The
Big Book describes this step as a “personal|
housecleaning.”
Imagine a messy room, or worse, a messy house. Picture dirty
dishes piled up in the sink, overflowing laundry baskets, piles of
old mail, dirty carpet, dust on the ceiling fan blades, burnt out light

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bulbs in the light fixtures, and cob webs in the corners. Maybe
there are socks on the floor, and other items strewn about. Add to
this a basement full of abandoned projects, and an attic stuffed to
the gills with long-forgotten possessions. And then there are the
bathrooms...yuck! This house needs to be cleaned.
AA would suggest that most people’s lives require the same
sort of upkeep.3? This is especially true of lives that are in the
midst of collapse, as they frequently are when a person arrives at
her first AA meeting. Indeed, AA is often the last place people
want to end up, or “the last house «on the block,” as it has been
called. Its shabby facade is considerably harder to approach than
Mrs. Jones’ white picket fence house down the street, which
always seems to glisten by comparison.
AA understands that most people’s lives are far messier than
their houses. Even people with clean homes do not have clean
lives, and furthermore, clean houses don’t stay clean without
continued spit and polish. For this reason, everyone, regardless of
their relationship with addiction, can benefit from Step 4, from
“taking an inventory of themselves.”4? The knowledge of our own
weaknesses and limitations continues to disabuse us of self-
reliance, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Step 4.
This step is a writing exercise. It is the step that people in
AA rarely complete until they have experienced its alternative —
the hollow sobriety that comes from failing to address the inner
issues behind alcoholism. That is, the same dynamic applies here
that we've discussed already, namely that people don’t do Step 4

°° Here we can affirm a famous quote from Socrates: “The unexamined life
is not worth living.”
“© The number of clergy, for example, that have never been in any kind of
therapy is shocking. They are floating out on their own in many cases, with
little to no reflective time in the presence of a wise friend. So many clergy
tout “accountability” as being so important, and yet have very little regular
practice at it. It is a spiritual axiom/basic premise of this book that: A// people
need counsel,

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 STEP 4

until they can’t keep from doing Step 4 any longer.#! To quote
Robert Capon again: “Of course we must believe; but only
because there is nothing left for us to’ do but believe.” People
dodge and half-heartedly work Step 4 because it is designed to
search out “the flaws in [their] make-up” — not exactly what most
of us would consider a good time, but something that becomes
necessary. As old-timer Chuck T. once put it, “we are driven to the
Twelve Steps...and not in a Cadillac!”

Blockages

‘When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and

physically.”
-Big Book (64)

Years ago I was part of a swim team. One day, before we jumped
in the pool, the coach walked up to me and pushed on a bruise on
my arm. He said, “Did that hurt?” It did hurt, but only once he
pushed on it. Step 4 works a bit like this, pushing on the bruised
places in our lives. It does so in order to heal them. As the Sufi
poet Rumi wrote, “The 4g t can only enter into wound.”
the Ot, to
return to the housekeeping analogy, the cleaning can only be
effective if it is applied to a specific mess. So what are the messes
that occupy our lives?

41 People do try to skip the less preferable or more demanding steps. Steps 4
& 9 are the ones that are most typically worked only partially or not at all. It
is often the case that they are avoided until the gnawing lack of thoroughness
and attendant misery of an unfulfilling emotional state in sobriety (called “so-
dry-ity”, or being “dry’””) motivates a person to revisit the steps in which he
skimped. The Big Book encourages the reader to ask himself, “Have [I] tried
to make mortar without sand?” (75).

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The Big Book focuses on three universally problematic areas

of human weakness: Anger, Fear, and Sex. What a list! Who is
exempt from dealing withhenr ne y
Bill W. describes their impact: “When harboring such
feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit’ (60).
Blockages keep things dark, and pees: t.the sunlight. They
ate likened to “spiritual disease” (66): “Esometimes like to think of
the problems — lingering anger, debilitating fear, and shameful
sexual experiences — as being like poison, or like cholesterol in an
attery. The 4 Step opens the vein so that the poison can be
sucked out... by God, It workslike an angioplasty, clearing out
the blockages so that the blood can flow to‘theheart unimpeded:
Each of these blockages describes particular expressions of
selfishness, which AA sees as the core problem. Again, as Bill
Wilson had it: “selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the
root of our troubles” (62). Traditional Christian theology uses the
word “sin” to describe this condition and, to our way of thinking,
the words are almost interchangeable. They describe the angling of
the human heart, inclined away from God or, to use famous
imagery from St. Augustine, curved in upon its own navel.

To start an inventory, a person can say a little prayer. Many in AA

use the following one: “God, help me to be honest. Please show
me what it is that you wish for me to see about myself.” Others
even write the words “God help me to be honest” at the top of
every page of their 4% Step. If we adopt the idea that God does the
revealing, it makes the whole process flow more smoothly. We
take inventory in order to find the things that He would reveal to
us. We do not need to muster up a great well of personal insight—
we just list what comes to mind.
One side note: the Stép 4 inventory is a written exercise. For
those wanting to do it, just get a legal pad and a pen. There is
power in the actual experience of writing the material down on

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 STEP 4

paper with one’s own hand, and it is not at all the same thing to try
to type an inventory or to do it mentally. This also happens to be
the most easily applicable step for non-AA members.

Lingering Anger: You Are Not John McEnroe

Think of a bad mood and the impact it carries. There’s an old

saying: “The boss yells at the employee, who goes home and fights
with his wife. She then scolds her son for not doing his chores,
and he runs to his room. On the way up the stairs, he kicks the
family dog, who was just lounging on the landing.” Anger can
have a chain-reaction effect, both within ourselves and in our
interactions with other people.
The Step.4 inventory starts by looking at,Kesentment which
the Big Book describes asthe ‘ ‘number_one-offender” when it
comes ‘to Blockage in recovery.(64). Resentment, of course, is any
kind of lingering anger — the residue of old hurts, disagreements,
and frustrations. Nobody chooses to be angry. We talk about
anger being something that “gets the better of us.” It is insipid,
and it sneaks up on us.
We live in a culture so besieged with anger that it can be
very difficult to imagine life without it. And so we try to justify our
anger. People talk about things like “healthy anger” and
“channeling anger in a productive way.” Remember John tou |
McEnroe, who was famous for his ability to play better tennis: 8
when he was angry? AA whole- heartedly parts ways with this train
of thought. In AA there isno such thing “as “healthy anger.” It is
ene nT

all bad; it is always toxic. In short, you are not John McEnroe.

Step 4 asks us instead to consider whether getting rid of our anger

would be more helpful than finding ways to hold on to it. Here in

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AA, we find arguably the finest outworking of Jesus’ famous

teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere—
admonishments such as the ones to “forgive seventy times seven”
and “if a person strikes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek”
and “love your enemies.”
It makes sense that Step 4’s inventory begins with a look at
anget and resentment. So how do we find our anger? It’s not hard.

Resentments: An Exposé

The Big Book suggests that each individual should begin her 4%
Step in the following straightforward manner: “In dealing with
resentments, we set them down on paper. We listed people [and]
institutions...with whom we were angry” (64). 4 “People” are the
individuals toward whom we have lingering anger. We refer to
them by name. “Institutions” are groups of people (e.g.
professions, corporations, races, or religions).
Whom do you resent? Now we make a list.
We write at the top of the first page of our inventory the
word “people” and then underline it. Then, going down the page,
we simply list the people we resent: “Martha, Alan, that car
salesman, Uncle Jeff, the neighbors...”
: A few things need to be said about resentments. First, ‘it’s
possible to love and resent a person at the same time. A person
can both love and resent his child or his spouse, for example.
Putting a name on this list does not mean we don’t love them, so
we try not to let our love for a person hinder our honest

“ Perhaps it goes without saying, but the Twelve Step approach to

spirituality implies that such a life is incredibly practical. It involves a direct
engagement with life, rather than any kind of transcendence. In AA’ there is
nothing more mystical than love for an enemy or charitable concern for the
wellbeing of others.

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 STEP 4

admission that we resent them too. Along the same lines, we

typically resent other people for two types of reasons: either they
did something that we resent, or they simply “are” a certain way
that we resent. We might resent a co-worker for stealing an
account from under our nose, or we might resent him for being
loud-mouthed, crass or ugly.
Also, resentment is typically an emotional response to a set
of circumstances, not a rational thought. You will commonly
“know better” than most of your resentments, especially when
they are embarrassing to admit. For example you might have a
resentment against “fat people” or “Mexicans” or “people who
drive pick-up trucks.” But, in spite of the ugliness of the content
and your knowing better, those resentments are still inside of you,
“renting space in your head” as we say in AA. We write them
down anyway. Thoroughness is important. One helpful rule of
thumb here is that the more time you have spent with a person, the greater
the chance that you are harboring resentment against them.
One other common hiccup is the thought, “I don’t resent
them anymore.” Perhaps people get over some of their past anger,
but usually such statements reflect wishful thinking. Anger lingers
— that’s the problem. It doesn’t tend to go away until a therapeutic
process like Step 4 has been undertaken. Common wisdom has it
that “time heals all wounds,” but AA does not agree. God_heals
wounds by
enabling peopleto forgive their offenders; otherwise,
wounds stay put. Anger typically festers and infects, and not the
othef way around. This is why resentment is the “number one
offender.”
There are usually between 5 and 20 key players at any one
time in a person’s resentful state of mind. For the alcoholic, that
number tends to be greater. But it’s fair to say that the bulk of
one’s resentment is focused on just a handful of situations, and the
names of between 5 and 10 individuals will comprise most of
someone’s anger. Every honest list includes at least one or two

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family members or loved ones. My sponsor once asked me, “John,

,|/am I on your list?” I answeted, “No”, to which he replied, “When
\|are you going to start getting honest?”

In terms of order, we generally find it helpful to start with the

present and slowly work our way back through our lives. Those
who want to try Step 4 on for size can use the following
guidelines; others will simply find them informative. Ask yourself
who or what citcumstances have caused you anxiety. Whom do
you have a problem with? Whom do you not like? Have there
been any fights? Write those people down. Start by thinking about
your family and your living situation. Think about your job. Bosses
and coworkers often find a place on this list. So do neighbors.
Then think about your extended family, friends, spouses of
friends, and former friends. Remind yourself about the places
you've lived and the places you’ve worked. Are there any other key
events from the past that have proved decisive for you in some
negative way? Who was involved? Try to reflect in a somewhat
objective fashion.
Aim for coming up with between ten and twenty names. It
shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, and the bulk of the
names will make your list in a much shorter time than that.
In order to be thorough, also make a list of “institutions” on
the same page if there’s still room on the right-hand side, or on
another page if not. What groups of people do you resent? Do you
have any strong political or religious beliefs? They tend to offer
plenty of fresh names. And how do you feel about the IRS, cops,
different races, rich people, poor people, cat owners, different
colleges, certain neighborhoods, or sports teams? Who has
wronged you, let you down, or frustrated your goals? Where do
you see injustice that affects you on a personal level? Whom do
you not want to be associated with? Add them to your list under
the “institutions” heading.

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 STEP 4

It’s not hard to find resentments when you start to look for
them. It might even seem like you are-opening Pandota’s Box. The
good thing about an inventory is that you can do it at any time;
names can always be added. It’s important not to get too bogged
down trying to make the list “completely complete.” That would
be impossible.*3 it

I remember one individual in AA who showed me a list with

over 900 names on it. It was pages and pages of names, the kind
of extreme behavior that alcoholics are known for. I wondered if
he would ever be able to finish his inventory. We started to look
through it together, and I immediately noticed multiple repeats.
He had his mom on there about twelve times, and many other
individuals were listed multiple times. I remember asking him,
“How many Dianes do you know?” Together, we wete able to
boil his list down to a much more manageable — though still
somewhat unwieldy — two hundred and fifty resentments.
At one point, while looking at his section on institutions, I
asked him, “It says here that you resent ‘communism.’ Is that true?
Do you really have a resentment toward communism?” He
replied, “I guess not.” And so we crossed it off the list. I then
asked him, “What about ‘capitalism?’ Is that a big red-button topic
for you?” He again said no and we crossed it off the list too.
Finally, I perplexedly asked, “What about ‘Subaru?’ It says here
that you resent ‘Subaru.’ Do you really resent ‘Subaru?”’ He
looked: at me with fire in his eyes and responded, “Big time!”
Subaru stayed on the list, and we went from there. He was very
diligent, and soon we were on to his 5% Step

43 As a young monk Martin Luther almost drove himself insane worrying

about the sins he had committed that he couldn’t remember. At the time, he
believed that he had to confess them in order to receive forgiveness for
them. He knew himself well enough to know that he could never finish the
job satisfactorily. You can probably imagine how happy he was to discover
that God is in the business of picking up this kind of slack.

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Most non-alcoholics don’t er in his direction though. They

tend to put too few names on their list, barely scratching the
surface. They are reluctant to acknowledge their resentments
because it makes them uncomfortable. To be clear, a cursory
attempt at inventory won’t do anyone much good. More is better
than less. But even fifteen names will get at the material that most
needs to be addressed.
The Big Book points out that “staying sore” was “as far as
most of us ever got” (66). Just making a list does little for one’s
mental and spiritual health. If anything, it disturbs it, stirring up the
silt at the bottom of the stream and making things murky. For this
reason, people sometimes (read: often) find that, when working on
their 4% Step, they become irritable in a way that is somewhat
uncharacteristic. One friend even spoke of a string of nightmares
that plagued him until he had finished his 5% Step. While we
neither worry about the agitation nor tell newcomers to expect it,
some disturbance during the 4% Step is natural. The most
important thing is to finish the inventory,*+ because the peace that
lies on the other side of the 4% and 5% Steps is the sort that people
would do well not to miss.

If Someone Steps on Your Toe, Say ‘Excuse Me’

A wise sponsor once offered his new sponsee the above heading
to think about. At first, this statement confused the new AA. What
on earth did it mean? He mulled it over. The more he teflected
upon it, the more it began to make sense. In order to see himself
from a spiritual angle, he needed to see the part he played in
causing offense. He wasn’t as much of a target in other people’s
minds as he thought. Instead, he was simply oblivious of how his

“# Alcoholics who start the 4% Step but don’t finish it commonly relapse.

o2
 STEP 4

behavior in the world was impacting the lives of others, forcing

them into uncomfortable situations where they were forced to
react suddenly or harshly to him, thereby stepping on his
proverbial toe. He was offended, therefore, for many things he
had brought upon himself. Once he began to consider this, he
began to get a better grasp of how his selfishness had manifested
itself in his life. The final portion of inventorying resentment
follows this introspective trajectory.
Bill W. writes, “We turned back to the list, for it held the key
to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely
different angle” (66). The different angle involves finally looking at
yourself, rather than continuing to fixate upon the people on your
list. It is at this moment, with the list in hand, that one does well to
remember Jesus’ words: “Why do you look at the speck in your
brother’s eye and disregard the plank in your own eye?” We now
try to look into our own eyes, to see our part. Here is how the Big
Book introduces its version of this radical idea:

“Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the

wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our
own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest,
self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not
been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other
person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The
inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw
our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in
black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly...”
(67)
“Where were we to blame?” The goal now is to identify the part we
have played in the resentment. Here we give each name on our list
its own page.

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We write the name of the person or institution at the top of

the page, with “My part?” below it. Then-we-answer théquestion,

contributing to the battle with the person on my list? Did I break

his arm? Have I screamed back when she accosted me? Or have I
gossiped about him in an attempt to get others on my side? Have I
tried in some way to make that person’s life more difficult? Have I
seen to it that she got fired? If nothing else, have I been actively averse
to the idea of forgiving the person for their wrongdoing? Have I
hypoctitically done the same things to others that the person on
my list has done to me?” This focus on our part is the side of the
resentment that deserves attention. It has most likely been
neglected.
The following example should help to illustrate how this
works. Imagine a guy named Gary and another guy named Levar.
Gary and Levar are not great friends, but they are — or rather used
to be — acquaintances. Now they hate each other.
Here’s what happened. Both Gary and Levar are smokers.
One day Gary found himself sitting next to Levar in the library at
their college. Gary noticed that Levar had a fresh pack of cigarettes
sticking out of an open zipper pocket in his backpack, and since
Gary was fresh out of smokes, he asked Levar if he could bum a
cigarette. Somewhat surprisingly, Levar said no, mentioning
something about how the price of cigarettes had gotten
astronomical and he couldn’t afford to spare any. Gary thought
this response was ridiculous and stingy. And he didn’t expect it.46
After mulling it over for a few minutes, Gary decided that
Levat’s answer was so inappropriate that he would not accept it.
He decided it would actually be helpful to Levar to experience one

45 This one question is crucial in instances where the inventory writer has
been the victim of some form of abuse (e.g., sexual) that has left behind the
residue of deep hurt.
46 Another great AA slogan: “An expectation is a pre-meditated resentment.”

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 STEP 4

slight punitive consequence for his miserliness, even if only the

cosmos noticed. While Levar’s back-was turned, Gary snuck up
behind his chair and slowly reached into Levar’s open backpack,
pulling the exposed pack out of the open pocket. At the moment
he was removing a single cigarette, Levar sensed something going
on just behind him. Levar turned around suddenly, catching Gary
in the act of stealing the cigarette, the pack still in his hand.
To the surprise of everyone, Levar screamed out an
expletive and pulled out a meat cleaver from the inside of his
blazer. In a single swooping motion, the cleaver sliced through
Gary’s forearm. Gary’s severed hand fell to the ground, still
clutching the pack. Levar had cut off Gary’s hand.
That was five years ago, but understandably, the resentment
against Levar was still alive in Gary’s mind. Hatred for Levar
seethed in him whenever he looked at the stump that used to be
his hand.
Let’s look at Gary’s inventory. When asked about his
resentment toward Levar, Gary easily rattles off a list of reasons
that justify his hatred. Due to Levar’s disproportionate response to
the situation, Gary has felt for years that his anger was well-
founded. Nonetheless, that anger was robbing him of peace, and
as far as AA was concerned, it was blocking out “the aunlient of
the spirit”. To quote an old Taoist sage, Gary’s resentment “isa
rock in his stream of consciousness.”
oe SS LS Step 4 is designed to help
Gary get past his resentment at Levar.
This is what Gary’s inventory looks like:

I'm resentful at. LEVAR

My part?

-I didn’t respect his “No” to my request.

-I tried to steal his cigarettes.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

-I have been trying to make other people hate Levar,

too, by getting them to take my side and by gossiping
about him.
-I have not wanted to forgive him.
-Sometimes I don’t like to share either.
-I would be angry too if someone tried to steal from
me.
-Smoking is unhealthy and not getting to smoke is not
really a bad thing.

With the help of the inventory, Gary finally glimpsed his part in
the resentment. Had he not tried to steal a cigarette after he was
told he could not have one, he would still have an arm today.
Although he found Levar’s stinginess outrageous, he had to admit
that he sometimes refuses simple requests himself. With these
important insights, Gary learned that he too was to blame for what
happened. The long-standing resentment began to lose a little of
its steam.

A few more quick tips for the would-be inventory taker: First, it is
easy to start with the situations or people where your part is most
glaring, and then work on the ones where you feel stuck. If need
be, a sponsor or mentor can help you see your part. If you knock
out five each night, it should be easy to finish this part of an
inventory by the end of a single week.*”

47 Like exercise, this kind of work rarely happens if you don’t schedule the
time to do it. Try to keep the ball rolling by doing a minimum of two names
or institutions each day. If it’s not coming easily and you have a long list,
schedule a time where you can spend a few hours uninterruptedly knocking
out the entire inventory. Only very seldom will the actual writing require
more than a few hours. Set a deadline for your 5 Step, where you will meet
with another person to discuss what you’ve written down. Then, if need be,
binge away the night before, coffee in hand. I wrote most of my first
inventory in an airport on the way home to meet my sponsor, the night
before our scheduled 5" Step. I had put it off for too long.

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 STEP 4

While each case is, to some extent; different from the next,
there are few (if any) resentments.that will not reveal some
element of your own culpability. Seeing anger from this angle
almost never happens naturally, and it will often be hard for us to
find “our part” when we first start writing. Learning to write
inventory is a bit like learning to ride a bike.
One other side note: In an aan, we often find that
what we write down about “oyur part” isrepetitive. And it should
be. Our less admirable
ble qualities t
tend to manifest themselves in a
pattern. Sponsors‘commonly urge inventory ‘takersnot to ‘worty
about the repetition, but simply to write it down again. No new
insights are required for each name on the list. In fact, it is worth
hitting ourselves in the head with the same hammer multiple
times. Maybe it will jog some of the self-centeredness loose.

“Pray for the S.0.B.” (Classic AA Saying)

“This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being
angry. Thy will be done.”
-Big Book (67)

The foreign nature of the moral inventory points to its divine

origin. Forgiveness comes from God, and it tends to be most rare
in the situations where it is most needed.
For this reason, the Big Book encourages us to pray the
following prayer — not only when we are taking written inventory,
but also in allother times when anger rises to the surface ofour
thoughts and feelings: “This isa sick person. Flow canI behelpful.ta.bim
or her? God save mefrom beingangry. Thywill be done.” The prayer is
powerful for at least three reasons.
First, in acknowledging the “sick’’-ness of the person toward
whom our anger is directed, we are encouraged to have a bit of

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

understanding. Our goal, as the author reminds us, is to show our

enemy “the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would
cheerfully grant a sick friend” (67). Understanding and. compassion
go hand in hand, after all; you can’t have one without the other.
This is why the best mental illness counselors are often those who
have struggled themselves. To the extent that we are aware our
own limitations, we tend to find that we have compassion for
others in those exact areas. Associating a person’s misdeeds with
the symptoms of illness, rather than with willful wrongdoing, is a
healthy mental leap. Jesus led the charge for this move with his
famous refrain: “It isnot the healthy who need adoctor, but the
© sick. I did not come for tthe righteous, but. forsinners’ Mk 2:17,
2:
cf. Mt 9:12-13).
Second, the prayer suggests that we focus our attention on
how we can be helpful to the person whom we resent. What could
be further from our minds when it comes to someone we hate? In
this way, the prayer forms a point of contact with Jesus’
exhortation to “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:44): By~considering
how we might be helpful, the abstract becomes concrete, and we
are given a useful direction in which we can head. We focus on the
ways We Can setve.
Sometimes a philosophical framework can help us figure out
the way in which we should act. If we have a goal in mind, we can
determine a course of action in light of that overarching theme. So
it is with anger; we seek to be helpful in the moment when we are
feeling angry. This opens us up to God’s inspiration while
simultaneously closing our eyes to the frustrated, less-than-
productive elements of our own thinking. In so doing, it breaks
the normal monologue of criticism which goes through our minds
whenever we’re around the person we resent. We don’t have to
know specifically what to say or what we want to do when we’te
around that person. Instead, we simply pray that God will show us
how we can be helpful. Then we keep our eyes open. This

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 STEP 4

approach can usually get us through an unexpected situation with

a difficult person. As the Big Book affirms, “It works — it really
does” (88).
Finally, the prayer seeks God’s help with anger. In an
instant, it enables us to accept our own inability to rid ourselves of
anger, and it seeks the one who can. The prayer puts the onus on
God,which is the great secret to the spiritual life. It takés~the
weight offof our shoulders. We are reminded that we are
powerless over our anger, and that we need help to be rid of it. In
Christian terms, it is a prayer of repentance, and one which
therefore opens us to God’s volition. Praying for God to save us
from our anger and to show us how we can serve the people we
resent soon becomes a regular part of our thought-life — if, that is,
we have become honestly convinced of resentment’s futility. No
anger is good anger.

Fear

‘T'm your boogie man"

-KC and the Sunshine Band

When my wife and I first moved to Charleston we befriended a

newly married, very sweet couple who lived nearby. But this
couple.was also extremely timid, as shy as any two people we had
ever met before. It occurred to us that they were a perfect match
for each other. On a related note, my wife and I like to throw an
annual Easter brunch blow-out. We invite our friends together to
share in the joys of that momentous holiday. So when it came time
to send out invites, our timid neighbors were included on the list.
Rather than mailing the letter, my wife asked me to deliver the
invitation by hand.

29
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

So I headed down the street one evening to hand off the

invitation and say hello. I climbed their steps and rang the
doorbell. Just behind the door I could hear the sound of their
television. In response to the bell, their dogs began barking and
gathered in the foyer. But nobody came to the door. I rang the bell
again, and shouted: “Hey yvall, it’s your neighbor, John. Just
wanted to drop off an invitation.” Still no answer. But I could see
the couple’s shoes huddled together on the living room coffee
table, frozen through the blinds. I tried the bell again with no luck
and eventually left the invitation in the mailbox.
It occurred to me as I walked home that they had once
mentioned that a neighborhood fellow had knocked on their door,
entreating them to give him some money. They had mentioned
that in response, they no longer opened their door to unexpected
strangers. While I in no way fit into that category, their fears had
categorized me as a threat. I had come bearing good news,
warmth, and an invitation to a party. But they could not receive
my call.
The story illustrates the impact that fear has upon life. It
blocks out possibility. It stifles the unanticipated, even in the case
of the good. It ascribes a negative
value to unknowns.— which are
as much a fact of life, if not more so, than the things of which we
are certain.
While resentment may be the “number one offender’? when
it comes to spiritual blockage, fear is not far behind. The text
points out that “this short word touches about every aspect of our
| lives...the fabric of our existence was shot through with it” (67-
_ 68). It’s an unfortunate fact. In the same way that we do not wish
to defend “healthy anger”, we also do not wish to defend fear,

:
_ though its necessity cannot altogether be denied. We think that
| less fear, or at least less, anxiety and worry, is almost always a good

A
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100 CP
Sh kn fw |\/ /
 STEP 4

As with anger, the Big Book suggests that we need God to

remove our fears, that we cannot rid ourselves of them. It is no
wonder that Jesus spent a substantial portion of the Sermon on
the Mount addressing this one issue. He too saw fear getting in the
way of a person’s trust in God.48
The Big Book suggests that we first “review our fears
thoroughly. We put them on paper” (64). At the top of a new
page, then, we write, “Fears” and underline it. Next, under the
heading, we simply list our fears, even the ones we know are
irrational. Are we afraid of spiders, of walking down the stairs in
the dark or of needles or giving blood? Fears often concern the
future, because that’s where they live. Perhaps we’re convinced
that we might suddenly lose our job or that something terrible will
happen to one of our children. Are we afraid of having an online
presence or of identity theft? In truth, it is possible to be afraid of:
anything. We briefly list each fear that comes to mind
Where fear exists, usually a harmful attempt to master that |
fear — via control — is also found. For example, people who are —

¢ 48 Jesus’ famous passage about fear, taken from the sixth chapter of
Matthew’s Gospel:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will
eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than
food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do
not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by
worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the
field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon
in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes
the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the
fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry,
saving, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows
that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough
trouble of its own (vv. 25-34).

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

afraid of the dark won’t go to sleep unless the light is left on in

their rooms. And people who fear social situations or potentially
awkward conversations will typically make silly excuses about why
they cannot attend various social events. Similarly, the ability to
consider any kind of a move (be it professional, locale-related, or
even just down the street) is usually infested by the baleful impact
of corrosive fears. They hinder our ability to engage with the
possibility that God is driving our lives.
We find ourselves wanting to seek a new, spiritual approach
to dealing with fear only after the failure of our own futile
concoctions and tired methods becomes apparent to us. How well
ate your methods for dealing with fear working for you? Have
your attempts to grapple with fear cut you off from the world at
large? With regard to fear the Big Book asks one key question:
“We asked ourselves why we had [these fears]. Wasn't it because self-
rehance had failed us?’ (68)
Until we see how this question relates to our fears, we ail
miss the thrust of Step 4’s insight. The author is pointing out that
we have fears to the exact extent that our attempts to control the
undesirable aspects of life have “failed us.” To the extent
¢ aoa we cant
eboks oapeyrmanicaithl Map
7. scontrol:something that we don’t like, we fear it. Fae

In taking an inventory of our feats, it is worth noting the

ways in which they have been controlling our behavior in affected
areas. We reflect upon the impact of each fear upon our lives. Do
any patterns of avoidance reveal themselves? In what ways do we
compensate for our fears? We write these consequences down in
parentheses after the related fear has been listed. If we need more
toom, we give each fear on the list its own page. Some discover
that fear has been hindering many areas of their lives, much in the
same way that resentment does. Unchecked fear can cause a
person to walk through life with the spiritual equivalent of a
devastating limp. It prevents, blocks, and binds us. Yet there is “a
better way” (68).

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 STEP 4

Fear’s Antidote: “Better Men Than We Are Using It

Constantly” (85) -

A very cool little horror movie called Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
came out in 2011. It tells the story of a little girl whose family
moves into an old house. She hears voices at night, calling to her
and luring her down to the basement. Soon it becomes apparent
that something ancient and supernatural is living in the house, and
more importantly, that “it” is after this little girl. As the movie
unfolds, we finally see the adversary: a bunch of tiny little creatures
that feed on the teeth of children. In one scene the poor girl is
attacked by a team of them while she is taking a bath in a claw foot
tub. They climb up through the old house’s air ducts, shut off the
lights, and then swarm the tub. The movie was criticized by many
reviewers for one main reason; it’s a horror movie in which the
horror turns out to be something that is not very scary when it is
brought into the light. Little creatures just don’t incite doom. In
fact, they're almost cute.
In a related and rather well-known passage from the 72 ¢
12, Bill W. describes how fears “turn out to be bogeymen” (49).
He suggests that most fears, when actually confronted, turn out to
be illusory. It's more than what happens with the not-so-scary-
after-all “faerie-folk” in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark; it’s that they
turn out to be imaginary, possessing no actual content. Like
bogeymen under the bed, we find that — in truth — there is nothing
there at all.
Moreover, our problem is less that we fear and more that we
don’t seem to fear the ght things at the right times. We
miscalculate, and consequently we punish ourselves with the exact
measures we think will protect us. As Christie Barnes, author of
_ The Paranoid Parents Guide (and mother of four), points out: “We
are constantly overestimating rare dangers while underestimating

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

common ones.”4? Such is the nature of self-reliance, especially

when it is applied to the arena of fear.
The Big Book approach to dealing with fear suggests, as it
always does, that we seekGod’s aid. Fear is just like any other
issue — something — characterized by the need for God’s
intervention. To the extent that fear gets in the way of the living of
‘our life, we ate encouraged to pray that God will remove it. We'll
explore this dynamic in much greater detail in Steps 6 and 7, but
the Big Book explicitly introduces this theme into the material in
Step 4. With regard to fear, the text tells us:

‘We are now on a different basis [ie., in wake of Step

3)]; the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust
infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the
world to play the role He assigns. Just to the extent that
we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely
on Him, does He enable us to match _galamity with
serenity. . . We can laugh at thosewhothinkSal Dei eTi
the way nor weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of
strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means
_ courage. All men of faith have courage. They trust their
) God...we let Him demonstrate, through us, what He
)” can do. We ask Him to remove our ‘fear and direct our attention
} to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to
outgrow fear.” (68)

Did you spot the prayer? “We ask Him to remove our fear and
direct our attention to what He would have us be.”
To reiterate, a spiritual awakening enables a person to face
fear — not avoid it. I recently had the privilege of taking a man who
worked for a pest control company through the Twelve Steps. At

* Lisa Belkin, “Keeping Kids Safe from the Wrong Dangers”, The
New York Times, September 18, 2010, http://www.nytimes. com/,

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 STEP 4

one point, as we discussed fears, it became apparent that his job |

had required him to face many of the things in life that most
people dodge at all costs: rats, cellars, dank and dark crawlspaces,
spiders, bats, cockroaches, and other common phobias. Not
surprisingly, he had a smaller list of fears on his inventory than
most people do. At one point, after I had tried to help him
discover one or two common areas of fear to no avail, he said, “I
think I’ve got one: I’m afraid to buy a motorcycle. If I got one, I
think I would get hooked on speeding!” What else could I say but,
ce
te
“That’s a good one. Put it down on the list as your third fear.”
eaten
ae

Then I told him to spend a week seeing if God brought anything

else to mind. A few more were added, but not many.
Of course, in comparison with most others, his resentments
were off the charts! But in the arena of fear he was already a great
portrait of spirituality. He told me about the time early in his
career when, after learning what was involved in ridding a house of
termites, he refused to go under a house. He soon realized that he
either had to get over that fear or pursue a new line of work.
Grow or go, right? The results were self-evident, for he had much
to teach me. Today he collects poisonous spiders for fun.
Most people, when they’re finally given the ability to face the
crippling nature of their fears, find that praying for God to remove
them comes quite naturally.5° Unlike my friend in pest control,
most people are unable to teach themselves to face their fears
without using a prayerful approach. While he had been able to
confront his fears on his own (in a most uncharacteristic fashion),
he was in desperate need of God’s help with his temper. Our point
is that, where character is concerned, no one is exempt from the
need for spiritual help, although the symptoms may vary a bit
from one person to the next.

50 The 6 Step describes this state of mind as being “entirely ready to have
God remove” our fear.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

“Let’s Talk About Sex” (George Michael)

“Now about sex. Many ofus needed an overhauling there.”

-Big Book (68)

Sex is the great taboo. It makes people bristle. Talk of sex and the
feelings of anger and guilt that frequently accompany it keep more
people away from church than any other single issue. In social
situations, the topic of sex tends to polarize more quickly than
almost any other, perhaps beating out both religion and politics.
What is AA’s stance on sexual disputes? “We want to stay out of
this controversy” (69).
While many of us are quick to take positions on matters
related to sex in general, very few people are willing to talk about
their personal sex lives openly. This is understandable given the
broad spectrum of strongly-held opinions concerning sexual
ethics. Everyone holds to some personal standard of sexual
conduct; we punish others to the extent that their behavior
deviates from our personally held ideal. It should come as no
surprise that sexual baggage makes up a huge percentage of the
material that lurks in the closets, basements, and attics of the
human psyche. While “sex problems” seems ambiguous, we like it
that way: in our definition, anything producing shame or
emotional dissonance in one’s sexual history is a concern that
should be aired and addressed.
A housecleaning on this front is almost always crucial. The
4 Step is in no way caught off guard by our checkered sexual
histories. In fact, it expects them: “We all have sex problems. We’d
hardly be human if we didn’t” (69).
It is remarkable that the hysteria that surrounds the subject
of sex in our culture is almost entirely absent in the world of AA.
There are two reasons for this. First, AA seeks to provide

106
 STEP 4

alcoholics with a non-judgmental environment. The attractiveness

of an AA group, especially for a newcomer, largely depends upon
this one virtue. Where sex is concerned, this is particularly true.
The Big Book is both aware of the extreme opinions that
punctuate all conversations related to sex, and it is quick to state:
“We do not wish to be the arbiters of anyone’s sex conduct” (69),
The second reason for AA’s relatively calm sexual
conversation is its view that sex is just like any other problem. In
AA, all sin carries the same rank: it’s all rooted in the same
deviation from loving God to loving the self. The moment people
begin to draw lines of deviation between one sin and another,
either by ranking them in terms of severity or by attempting to
draw a distinction between motive and behavior, they get into
impossibly complex theological material. AA’s approach lines up
nicely with Paul’s sentiment in Romans 3:23: “all have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God.” And AA firmly believes that all
problems straighten out when cast under God’s dominion. Matters
of sex, just like anything else, fall under the scrutiny of God; they
do not have to fall under the scrutiny of the group. In other
words, nagging is not required for change to occur. You might say
that sex, and all other moral matters, are viewed as “secondary”
issues in AA. In this context, conventional morality pales by
comparison to the life-or-death issues of drinking and the working
of the Twelve Steps.
Again, in AA there is really only one thing that takes on a
moral dimension: the working or not working of the Twelve Steps.
If you are sober and not working the Twelve Steps, then you are
doing something wrong. If you are working the Twelve Steps,
then all the other issues will fall into place in God’s time. Again we
quote the Big Book: "When the spiritual malady is overcome, we
straighten out mentally and physically." And sexually, for that
matter (64).

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

While outsiders may have a problem with this approach,

they cannot argue with the empirical evidence, which is that it
works — and that it works better than what one finds in most
churches. In AA we find a group of people who are perhaps more
oo

honest, as a group, about matters of sex than any other. The

people of AA talk about sex problems without excuse, and they
deal with their sex problems accordingly. This approach works so
well because AA understands that sex problems do not simply
bow down to fight judgment, willpower, or conventional
knowing-better. God’s help is the only factor that can turn the tide
of self-interest and compulsion.
The result is that, in fact, the sober individuals of AA have
more transparency, less-shame and secrecy, and more stories of
growth and healing when it comes to their sex lives than most
Christian believers. Far too many churches have become places
where people go to hide from the reality of their own sexual
shame, where any kind of honesty about one’s sexual past is
discouraged by fear of judgment. AA’s lack of condemnation, on
the other hand, produces a lack of sublimation, which in turn leads
to healthier and mote spiritual sex lives.

How to Take Inventory of One’s Sex Life

Obviously any inventory of one’s sex life involves making “a

review of our own [sex] conduct over the years past” (69). Most of
us simply need to record a list of names, just as with resentments
and fears. If the name is not remembered but the circumstances
ate, a dummy-name that jogs the memoty will do fine (e.g., “girl in
Athens” or, “one-night-stand”). If there are any especially
embarrassing or painful incidences (e.g. molestation or abuse), we

108
 STEP 4

include them too. We start with the present and move backwards,
including ourselves on the list last.
After the list has been made, each name is then given its
own section to be prayerfully analyzed with the help of the
following questions: “Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or
inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy,
suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault, what should we have done
instead?” (69).
It is important to note if any patterns emerge. Odds are that
we have repeatedly acted in selfish ways where sex is concerned.
What are they? How have we caused harm? Have we led people
on or sent mixed messages? If it would be awkward to suddenly
bump into one of the people on our list, why is this the case?
What did we do that created the awkwardness? What was our
part? Maybe we said we would call and then didn’t?
We put these answers down on paper in order to shape “our
future sex ideal.” What goals for the future arise from these
considerations? The book encourages us to “shape a sane and
sound ideal for our future sex life” and then to pray that God will
help us to live up to it as we move into the future (69). For many
Christians, abstinence outside of marriage will be the goal.
We commonly find that where honesty, compassion, and
thoughtfulness have been present, harm will not have been done.
The 4% Step is where we look for the absence of these attributes
and how our selfishness has robbed us of our usefulness to our
fellow human beings. By pinpointing our destructive patterns and
the misery they have caused, we may find that God begins to
shape us in ways that do not arouse shame, guilt, and the feeling of
being blocked off from Him.

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Finally

“Can you see that this death of self is not, in the final analysis, something
_you can do?”
-G. Forde, “Sermon on the Death ofSelf’

At this point, we should have a little journal or notepad with a fair

amount of writing in it. Resentments, fears, and sexual issues have
been listed and analyzed. We are now ready for Step 5.°!
There may be places where we feel that we have been
“stuck” in our reflections. But we need not worry about this if
we’ve made an honest attempt and tried to work through the
material in the way that has been laid out above. To the extent that
something important is missing, the person to whom we divulge
this material in the 5% Step will likely be able to help us connect
the dots.
Sometimes in AA, the writing of a perfect “by the book, 4-
column inventory” is overly emphasized. There is no such thing as
a perfect 4% Step inventory. The Big Book offers great insight and
guidance, but it makes room for error in its execution. In the same
way that the exact wording of the 3 Step prayer is
inconsequential so long as the correct sentiment is expressed (63),
we know that it is not perfect adherence to directions that brings
sobriety and sanity, but God’s grace.52

>! The 72 ¢% 12 adds matters of family and money to the list of things that
should be looked at in the 4% Step. If you have particular discomfort in one
of those two areas, you might also do a similar review of your situation in
that respect. As always, the important thing is to list honestly the problematic
areas and the faulty ways in which we have added to these difficulties.
2 This is a point that is often missed by the zealous newcomer who has
found freedom and release from sin through the Twelve Steps. The Steps
point to God, but they are not synonymous with Him. We do well to
remember Jesus’ relevant (and mind-blowingly insightful) words: “The
Sabbath [Twelve Steps] was made for man, not man for the Sabbath [Twelve
Steps]” (Mk 2:27).

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 STEP 4

The purpose of the 4% Step inventory is to confront our

shortcomings as God reveals them to us. When that has
happened, we are prepared for the next three steps.
But before we move on, we might ask what exactly our role
in writing the inventory has been. Take the example of a new AA
or, better yet, someone outside the world of addiction who has
just finished an inventory along the lines of Step 4. She’s
substantially overhauled her perspective, possibly for the first time
in her life. Hopefully she has looked at all kinds of primary
Situations in her life from new angles. Honesty has been
paramount, and many lurking suspicions, formerly denied, have
probably become evident. To quote the Big Book, she has
“swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about [herself]”’
(71). How has our 4* Step practitioner suddenly been able to see
things about herself that she’s never been able to see before? In
my own case, looking back, it seemed much more like God had
helped me do this 4% Step work, and that, apart from His help, it
would never have been done. Sometimes in AA, people say things
like, “you put the pen to the paper, and then God does the
writing.” I wholly sympathize with that interpretation of the
inventory process.
Consider the following story: Years ago, in a particularly
stuck period of my sobriety, I sought the help of a therapist.
Picture the quintessential wise, New York City Jewish therapist.
This man had a renowned reputation for helping Christian
ministers, and I was vety eager to receive his help in dealing with
my life as it then stood.
In our first session, on a Monday morning, I told him about
myself: my confusion about the future (especially vis-a-vis career),
frustrations in my romantic life, and my voracious appetite for
clothes and shopping. I voiced too the difficulties I was having
"with basic aspects of adult responsibility. At one point, I think I
told him that I hated “the post office.” At the end of our time, I

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

asked him if there was anything I could do in the next week to

make the most of the therapy.
He said, “Before you come back next week, I want you to
buy a stamp.”
The following Monday morning I returned to his office,
stamp in hand. I walked into the office practically waving it in
front of his face, but he didn’t seem eager to give it much
attention.
At the end of that second session, I again asked the same
thing:
“What do you want me to do this week?”
He replied, “This week, I want you to buy a post card.”
The next week I came in with a “Greetings from
Chinatown” postcard I had picked up on the street near my
apartment.
He responded, “Good. Next week I want you to put the
stamp on the post card.”
I returned the following week to show him my postcard,
now with the stamp affixed in the upper right-hand corner. At the
end of our session, I asked again,
“What do you want me to do?”
“Write something on the post card,” he told me.
A week later I walked in, feeling a bit blue. I told him
forthrightly that I had not written anything on the postcard and
showed him the blank front. He responded in a way that surprised
me.
Dryly, and with a slight smile, he replied, “That’s okay; all I
ever wanted you to do was buy a stamp.”
I had assumed that I had ceased to make any progress
because I had stopped doing the things he wanted me to do. To
the contrary, he was suggesting that the therapeutic work that had
begun with our meetings was far bigger than my ability to stop it.

112
 STEP 4

Once I had purchased a stamp, I was “dead in the water” of

forward progress.
I never asked him for an assignment again. By the time I
finished meeting with him a few months later, I had decided to
enter the ordained ministry, enrolled in a seminary in England, and
— most importantly — met and started dating the woman who
would become my wife. Something had indeed begun to move in
my life, and the fruits were undeniable.
And so it is with the 4" Step inventory. Once a newcomer
has made her resentment list, I now smile to myself because I
know that the proverbial “stamp” has already been purchased. The
inventory process usually bumps into hurdles at some point, but
they are easily overcome with the help of an unflappable sponsor.
If the subject is given space, the potent cocktail of personal
discomfort and God’s grace typically works wonders in motivating
a return to the work.*3

53 As previously mentioned, people often balk on the 4% Step. The inventory

experience is that unpleasant. The goal of the sponsor here is to help make
the experience as easy as possible for the inventory taker. For sponsors, it
may be helpful to schedule a time for the subject to meet with you, where he
can quietly do the writing in your presence, like a kind of 4® Step “study
hall.” Usually people don’t do this work until they become convinced that
they cannot find peace until they do it. This means that discomfort plays a
crucial role. The sponsor does not need to increase the subject’s feelings of
discomfort, except for gently asking, “How is the inventory coming along?”
~ You might relay your own experience of procrastination with the work. It
will be written when the time is right and the pain of not writing it surpasses
the pain of doing it.

113
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 Step 5

“We Admitted to God, to Ourselves, and to

Another Human Being the Exact Nature of Our
Wrongs”

“You're only as sick as your secrets.”

-Unknown

‘We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every
dark cranny of the past.”
-Big Book (75)

The Twelve Steps are “ego-deflators.” They typically direct us in

the opposite direction of our instincts.54 In no case is this more
evident than with Step 5, which involves bringing another person

54 In that sense, we do well to acknowledge that the spiritual impulse is not a

"self-generated phenomenon. Perhaps it is even divinely inspired (1e., to the
exact extent that it is counter-intuitive). We'll discuss this more in Steps 6 &
a

ats
GRACE IN ADDICTION

in on the nasty truth about ourselves that has surfaced in the 4%

Step inventory. As long as someone refuses to share his Step 4
inventory, to an extent, he is trying to hang onto his past and deal
with it independently. By sharing our histories, however, it’s like
we take a poison within ourselves and distribute it over a much
larger body. Step 5 reduces the damaging impact of our past by
sharing it with a sponsor. This is where the skeletons come out of
the closet so that they can receive a proper burial.
The Big Book is quick to point out that the 4% Step is not a
cure in and of itself: “in actual practice many of us found that a
solitary self-appraisal is insufficient” (72). In other words, the 4"
Step is simply a diagnosis. Like all humbling self-knowledge, it
provides no ameliorating salve by which a person might be healed.
Instead, Step 4 prepares us to take Step 5 and to experience the
much-needed sense of relief that it brings.
The 5 Step is when the writer of the inventory meets with
an understanding individual to read and discuss his 4% Step work,
preferably very soon after the inventory has been completed.**
There is an important spiritual principle that lies behind this
uncomfortable divulging. The 5% Step states that we are to “admit
to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.” The principle that we cannot fully admit a thing to God
unless we have admitted it to another person may not be self-evident, but
all who have tried this approach will attest to its truth.
Indeed, the humility involved in sharing our weakness with
another person is invaluable. It helps us to feel unified with the
human race and with God. People who have tried Step 5 often
describe feeling like God has “heard them” in a fresh way. Since
the relief and help are so beneficial, many will find themselves

°° While it may take as little time to complete as one hour, in all likelihood it
will requite a longer session. A person might even schedule the 5" Step
meeting before the inventory has been finished to give themselves a deadline.
Saturday afternoons are perfect for a thorough 5" Step.

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 STEP 5

taking this step more than once. In fact,itsometimes becomes a

way of life. The 5% Step teaches us a great lesson: ifyou really want to
bring God in on a particular situation, bring someone else in on itfirst.
Notice another 5% Step principle: by confiding in another,
we may be able to admit something to ourselves that we would
not have otherwise been able to see. The listener will often share a
bit of his own experience, or he will make a simple point that will
come across to the person taking the 5" Step as a revelation.
Most people think they are unique, and in the 5th Step, they
discover that they are not. Far from it, in fact. We think, “If
anyone knew this about me, they would never talk to me again.”
The justifications for holding onto our secrets are the same things
that cause us to feel irreconcilably separate from our fellow man.
The classic example described in many AA meetings
concerns a person telling her sponsor in the 5% Step about “the
worst thing I’ve ever done”, to which the sponsor replies: “That’s
all? I did that twice!”’ In many cases, some terrible secret will elicit
barely more than a raised eyebrow, or an, “uh-huh, what’s next on
your list?” from the sponsor. The unexceptional nature of most
sin comes as a real surprise and relief to the person who takes the
5t Step honestly. In hearing a 5 Step, the sponsor should stress
the reality that the sharer is indeed a member of the human race.
This is a sad truth, but a freeing one. I have almost never
heard a male’s 5% Step that has not involved some shameful sexual
recollection. Most people have been involved in some kind of
abuse. A big part of the healing that is needed in this area of life
comes from finding out that “you’re not the only one.” If trust has
been established with the listener, there is no reason why a tiny bit
of questioning in this direction should be avoided; it may enable a
person to experience an absolution of sorts that is equivalent to a
massive amount of therapy. For this step, all that the listener needs
is the ability to convey that what she is hearing is in no way
exceptional, uncommon, or overly disconcerting.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

In a rather serious sense, therapy and counseling are

contemporaty expressions of this confessional movement. A
solitary life almost inevitably leads to a loss of perspective; people
ate simply not designed to live their lives on their own.5° That is
because we need each other, and furthermore, God often speaks
through the mouths of other people. Seeking good counsel is what
we might call “a no-brainer.” For the alcoholic in search of
sobriety, the 5‘ Step is vitally important, and a great many relapses
have been attributed to people skipping it. As important as this
step has been for AA, both modern psychotherapy and the
Christian tradition also affirm the need for counseling and
confession. This suggests the insight that everyone could benefit from a
5 Step.
The Big Book describes the wonderful feelings associated
with completing the 5% Step in the following way:

“Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we

ate delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can
be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from
us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We
may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin
to have a spiritual experience...We feel we are on the
Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of
the Universe” (75).

Confession in AA

“...2n God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have.”
-Big Book (24)

*6 “Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous” (12 ¢> 12, 60).

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 STEP'5

I once heard the story of a member of AA who was in need of a

new sponsor. He needed to finish a-4% Step inventory that had
been started a few months earlier with the help of a sponsor who
had subsequently relapsed. Our friend was choosing a new
sponsor based on who he thought had the most experience with
the 5% Step. So he chose a famed old-timer who had heard
countless 5% Steps and was known for his wisdom. Our friend
described his excitement about getting to spend a prolonged
period of time with this enlightened old fellow. He described his
experience to me in the following way:

“The actual experience of meeting with him on a

Saturday afternoon to read my 4% Step turned out to be
not at all what I expected. I had been expecting sage
wisdom and insight into each of my _ particular
resentments, as well as countless points that I had not
considered before. Instead, he sat there across from me,
listening in a seemingly detached fashion as I read to
him.
We both smoked a lot of cigarettes. He said
‘next’ a lot, sometimes even in the middle of my reading.
It was like he didn’t care or find any of my inventory to
be very interesting. At one point, during the sex part, he
divulged a very embarrassing story from his own past
that put me right at ease. Other than that he said very
little.
The whole thing was done surprisingly quickly,
sort of like the way an experienced doctor might visit
with a patient in a hospital for only a very short period
of time. All in all, the experience was remarkably
unremarkable. It helped to redefine my understanding
of both wisdom and spirituality. It taught me that being
down-to-earth is more mystical than tripping on LSD !
bP)

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The 5% Step encounter benefits from a low-key vibe. It may take a

little while to get the ball rolling, as the reader may wish to give her
sponsor the context of a few of the first items on her list. Ideally,
the sponsor should only be interested in the “my part” aspect. If
the reader starts getting hung up on explaining the “why” behind
the resentment, a good sponsor might cut them off sweetly, saying
something like, “Thank you for helping me to better understand
the situation. Now let’s jump ahead to your part. What did you
write down in answer to the questions I gave you?” In fact, two or
three resentments deep into the inventory, it’s a good idea to
speed things up. Sponsors should be quick to acknowledge where
the same material is being revisited: “Oh, it sounds a lot like the
last one actually...”
Listeners generally see faults more easily than inventory-
takers. The process, therefore, can be a matter of , push-and-pull.
At many points in the proceedings, it’s up to the sponsor to hurry
someone along. Sometimes, if I feel that we’re covering redundant
material, I'll abruptly cut off the reader with a slightly bored,
“Next!” It’s even okay to yawn while listening. At other times,
however, T’ll make them pause to dwell on something they are
inclined to skim over.
Again, the listener’s role is to help the subject see the
running themes in his life that comprise his “character defects.”
You can write these on a piece of paper under the heading
“Millie’s Defects” or “Jason’s Shortcomings”, which will be given
back to them at the end of your time together. Don’t hesitate to
ask them, “How would you describe that tendency in a word or
two? I was thinking about writing: ‘temper flare-ups.’ Does that
sound like a good way to describe this pattern we’ve seen three
times in the past six resentments?”
At the end of the session, the listener reads the list of defects
out loud and asks the inventory-taker if they think it’s an accurate
account of the negative character traits that have emerged in the

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process of reviewing the inventory. A recent list I compiled for a

person included “road rage, social awkwardness, loneliness,
difficulty separating work from the test.of my life, smoking, being
cynical, lust, pushiness, shame about not finishing college.” This
list will be crucial for the next two steps.
The 5% Step is finished after someone has read his entire
inventory to another person, sharing resentments, fears, and sexual
history with the listener. At the end, there should be a list of
character defects the sponsee can take home with them, a kind of
summary of the problematic tendencies that have caused repeated
trouble, discord, and unrest. If we don’t have any defects, of
course, then we won’t be able to continue with the Twelve Steps.

Confession in Christianity

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you
may be healed...”
-James 5:16

“Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the hight for
fear that their deeds will be exposed.”
-John 3:20

The old-fashioned Christian word for Step 5 is “confession.” This

is simply the act of telling another person about one’s sins, the
ways in which our besetting weaknesses have manifested
themselves concretely in our lives. A helpful Biblical description of
this kind of ministry comes from the book of Hebrews, where the
author writes that, “Every high priest [read: minister] is selected
from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in
_ matters related to God...He is able to deal gently with those who are
ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness” (5:1-2).

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The primary role of representing and serving God in ministry

involves “dealing gently” with sinners, in light of the knowledge of
one’s own sin.
Few will contest that compassion for hardship is usually
born of shared experience. Usually the person best suited to
convey compassion to someone who has suffered a tragedy (e.g.
miscattiage, cancer, or suicide) is the person who has experienced
these things in their own life. The 5% Step represents a natural
expression of this insight, and we see it clearly played out in the
sponsor’s bored “next —’ following the most shameful
confessions. This slight air of boredom conveys grace to the
sponsee, letting him know that his sins are nothing exceptional in
the community of sinners, and indeed that the sponsor has likely
had firsthand experience with them.
Similarly, the sponsor might show great sensitivity over
some small detail, or when the sponsee is noticeably reliving some
traumatic memory from their past.>’ This too, is grace in practice.
The Twelve Steps would suggest that being in touch with one’s
own past sinfulness and sufferings allows the hearer to show
understanding. This facilitates the humble, forgiving attitude on
the sponsot’s part that helps confession accomplish its purpose: to
be a tangible expression of God’s one-way love, a word spoken
into the individual’s life that gives him certitude that he is indeed
forgiven. The goal in confession is not to fix a person. It is to
make the person feel understood, heard, and not condemned. The
truth comes out and it is not held against them, but instead it is
forgiven and absolved.

°7 If a deep sense of shame is connected to the material being discussed, I

will try with my body language to convey that I am listening especially
attentively, sometimes exhaling audibly.

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 STEP!5

AA’s method operates implicitly upon the same theological

principles that guide confession in the Church. The fact that
confession works isn’t due to some special status or deep
spirituality in the hearer. Instead, we find confession’s efficacy
consists in the concrete knowledge offorgiveness as it is extended to us in the
specific context of our sins. During the time of the Reformation, Martin
Luther put forward the idea that every person who puts trust in
God is, in turn, given a ministry on earth. The teaching came to be
known as “the priesthood of all believers.” In AA’s 5% Step, the
universal need for forgiveness aligns itself with the doctrine of
“the priesthood of all believers” in a profound expression. This
need reminds the Church that its calling to bring the Gospel
message to life directly depends on how well it conveys
forgiveness to its people.
Although confession’s purpose in Christianity is to convey
God’s forgiveness and its corresponding freedom from guilt, it has
a mixed history in the Church. Pop culture commonly portrays
confession as something silly and archaic, something obligatory or,
worse, a prison of guilt symbolized by a stifling confessional
booth. Although the Church bears ultimate responsibility for these
mixed messages, both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches
have always believed that confession is not obligatory for
forgiveness and, furthermore, that it is meant to convey grace.
With all of this in view, confession is meant to be (and can be!) a
reception of God’s one-way love to us, distributed through
another person. As FitzSimons Allison once remarked, “It’s not
something we ave to do, it’s something we get to do.”
While we don’t believe it’s necessary in the traditional,
whispering-sins-to-a-priest sort of way, AA’s Step 5 highlights a
useful practice for the Christian Church. Its honesty produces teal
results, corroborating the age-old truth that grace is an agent of
change. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred German theologian,
explained well confession’s double-movement of the terror in

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

having one’s sin known and the grace that immediately follows
from it:

“You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear
before men will do no good before Him. He wants to
see you as you ate; He wants to be gracious to you. You
do not have to go on lying to yourself and your
brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a
sinner. Thank God for that...”>°

Because of confession’s value, it’s not surprising to find that

cotporate confession and absolution occur in every Sunday service
in most denominations. In the church where I serve currently,
each week we read the same Bible passage from the Book of
Common Prayer, one which grasps the heart of the confessional
dynamic. In simple terms, this verse offers the sense of peace that
comes with completion of the 5% Step or with a healthy practice of
Christian confession. We close with it:

“Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh
you. eed
-Matt 11:28

8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1954), 111.

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 Step 6

“Were Entirely Ready to Have God Remove

These Defects of Character”

“The problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar.”
-Unknown

“Character defect? My sponsor told me I’m a defect in search of some

character.”
-AA member working the 6% Step, South Carolina

Step 6 begins the moment we finish Step 5. That is, it begins once
the reading of our moral inventory has yielded its list of
undesirable character traits. Not surprisingly, the initial feeling of
relief that comes from the 5 Step is soon replaced by the
frustration that comes from trying to master character defects.
If you don’t have a written list, it might be helpful to pause
- here to make a quick mental one. What aspects of your personality
typically rub people the wrong way? Are you a picky eater,

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constantly giving waiters a bunch of extra instructions even

though it makes your husband want to hide under the table? Are
you a hypochondriac? Or a loud talker? Are you grumpy of
impatient? Do have a temper with your family members?
Character defects ate deeply-ingrained, unruly foes. One
wise AA old-timer, Milt L. from Cleveland, compared them to
“that game at Chuck E. Cheese”:

“You get the mallet in your hand and you start hitting
those ugly puffy clowns as they pop up on that board
with the six holes in it. You hit the thing over here and
then a new one pops up over there. You hit that one,
and then another one pops up in a different spot. Every
time you hit the thing, a new thing pops up somewhere
else.”

The image is fitting. The battle with our defects is often defined by
defeats in the same way that the story of alcoholism is often best
understood by looking at relapses. Step 6 provides a concrete
opportunity to reflect upon that list of defects and, if need be, add
to it. Despite their persistence and unhealthiness , our kst of defects
comprises our “Spiritual resume.” Indeed, to our way of thinking it is what
qualifies us to build a strong relationship with God.

Defects loom over our lives, and we sometimes find that our
attempts to muzzle them provoke their re-emergence. St. Paul had
a similar insight in his Letter to the Romans, where he writes,
“Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the
commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died” (7:9). The
experience of trying to get better usually involves some aspect of
disillusionment and regression.
Perhaps, during the 4% and 5th Step process, some things
wete revealed to us about our character that we had never

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consciously seen before. It is more likely, however, that we have

been aware of the items on our lists for some time, but had never
tried looking at them all together as a group. Not surprisingly, the
5 Step usually provokes a desire to be rid of the personality traits
that have been defeating us in our day-to-day lives. Up until this
point, we’ve justified or counter-balanced them against the
weaknesses of others. Now, having focused entirely upon
ourselves in the inventory, the (unsavory) fruit of that investigation
sits before us.
The way that AA suggests we deal with our defects begins
with the same type of moves we have found in the earlier steps:
we look at the various ways we have failed to deal with them.

Absolutely Unable to Stop..on the Basis of Self-

Knowledge (39)

“The presupposition that the will is able and willing to carry into effect what
reason dictates 1sfalse.”
-Karl Holl

“Knowing is half the battle.”

-G. I. Joe

In Step 6, we are forced to re-evaluate our understanding of self-

knowledge. Do you remember those instructional lessons that
used to come at the very end of each episode of the 1980s
children’s cartoon G.I. Joe? They would show, for example, a
hapless kid about to stick his finger in a socket. At the last possible
instant one of the heroes from the series would show up to
prevent the catastrophe. He would say something like, “Billy, don’t
. stick your finger in electrical outlets or you'll get electrocuted.”
Then Billy would say, “Thanks for saving me. Now I know not to

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stick my fingers into electrical sockets,’ to which the G. I. Joe

would respond, “And knowing is half the battle!” It was a slogan
of sorts: “Knowing is half the battle.’ AA’s philosophy looks
upon this comment with amused skepticism. You can almost hear
some wise old-timer in an AA meeting exclaim, “Knowing may be
half the battle... but it sure isn’t the whol victory” as he slaps his knee.
To illustrate this point, consider the story of the watermelon
farmer. He loved his watermelons and grew them with great
affection. But he had one nagging problem: a group of “punk
kids” were known from time to time to terrorize his beloved
watermelon patch, usually stealing some of his best produce.
Every year when the watermelons got large enough for harvest,
these sneaky saboteurs would infiltrate his patch and make off
with some of his crop.
The farmer tried all kinds of techniques to protect his
watermelons. He would stay awake in his porch rocking chair,
shotgun in his lap, waiting for the assailants. But they would show
up just as he nodded off and be gone before he could even fire off
a shot. His frustrations mounted from year to year until finally he
built a fence around the patch. They still broke in. The next year
he lined it with barbed-wire. He bought guard dogs and a secutity
system. But all of these measures failed to prevent the surprisingly
wily thieves from breaking in. His preoccupation with security
grew into a perennial source of anxiety and neurosis.
Finally one night, just before the new crop reached harvest
time, the farmer came up with a brilliant plan to stop the thieves.
He woke up early the next morning, went into his shed and
created a small sign, which he attached to a stake. He planted it
right in the middle of the patch. It read: “One of these watermelons is
poisoned.” Finally, for the first time in weeks, he slept well, knowing
that the thieves would stay away for fear of being poisoned.
The next morning he walked out to the watermelon patch
with an air of confidence. His smile was quickly replaced by a

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frown when he noticed something writtén on his sign. The word

“one” had been crossed out with a~black slash. Scrawled just
above it was the word “two”, so that the sign now read: “Two of
these watermelons are poisoned.”
The point is that, as far as Step 6 is concerned, our best
thinking and planning is not enough to beat our defects of
character. We cannot change ourselves, even if we understand the
ways in which we would like to change. Shel Silverstein points this
out in his classic poem, “The Little Blue Engine”: “If the track is
tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain’t
enough.” Until we view our inflexible personalities this way, we
will remain stuck in our delusions about both ourselves and the
world at large.
Likewise, in the religious realm, churches that fail to account
for the realities of recidivism — or the tendency to fall back into
reprehensible behavior — in the life of Christians have a hard time
connecting with their congregations over the long haul. Lutheran
theologian Steven Paulson has noted the “vast difference it makes
for a preacher to stand before a congregation and assume their
wills are bound rather than to stand before a group and assume
their wills are merely in need of motivation.’”?
Theologian Rod Rosenbladt captures the 6% Step bind as it
often presents itself in the mind of a Christian in his pamphlet
Christ Alone:

“Think of the inner soliloquy many Christians

experience week by week: “There may have been grace
for me when, as a sinner, I was initially converted. But
now, having been given the Spirit of God, I fear that
things have gotten worse in me rather than better. I

~ 59 Stephen Paulson, introduction to The Captivation of the Wilk Luther vs.

Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage, by Gerhard O. Forde (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2005), xi.

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have horribly abused all of God's good gifts to me. I

was so optimistic in the beginning, when the pastor told
me that Christ outside of me, dying for me, freely saved
me by his death, and that the Holy Spirit now dwelling
within me would aid me in following Christ...I have
tededicated myself to Christ more times than I can
count. But it seems to stay the same, or even get worse,
no matter what I do. Whatever the outer limits of
Christ's grace are, I have certainly crossed them. I have
utterly, consciously, and with planning aforethought
blown it all.
““T guess I was never a Christian in the first place,
because if I had been, I would have made some
progress in the Christian life...I'll try going to church for
a while longer, but I think I've tried every possible thing
the church has told me to do. After that, I guess I'll
return to paganism and ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ for the
time I've got left. What else is there to do?”6?

Rosenbladt’s quote perfectly depicts the psychological state that

accompanies the experience of the 6 Step for people in AA.
While some may hope that working the steps will quickly change
them in an easily discernible way, the reality of the spiritual life
does involve frequent disappointment — and this disappointment
has a profundity and transformative power all its own.
Think about your most glaring defects for a moment. Have
you been able to rid yourself of them? What would your closest
friends say? Can you identify with the train of thought described in
Rosenbladt’s soliloquy? For example, are you a smoker? Smoking
is a perfect example of a character defect. It’s unhealthy and hard
to defend. Yet tons of people do it; they love smoking, but they

6° Rod Rosenbladt, Christ Alone, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 39-
40.

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hate being smokers. Most smokers ‘want to quit, at least

theoretically. But “quitting time” never seems to arrive or, for that
matter, it never seems to last very long when it does arrive.
Step 6 requires us to look our defects square in the face.
How much of your life has been defined by your defects? How
many attempts have you made to beat them? What’s the longest
you've had a defect lie dormant? If you beat it, did two or thtee
new ones arrive in its place? And are they still with you?
If we’re to understand what Step 6 means when it says
“were entirely ready to have God remove our defects of
character’, we will need to address the fact that se/“Anowledge, in and
of itself, does not provide the means necessary to defeat defects. George Eliot
captures this perfectly in her short story Janet’s Repentance:

“She was tired, she was sick of that barren exhortation

— Do right, and keep a clear conscience, and God will
reward you, and your troubles will be easier to bear. She
wanted strength to do right — she wanted something to
rely on besides her own resolutions; for was not the
path behind her all strewn with broken resolutions?
How could she trust in new ones?’’’!

Self-knowledge, without the aid of outside power, does little more

than laugh at our failures. Unflinching honesty produces despair
rather than hope. Step 6 understands that the state of continual
relapse is common in human nature, and that we need more than
simple self-knowledge to te-habituate the individual’s will. This is
an understanding that is just as important for the church to
recover as it is for alcoholics.

61 George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life (New York, NY: Oxford UP, 1988), 252

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“Were Entirely Ready” and the Defense That Precedes

Readiness

‘The only wisdom we can hope to acquire ts the wisdom ofhumility: humilty
is endless.”
1 Smt Lor

‘When the ground crumbles under their feet, [people] have to leap even into
uncertainty ifthey are to avoid certain destruction.”
-W. H. Auden

People are quick to make excuses for themselves. We defend our

defects of character on the grounds that we cannot change them.
They come with us; they are part of the package. Maybe you’ve
met a person who says of themselves, “I’m a control freak, so...”
ot, “I don’t like surprises” or, “I’m a big talker.” To some extent,
they are describing defects that have taken over their lives, defects
that define their self-understanding. Indeed, our defects can make
us think of ourselves as a closed system. If our “system” cannot
eradicate them, then it incorporates them and defends their
presence.
Step 6 acknowledges the presence of our defects and their
deep-seated, barnacle-like attachment to us. But it also refuses to
excuse them, in spite of the fact that they have not yielded to the
headlong assault of the will. If certain patterns of behavior and
thinking have caused us to harm ourselves, our neighbors, or our
relationship with God, AA would suggest that we view them
through a critical lens.
This means that the defects on our list can be things that we
both like and dislike. While we may be understandably reluctant to
criticize the things about ourselves that we hold dear, if they are
the same qualities that create distance between us and our fellow
man (and God), they need to come under scrutiny. Inventory has

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opened the door to the idea that we may, in fact, need a complete
make-over and not just a little bit of tweaking. In this way, we
begin to view our lives from God’s perspective rather than from
the vantage point of our own navels. Again, the formal religious
word for this is “repentance.” Indeed, the 6% Step dynamic is so
central to spirituality that Martin Luther believed that the whole
life of believers should be characterized as one of repentance.
Step 6 involves looking at the various ways we have
defended and justified our shortcomings. In many instances we
actually find that we love our character defects. We don’t want to
be rid of them, and we definitely don’t want to know what life
would be like without them. A perfect example of this comes from
a column Mark Oppenheimer wrote for Slate in 2011 entitled
“The Unholy Pleasure: My Life-Long Recovery from Snobberty.”
We quote from it at some length because he makes the point so
well:

“It is not unusual for snobberies to begin as self-

defense—they are almost necessarily the province of
minority groups worried that they might any day be
vanquished: The landed English were surrounded by the
peasants, the educated Ivy Leaguers by hoz polloi. Beneath
the airs of superiority one can quickly discern the
grounding of insecurity...
“But self-protective armor can be used in the
offensive, too; judgment nearly always turns judgmental.
Nobody likes to relinquish a snobbery, even when it
becomes safe to venture forth without it... Wherever
snobbery can be found, it is evidence of insecurity, even
emotional poverty; and yet it is frequently one of life’s
great pleasures...
“The problem, of course, is that after a while the
snobbery game, like any game played consistently over

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many yeats, becomes quite serious. Just as there are no

true “recreational” golfers, there is after a while no such
thing as a recreational snob. The judgmentalism moves
to the fore, and the snob really begins to see people as
mete butterflies, objects for classification... Snobbery is
ultimately a dysfunction.
“ ..I do wonder if I can ever change; I cannot
decide if I even want to.’’&

Here we see the flipside of our personalities. We are defect-laden

people, and yet imagining ourselves without our defects is almost
impossible. This becomes especially clear when we understand
that even our favorite things about ourselves (e.g. where we went
to school, or our community-setvice track record, or our career
success) can be the biggest hindrances to our spiritual lives. It’s a
great and important point and one that the New Testament
frequently makes — that self-righteousness is more detrimental to
the maintenance of a relationship with God than despair and
humility.

I’m in a 6® Step State of Mind

In order to better make sense of the 6 Step state of mind, let’s

consider its opposite for moment. A few yeats ago, a young
professional named John Fitzgerald Page made headlines when a
young woman, who had approached him on Match.com,

62 Mark Oppenheimer, “The Unholy Pleasure: My Life-Long Recovery from

Snobbery”, S/a#e, January 24, 2011, http://www.slate.com/,
63 For New Testament examples of this, see the older brother in the Parable
of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11-32), the story of the Pharisee and the tax
Sees (Lk 18:9-14), or the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt.

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 STEP 6

published two of his emails to het. Here’s the report the girl wrote:
64 se

"So I winked at this guy on Match. Should have known

better considering his screen name was
‘IvyLeagueAlum.’ He responds with the following
email...

“T live in a 31 story high rise condominium, right in the

middle of the Buckhead nightlife district. Do you ever
come to this area of town to shop/go out/visit/
explore?
I went to an Ivy League school - the University of
Pennsylvania - for my undergraduate degree in
economics and my graduate degree in management
(Wharton School of Business). Where did you go to
school?
What activities do you currently participate in to
stay in shape? I work out 4 times a week at LA Fitness.
Do you exercise regularly? I am 6 feet tall, 185 pounds -
what about yourself? I am truly sorry if that sounds
rude, impolite or even downright crass, but I have been
deceived before by inaccurate representations so I
ptefer someone be upfront and honest on_ initial
contact...
I do mergers & acquisitions (corporate finance) for
Limited Brands (Bath & Body Works, Victoria's Secret,
etc). Enjoy any of our stores/divisions?
Do you have any other recent pictures you care to
share? I have many others if you care to see them.
-Regards, John”

64 Emily Gould, “Nightmare Online Dater John Fitzgerald Page Is the Worst
Person in the World”, Gawker, October 7, 2011, http://www.gawker.com/.

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“So I in turn send him a polite 'No Thanks' thru the

Match system which sends him the following email:
'Thanks for writing to me, but unfortunately, we're just
not a good match. Good luck in your search! Our
Portraits didn't match on: A. Personality."

John then responded with the following email:

"T think you forgot how this works. You hit on me, and
therefore have to impress ME and pass MY criteria and
standards - not vice versa. 6 pictures of just your head
and your inability to answer a simple question lets me
know one thing. You are not in shape. I am a trainer on
the side, in fact, I am heading to the gym in 26 minutes!
So next time you meet a guy of my caliber, instead
of trying to turn it around, just get to the gym! I will
even give you one free training session, so you don't
blow it with the next 8.9 on Hot or Not, Ivy League
grad, Mensa member, can bench/squat/leg press over
1200 lIbs., has had lunch with the secretary of defense,
has an MBA from the top school in the country, lives in
a Buckhead high rise, drives a Beemer convertible, has
been in 14 major motion pictures, was in Jezebel's Best
dressed, etc. Oh, that is right, there aren't any more of
those!
-Regards, John"

Like all of us, poor John is rife with character defects. We could
easily list the ones he forgets to mention, but the example reveals
just how, in God’s world, a strength can be a weakness.
The Big Book is quick to point out this twist, that we tend
to gravitate toward — rather than away from — our defects, thinking
that they are strengths. The 6 Step prayer spells it out beautifully:

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 STEP 6

“Tf we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to
help us be willing” (77). It is partly for this reason that the 7" Step
will ask us to pray that God will take both “the good and the bad”
that exists within us, for the “good” may in fact be our bad.
Hopefully it has become clear that the phrase “were entirely
ready” actually means: “were entirely miserable about the person
we have become, and also about our inability or lack of desire to
change ourselves.” Step 6 is the place where we see ourselves
continuing to exhibit the qualities that we most dislike about
ourselves. And it is also the place where we recognize that we like
the things about ourselves that we should find most repulsive.
Step 6 is the brick wall against which we bang our head, and it is
the claw marks on the things about ourselves that we are hanging
onto. Step 6 is honest frustration and undefended vulnerability.
Step 6 is, in some sense, a continuation of Step 1. Once
people realize that their lives have become unmanageable because
of their fundamentally impaired selves, it then makes sense to
examine selfishness more closely in Step 4 and then, digging
deeper in Step 5, to examine particular character defects. The
honesty of Step 6 concerning one’s shortcomings also makes a
great deal of sense in Christianity, which describes all people as
sinful and locates their fundamental problem in pride.

The Defect of Self-Justification

One fundamental expression of our character defects is the

universal phenomenon of self-justification. Self-justification is
simply our bias towards believing we act rightly, even when our
actions are destructive, hurtful, or in some other way at cross-
_ purposes with the best interests of ourselves and others. In a social

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science book called Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), two
authors explore this universal human desire to justify our actions:

“We look at the behavior of politicians with amusement

ot alarm or horror, but, psychologically, what they do is
no different...from what most of us have done at one
time or another in our private lives. We stay in an
unhappy telationship or merely one that is going
nowhere because, after all, we invested so much time in
making it work. We stay in a deadening job way too
long because we look for all the reasons to justify
staying and are unable to clearly assess the benefits of
leaving. We buy a lemon of a cat because it looks
gorgeous, spend thousands of dollars to keep the damn
thing running, and then we spend even mote to justify
that investment...’

We have a natural inclination to view our actions and choices as

good and right and valuable, even if they are quite the opposite,
and the result is self-justification. If we offend someone, we
assume it is they who are too sensitive; if someone criticizes us, we
deflect it by classifying them as a nitpicky person who doesn’t
know us that well anyway. It is no surprise that in most marriages,
each spouse thinks that he or she beats a greater load of
household chores than they actually do. We overestimate our
contributions and underestimate our faults, and yet the nagging
feelings of guilt and failure still don’t go away. Steps_ a 68are
intended to give us a more honest view of ourselves than wewe will
ever receive from the inner voice of self-“justification.

6 Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why
We Justify Fooksh Beliefs, Bads Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (Orlando, FL:
Harcourt, 2007).

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 STEP 6

In Christianity, this rigorous assessment of ourselves is often

described in terms like original sin, total depravity, or the ongoing
power of the flesh (Gal. 5:16-21) and the ‘old man’ in human lives
(Rom. 6:6; Col. 3:9). Rightly diagnosing self-justification as
connected to pride, lack of self-honesty, and refusal to recognize
one’s need for God, the Protestant Reformers viewed human
reliance on ourselves and our own powers as a critical problem.
It is a tragic fact that the Christian church has so often been\
guilty of just this sort of un-self-aware self-justification, and|
corresponding self-righteousness, arrogance, judgmentalism, and|
condescension towards others. The accusations of hypoctisy {
frequently leveled against the church for seeing the speck in the
eyes of others but not recognizing the log in its own are in many \
instances difficult to refute. Religious self-justification finds }
especially fertile ground in the belief that believers are special or }
more morally sound people than non-Christians. "i
In light of this recurrent problem in the church, it is striking
to recognize that at the core of Christianity is an idea that
demolishes such hypocrisy and targets the deceit of self-
justification like a heat-seeking missile. In the 16% century, a monk
named Martin Luther read the New Testament with fresh eyes and
in light of his own religious strivings and failures and saw there an
idea often called “justification by faith.” Justification by faith is the
understanding that God finds human beings acceptable and
lovable not because of who they ate or what they have done, but
because of who He is and what He has done. In this
understanding, Christian faith is the belief that God saves and
rescues us precisely in our failures, our needs, and the
inescapability of our character defects. In the Anglican Book of
Common Prayer, God’s attitude towards human beings is described
in a two-fold manner: “Not weighing our merits, but pardoning
~ our offenses.” In other words, the thrust of justification by faith is

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

two-fold: we are not righteous by our own merits, but neither are
we penalized for our sin.
The idea of justification by faith, like Step 6, thus encourages
us to look honestly at our character defects, because it is there that
God greets us with mercy and compassion. He doesn’t accept us
because we do good; rather, it is our very sinfulness and limitation
that drives us to Him. Since we have no righteousness to bring us
to God, He must use our wrongdoing to bring us to Him. For the
Church to address its problems of hypocrisy and judgmentalism,
an excellent place to start would be a return to this core Christian
idea of justification by faith. By recovering this idea, the Church
could at the same time begin to retrieve a rigorous, Step 6-style
honesty about human limitations, as well as an understanding that
such honesty has its own transformative power.

The Protestant Reformer Thomas Cranmer constructed a series of

prayers known as “collects” which accompany the Christian
Church calendar and are read at each service from the Book of
Common Prayer. One of the most beautiful prayers from that
collection is the “Collect for the First Sunday after Epiphany.” In
it Cranmer draws attention to two primary aspects of life: first, that
we need to see things rightly (which, in the case of the self, is “half
the battle”); and second, that we have no power over our
shortcomings without external help. The latter is the subject of the
next step, Step 7, and Cranmer’s words prepare the way:

(Lord,
( we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people /
which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and)
, know what things they oe to do, and also have grace-and Power
\ seit to fulfill the same.’

140
 Step 7

“Humbly Asked Him to Remove Our

Shortcomings”

“Only the saint knows sin.”

-Wilham Porcher Dubose

None of the Twelve Steps exist in a vacuum. In the same way that
Step 2 naturally precedes Step 3, and that there cannot be a 5%
Step unless a 4 Step inventory has been written, so it is with Step
7, which is crucially dependent upon Step 6. In fact, no two steps
ate as interrelated as Steps 6 & 7. Without a knowledge of one’s
shortcomings, there can be no genuine impetus to ask God to
remove them.
These steps are so closely linked that the Big Book deals
with them in almost the same breath, in a notoriously short two-
paragraph passage. It is all that is written in the text about these
two somewhat mysterious steps. For this reason, Steps 6 & 7 are

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sometimes called “the forgotten steps.” But much can be said

about them.

Asking for Help

At the core of Step 7 lies a prayer:

“My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all

of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from
me every single defect of character which stands in the
way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me
strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.
Amen.” (76)

The prayer voices a request to God for help with “every single
defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to
you and my fellows.” Indeed, it asks for their “removal.” The idea
implicit in Step 7 is that people, in and of themselves, are
incapable of beating or removing their defects on their own. Help
is needed. In the case of the sad-sap alcoholic, the reception of
divine help is obviously equivalent to an experience of grace, for it
is not deserved and yet it is given.
You and I are typically reluctant to ask for help. In fact, we
often reject help even when it is offered. The TV drama Breaking
Bad, for example, tells the story of a man named Walter White,
who would rather become a drug dealer than accept help in paying
for his chemotherapy. Walter White’s reluctance is extreme, but it
is not uncommon. People typically wish to avoid any suggestion
that they are not the primary solution to their problems.
Alcoholics Anonymous would wholly disagree with the well-
meaning new age saying that “the answer is within you.”

142
 STEP-7

Step 7 sees the desite to ask for’ help as a great spiritual

breakthrough. This insight was discussed at length in Step 3, but
Step 7 applies it to a concrete series of issues. It is where we learn
to pray in the most practical sense for God’s help with life. Step 7
asks God to be the one who will solve our problems.

Praying the List

“T'm at my most victorious when I'm on my knees.’ J

-Unknown

What does this look like in practice? In the most straightforward

sense, Step 7 simply involves praying on a daily basis for God to
remove our defects of character. Personally, I perform Step 7 with
the help of two bits of text. The first is the 7% Step prayer quoted
above, and the second is the list of defects I got from Step 6.
In the earliest days of AA, Step 7 had a tiny phrase added to
it. While it now reads: “Humbly asked Him to remove our
shortcomings’, the step originally read: “Humbly on our knees asked
Him to remove our shortcomings.” The “on our knees” part is
obviously not crucial, but perhaps it gives us a picture of the
humility that true prayer naturally invites. We kneel so that God
might stand in our place.
Taking my copy of the Big Book and my list of defects in
hand, I hit my knees at the foot of my bed. Then I say the 7® Step
prtayer—I say it aloud, but silently works well, too—exactly as it is
written. When I get to the part that says, “My Creator, I am now
willing that_you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now
remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my
usefulness to you and my fellows,’ | pause and turn my attention to my
list of shortcomings, reciting them in the order they are written, in
the same way that I might read off of a grocery list, only with a bit

143
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mote attention so that I feel like I mean what I’m saying. & For
example, “my temper, my lust, my being overly talkative, my
inability to keep secrets, my smoking, my social awkwardness, my
poor eating habits.” I then I finish the prayer: “Grant me strength, as
I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen,’ after which I get up and
begin my day.9’

How Does God Answer a (7" Step) Prayer?

‘When I am weak, then I am strong.”

-2 Corinthians 12:10

“Only he can see his sin who has the Holy Spirit.”
-Bo Grertz

In order to best appreciate the ways in which people change as a

result of Step 7, it is helpful to consider the ways in which the 7%
Step prayer is typically mot answered. I have yet to meet a person
who says that, once they started praying about their defects, they
were all removed instantly and forever.
No one ever graduates from needing God’s help. The reality
of the spiritual life is that need-for-God grows, it does not diminish. As a
consequence, people who pray for God to remove their character
defects rarely find that they are removed in an obvious fashion;
that is, the removal of defects is usually not very evident to the
person praying for their removal.

66 A brief tangent: although some AAs have wished to draw a distinction

between the “defects of character” of Step 6 with the “shortcomings” of
Step 7, Bill W. was quick to offer a corrective on this matter. He said that he
was taught that “good writers don’t use the same words over and over”, so in
Step 7 he used a different word, “shortcomings”, in place of “defects of
character.” They are the same thing.
°” Later, in Steps 10 & 11, we will see how this simple minute-long practice
can be incorporated into a more developed devotional time.

144
 STEP'7

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ offers a pertinent image

of a right hand not being aware of what a left hand is doing (Mt.
6:3). Usually, the person who prays for God’s help is slow to see
its appearance. One reason for this is that once a petson’s life
belongs to God, their improvements occur for the sake of others
and not for the self-centered benefit of the individual. That the
individual appreciates the removal of defects is almost an
afterthought.
Spirituality is not about growing in self-improvement, but
about growing in usefulness to God. As the Big Book reminds us,
“Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to
God and the people about us” (77). In Step 7 we realize that our
problems are primarily detrimental to us because of the way they
hinder our usefulness to other people, not because of the
discomfort they create for us. In effect, the world benefits from
our 7% Step work more than we do.°®
Step 7 involves laying our problematic tendencies prayerfully
before God and then trusting Him to work on them in whatever
way He deems fit. We trust His judgment about what we need
over and above our own. We lay our life before God in all its
ugliness, and we then proceed with our day, hoping against hope
that we will not get in the way of the opportunities we are given to
share God’s love with the world.

68 The goal of personal improvement is perhaps best pursued by joining a

gym ot some form of new-age practice that focuses on becoming “the
" person you want to be.” Step 7 is about becoming the person God wants
you to be. Chances are, those two people are very different versions of you.

145
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Getting Worse Is Getting Better?

"Although people do sometimes have a sense ofpeace with God...nevertheless,

in a given situation it is not so much peace with God that ts the true mark. of
the Holy Spirit at work, but birth pangs."
-Christoph Blumbardt

Another image of God’s work in a person’s life comes from

John’s Gospel: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its
sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is
going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (3:8). During the
7 Step, defects can often seem to get worse, as though God’s
power is blowing fickly from one random branch of out lives to
the next.
On some days there seems to be very little wind. On other
days things are gusty and inconsistent. Occasionally, the feeling of
God’s presence in the midst of problematic situations is almost
overwhelming. In each case, the individual has very little control
over how it goes. Good sponsors consequently tend to encourage
their sponsees to practice the 7% Step relentlessly for at least a
month or two without forming any judgment on whether or not
it’s “working.” You can imagine that a sapling, if it is dug up every
day to check for root growth, will have a much harder time
growing than one that is simply watered, exposed to sunlight, and
left alone.
Why wouldn’t God remove defects in a way that is easily
measurable to the recipient? A few reasons: First, it teaches us to
rely upon God and not upon ourselves. Second, we must question
the level of insight we have into our lives. Few people see
themselves accurately, alcoholic or not. For people in a romantic
relationship, for example, a significant other usually recognizes 7
Step changes first. Third, it draws our focus away from the areas
where God is, in fact, improving things in us. True changes

146
 STEP'7

sometimes happen slowly and are difficult for us to recognize.

This allows us to remain prayerful and focused on the only place
where true solutions are found. While we’re preoccupied with one
part of life, God is usually at work in another area, unbeknownst
to us.
Fourth, it often feels like things are getting worse because
we are starting to view our lives by a new set of incredibly
stringent standards — not necessarily because we actually are
getting worse. As C. S. Lewis once commented, “The closer you
get to the sun, the bigger the shadow.” An AA doing the 7® Step
has begun to view her life from God’s perspective, rather than her
own. The old life is no longer easily justified. Nor is it defended. If
nothing else, entering into this mindset brings about a fresh
measure of humility. As Chuck T. used to say: “The thing about
meekness [which is good] and weakness [which we think is bad] is
that they feel the same.”
Finally, a person who is praying for God to remove his
shortcomings might not be able to detect any answer because a
new approach to life is being developed in them. This has mote to
do with praying than with having prayers answered. In many
important respects, the prayer itself is the answer to the
shortcoming. Our self-reliance is eroding and continual reliance
upon God is taking its place. It’s actually the most wonderful thing
in the world!
In my own experience, I remember being incredibly
frustrated by the 7 Step and God’s failure to answer my prayers
in a lasting fashion. I remember exaggerating stories and
dishonestly embellishing in my conversations with friends, for
example. Then I would awkwardly apologize, correcting the details
in the middle of re-telling a story.
After the conversation was over, I would run through the
series of events in my head, praying, “God, forgive me for being
dishonest, and please remove my dishonesty.” And _ then,

147
GRACE IN ADDICTION

seemingly five minutes later, I would find myself doing the same
thing again. If I was not repeating the lying, like our earlier whack-
a-mole analogy, I would be thinking some incredibly judgmental
thought about another person in place of the still-smarting lie.
This went on for weeks and months, and my alone time, walking
to and from the subway, was tiddled with endless self-criticism
and confused attempts at 7 Step prayer. After a few months of
this, I called my father, who is a minister and — to my way of
thinking — a very spiritual man.
I burst out, “Dad, I must be doing something wrong. I pray
fot God to forgive me and to help me not do whatever it is I’ve
just done again...and then five minutes later, I do it again. ’'m
trapped in this cycle and I honestly feel like I’m going insane!”
After a brief pause, my father replied, “So... welcome to the Christian

An important part of Step 7 is acknowledging the fact that a

person never graduates from the need for dependence upon
God’s grace in the midst of life’s difficulties. St. Paul famously
described this dynamic at the end of his Second Letter to the
Corinthian Church. He recounted having a “thorn in the flesh,”
which he repeatedly prayed for God to remove. God did no such
thing, and for this, Paul later came to be incredibly grateful. He
writes:

“In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was

given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to
torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to
take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is
sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly
about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest
on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in

148
 STEP 7

weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in

difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(2 Cor 12: 7-10)

AA on Sanctification: Still Bob, Still Sober, or Simul

Iustus Et Peccator

In the Christian faith, the term “sanctification” refers to the way in

which God’s grace transforms an individual life. It is a topic that
has divided Christians for centuries. AA has become a
contemporary think tank on the question, and it has some valuable
contributions to offer the Church.
In spite of newfound sobriety, the sober alcoholic still
struggles with the same powerlessness that afflicted him in the
midst of his drinking. Many Christians would instead claim that
once a person establishes a relationship with a saving God, they
become measurably empowered to fend off temptation and self-
centeredness through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. AA would
look upon this claim with skepticism, as one adage demonstrates:
“Once a pickle, you can’t go back to being a cucumber, even if
you’re no longer sitting in a jar of pickle juice.” In other words:
once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. As one gentleman
observed, “I thought when I got sober that I was no longer going
to be Bob, but guess what? I’m still Bob, even though I’m sober.”
God’s transformative work in the life of a sober alcoholic
has more to do with perspective and faith than with ontological
alteration. In more strictly religious terms, sinners remain sinful
even after they find salvation. The empirical evidence in support
of this claim is overwhelming, though its implications are
_ somewhat disappointing for the struggler who hopes all will be
well once her life is placed in God’s care.

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In contrast to this sort of spiritual idealism, Bob’s earlier

statement reflects an incredibly important insight that emerged in
the 16% century during the Protestant Reformation. We again
reference Luther’s insight that a spiritual person is “simultaneously
justified and fallen.”
Martin Luther believed that the Christian stands before God
completely exonerated of all guilt, treated as though his or her life
is as righteous as Christ’s own perfect one. The word for this
gracious coveting-up of our guilt before God is “justification.” In
spite of the fact that we are justified, humans in and of ourselves
still struggle in the same ways we did before finding faith. In other
wotds, a spiritual person is simultaneously Saint (from God’s
vantage point) amd Sinner (from a human vantage point). Rather
than being either good or bad, the Christian is viewed as both good
and bad in the same moment.® In contrast to so much modern
Christian self-understanding, the Protestant Reformation affirmed
that God operates primarily outside of and upon humans, rather
than in or alongside them.
An AA known as “Happy Jack’ once told the following
story about himself:

“Last week I got a resentment at my wife because she

decided to file for divorce on the one year anniversary
of my mother’s death. So I was angry at her, to say the
least. But I did what I’ve always been told to do in AA
whenever I’m angry: I went to a meeting, and you know
what? It didn’t help ...although it did. Then I helped
out a new guy in the group who was having a rough
time, and you know what? It didn’t help ...although it
did. Then I called my sponsor and told him about the
resentment, and he asked me what my part was in all of

To quote AA’s 7” Step Prayer: “My Creator, I am now willing that you
should have all of me, good and bad.”

150
 STEP 7

it, and you know what? That didn’t help either

.. although it did.” sa

As this example reveals, Luther’s sivzu/ iustus et peccator describes

even our daily emotional lives, with the tension between out
failure to work for ourselves and God’s work upon us. This
dynamic is bandied about unwittingly in the rooms of AA.
When an alcoholic turns her life over to God in Step 3, she
has made a permanent, life-altering covenant with God that will
have inexorable pull on her life from that moment until death.
This implies that once God begins a work in the life of a person,
that person is incapable of resisting His overarching sovereignty,
even if she kicks and screams and does terrible things.7” Another
priceless AA adage puts it this way: “If you give your lunch to a
gorilla, you don’t get it back.” Our ability to impact the world in a
negative way becomes subsumed and superseded by the work that
God intends for our lives.
There is immense freedom in this picture of life: God is
actively at work in human life for His greater good, even when we
cannot clearly see or understand how or where He is at work. The
things of life that seem trivial, meaningless, or even terrible may
still be the channels through which God is bringing about His
glory.7! We still feel the same, and yet we know by faith that all has
changed. We see “through a glass darkly” as the New Testament
puts it (1 Cor 13:12).
The ability to control God is completely written out of this
equation. As one AA said to another, “Son, your life ain’t none of
your damn business!” Faith and total abandonment to God go

70 This idea greatly resembles what, in Reformation terms, is known as

. “irresistible grace.” aa
71 In the Lutheran tradition, this understanding of spirituality is known as a
“theology of the cross.” For more on this, see Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a
Theologian ofthe Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

hand in hand in AA. A life must be lost if it is ever to be found

(Mt 16:25).

Defects Removed

“Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can — and nill, under
certain conditions — remove defects of character will be answered with a
prompt affirmative by almost any AA member.”
-120712 (63)

In a general sense, God addresses our defects in two ways. In the

first way, He works im spite of the continuing presence of our
defects. In the second, He temoves them in a more
straightforward fashion. Let’s look at both.

Type 1: Defects Removed? No, but Yes.

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strong, it aif works out later. |seeing him so down. comeback is sweeter thatwily

An important part of parenting comes when the parent makes a

mistake. Perhaps tempers flare in a regrettable way. Or maybe a
crucial decision turns out to have been a misstep. Maybe the
parents move their child into a new school that proves to be a
poor match, and the child has to switch back later. God’s grace is
often most palpable where good things happen in the wake of our

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 STEP’7

mistakes. To revisit our earlier example, perhaps the child had

such a terrible experience in the new school that, after an awful
year there, he switches back and has a newfound appreciation for
the old school, so much so that he begins to study more and loves
his experience more than ever. These are the experiences of God’s
providence that make life in the midst of uncertainty bearable
rather than paralyzing. If we make a mistake, God can right it or
even undo it, sometimes bringing ultimate good out of our worst
decisions. God redeems our lives because it is in His nature to do
so. We do not have to live in fear that our life hangs in the balance
of whether or not we make a “wrong move.”
The spiritual life that is lived on the other side of a mistake
is more important than the life lived before it. The mistake
provides the opportunity to fall into God’s care, where we see just
how big and powerful His goodness is. Often it is there that we
find freedom. Such freedom is a spiritual gift, and the 7 Step
opens the door to it. Indeed, much of the spiritual life described in
the Twelve Steps involves living in the face of mistakes, as
opposed to living rightly in order to avoid them. Wherever our
steps fall, whether they are “on the path” or “off the beam”, God
is overarchingly present and working for good.
We may make a mistake or series of mistakes that leads to
total collapse. God may allow a defect to persist toward exactly
this end. Like the “Coffee with Jesus” cartoon above suggests,
God may reply to our desire for easy, tangible results in the
following manner: “T totally hear you. It’s just that Carl’s got some
more falling to do before I can be of much help...It all works out
in the end...the comeback is sweeter that way.”’3 Where the

72 Paul echoes this sentiment famously: “And we know that in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according
' to his purpose” (Rm 8:28).
73 Used by permission of Radio Free Babylon, which is not affiliated with
this book, its content, or Mockingbird.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

shortcomings are not removed, the opportunity for a profoundly

redemptive narrative only deepens. Imagine how different the
Parable of the Prodigal Son would be if the prodigal son had
gotten his life in order, found a steady job, and acquired a good
reputation before returning to his father. The story would still
have a happy ending, and yet it would not say as much about the
depth of God’s forgiveness — nor resonate as powerfully with our
lived experience. The possibility of profound forgiveness becomes
more concrete when the trespass is great. To quote Jesus’ actual
words, “Whoever has been forgiven little, loves little” (Lk 7:47).
Where a defect is not removed and _ unpalatable
consequences ensue, we can faithfully affirm our hope of
deliverance. One example of this counterintuitive turn of events
comes in the famous story of Jacob in the Old Testament. Jacob
spends a night wrestling with God. During one point in their
struggle, God “touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip
was dislocated as he wrestled with the man” (Gen 32:25). Perhaps
the dislocated hip, like the thorn in Paul’s flesh, is something that
provides the fuel for a much mote significant fire later.
In a mote overtly positive light, the assurance of God’s work
delivers us from a world of second-guessing and trouble-shooting,
which are exactly the things we abandoned to God in the 3*4 Step.
Consider the following story of how one AA member came to
appreciate this new perspective:
Stanley was a wise and well-regarded member of AA. He
sponsored many people and was sought by many for his wise
counsel. But Stanley was also a human being, still dealing his own
defects of character. One afternoon, Stanley went for a jog, which
was something he often did to clear his mind. On this one
afternoon, things took a terrible turn when he tripped over a low-
lying barbed wire fence that was wrapped around the base of a
large tree. He hadn’t seen it until it was too late.

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 STEP

Suddenly he was on the ground, and his right ankle was torn
up in a few spots, not to mention the scrapes, bruises, and
embarrassment. Stanley was also a bit of a vain fellow, and that
“vanity” was indeed one of the shortcomings that he had been
praying for God to remove from his life. As Stanley describes it,
not only was he bleeding and in need of a few band-aids, but he
was also livid. As he made his way home, he thought about how
he could sue the petson who had put the fence there. “The
audacity!...” His mood had turned incredibly sour, far from the
“serene and spiritual’? demeanor for which he was known.
To top things off, he had already made plans to meet with
two sponsees on either side of an AA meeting later that evening.
Begrudgingly, Stanley still made it to the coffee shop where he met
up with Sponsee #1. In spite of his foul mood, he went through
the motions, asking the newly sober guy about himself. The two of
them soon opened up the Big Book and began reading at the place
where they had left off in their step work. But Stanley was not
feeling at all present, mentally. Instead, he was back at the tree,
fuming about the barbed-wire, the city officials who had allowed
such a thing to go unchecked, and the guy who had invented
barbed wire in the first place.
As they wrapped up their hour-long session, to Stanley’s
total surprise, Sponsee #1 told him that he had never gotten so
much out of one of their sessions. He felt that finally the Twelve
Steps were starting to have an impact on his outlook, and he was
so thankful he had found such a great sponsor. Stanley wasn’t sure
what to make of it, but he just assumed that the young buck was
still a little wet-brained or something.
Then they attended an AA meeting together. Stanley was
still annoyed, and the meeting made little impact on his mood. At
_ the end of the meeting he met up with Sponsee #2. Stanley took
the same approach, trying to be helpful but completely distracted.
At the end of their time, Sponsee #2 said almost the same words

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to Stanley: “I’ve never gotten so much out of one of our meetings.

The things you’te saying make so much sense. You teally know
how to convey hope to me.”
Needless to say, Stanley didn’t know what to make of the
whole experience at first. Upon reflection, however, he came to
relay the following insight: “God’s ability to be helpful through me
is bigger than my bad mood’s ability to torpedo His plans. God
can use a sober alcoholic in a bad mood to help a person just as
well as he can use a focused, inspired sober alcoholic for the same
enterprise.” Stanley’s life was not his own. So much so in fact, that
he seemed unable to step outside of God’s will for lim. This was a hugely
helpful and humbling realization. It gave credit to the one who
deserved it, not to the “earthen vessel’ who happened to be
catrying the goods (2 Cor 4:7).
The resolve of the 7% Step has more to do with living in
God’s grace in spite ofthe continual presence of defects of character
than it does with living in their absence. Still full of bad moods,
and yet owned by something bigger, a person’s second narrative
tells the real truth. This narrative operates over and above the sin
of the individual, a spiritual covering of sorts. Gerhard Forde
described this sentiment in a little piece he wrote toward the end
of his life. He spoke from his own experience of the way in which
7% Step-type spirituality had altered his understanding of God’s
work in human life:

“Am I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems

to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous.
As I get older and death draws nearer, it doesn't seem to
get any easier. I get a little more impatient, a little more
anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has
to offer, a little slower, harder to move, a little more
sedentary and set in my ways. It seems more and more
unjust to me that now that I have spent a good part of

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 STEP 7

my life 'getting to the top,' and I seem just about to have

made it, I am already slowing down, already on the way
out. A skiing injury from when I was sixteen years old
acts up if I overexert myself. I am too heavy, the
doctors tell me, but it is so hard to lose weight! Am I
making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin
less, but that may only be because I'm getting tired! It's
just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that
sanctification? I wouldn't think so! One should not, I
expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification.”

Forde began that essay by summarizing this point in the following

way: “‘sanctification is the art of getting used to justification.” This
is just a theological way of saying that growth in spiritual maturity
involves an increasing sense of our sinfulness, coupled with a
corresponding appreciation of God’s graciousness to us. Any form
of spirituality that neglects this humble understanding of how God
transforms an individual has missed something very important.

Type 2: Yes, but...Yes!

‘Which ofyou fathers, ifyour son asks for a fish, will give him a snake
instead? Or ifhe asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
-Luke 11:11-12

Stand-up comedian Maria Bamford offers a somewhat cynical read

on the over-spiritualization that she experiences on a regular basis
in Los Angeles. She says:

' 74 Gerhard O. Forde, “The Lutheran View of Sanctification”, The Preached

God: Proclamation in Word and Sacrament, Ed. Mark C. Mattes and Steven D.
Paulson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 244, 230.

15?
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

“T live in LA, and a lot of my friends claim to be

‘spiritual.’ They have all these ‘miracles’ happening in
their lives. The weird part about this, at least to my way
of thinking, is that the Lord seems to be manifesting
himself in all sorts of small parking and shopping-
related miracles. [She parrots one of her friends:] ‘So I
pull up outside of The Gap and a parking space opens
up right next to the mall entrance. So I say to myself,
Okay, if it’s meant to be? I go inside...and the sweater is
ences
25% off! It’s like, Okay, I get it. I’m on the path...”

( To Maria’s way of thinking, her friends have unwittingly begun to

| baptize their own self-interest with the help of spiritual
& terminology.’>
—

™S. She is critiquing precisely the same inclinations that the

Twelve Steps critique. Yet one wonders what her criteria for an
answered prayer would be. If her friend were praying for a sick
child to be healed, and the child experienced a surprising return to
complete health in spite of dissenting medical speculation, would
that count as a legitimate answer to prayer? One suspects that her
comments betray a more deep-seeded doubt in the very possibility
of a spiritual reality beyond our immediate perception.
Disappointments in our prayer life often bring us to see
“unanswered” prayer in a completely different light. This is why
people are encouraged to pray on a daily basis while paying as little
attention as possible to whether or not the prayers are working. It

7 Ludwig Feuerbach famously criticized this spiritualization of self-interest

in religion, arguing in favor of atheism quite compellingly with the idea that
any belief in God which aligns itself with our wishes is simple fantasy: “God
is the love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional wants; he is himself the
realised wish of the heart, the wish exalted to the certainty of fulfilment, of its
reality... “God is love’: this, the supreme dictum of Christianity, only
expresses the certainty that... the inmost wishes of the heart have objective
validity and reality.” (Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans.
George Eliot (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1989), 121.)

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 STEP 7

might sound like a rationalization, but it is profoundly good news

that prayers almost never play out in ways that can be
anticipated...except, that is, when they do. Sometimes God seems
to say: “Sure. I was thinking the same thing.” We turn our focus
now to the Yes...but-yes side of a prayer life.
The Big Book encourages us to pray concretely about the
things in our life that concern us. It also offers a single and far-
reaching caveat which accounts nicely for what we'll call the Maria
Bamford critique of spirituality cited above. As the Big Book
cautions, “We may ask for ourselves. ..if others will be helped. We
are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us
have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can
easily see why.” The 7® Step encourages us to pray for ourselves
so that we might better be able to serve God and our neighbors,
not so that we can find nice sweaters at discounted prices.
It should come as no surprise that the founders of AA
believed that, in many cases, God does indeed “remove our
shortcomings.” And they were not deluded to think so. We pray
for God to remove our self-centeredness and find that our
‘relationships with others and our ability to be of service increases
exponentially. Or perhaps we pray about lust and find that we are
not as preoccupied with lascivious thoughts throughout the day.
Or maybe we have an illness and ask for God to heal us, only to
find that, for no apparent reason, we soon feel substantially better.
Implausible as they may be to some people, these things happen
all the time.
While we do not base our belief in God upon such “God-
instances,” they are nonetheless an integral part of the spiritual
awakening that occurs as a result of the Twelve Steps. Step 7 both
opens the door to such positive developments and gives us the
_ means to deepen spiritually when these developments do not seem
to be occurring.

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The Bible is full of examples of this principle. Most of Jesus’

healings were straightforward: someone asked to be healed, and
then they were healed. On the other hand, Jesus just as often
worked in unexpected or even inscrutable ways. When two
women asked him to heal their friend Lazarus, for instance, his
lengthy delay allowed Lazarus to die, only after which Jesus
resutrected him. We see the same two avenues in Acts: much of
the narrative recounts the early church’s persecution and difficulty,
but at one point we read that “the churches were strengthened in
the faith and grew daily in numbers.” So examples of God
straightforwardly bestowing his “favor” are not hard to find in the
Bible. Yet as any AA will tell you, those times have not come to an
end; they occur daily in the lives of sober alcoholics.
I might characterize this second way in which prayers are
answered as the “Yes? ... “yes?” variety. This is answered prayer in
the most good-old-fashioned way conceivable: “I prayed God
would remove my nervousness, and sure enough, the speech went
swimmingly well and I felt a sense of peace the moment I got to
the podium.”
One of my favorite examples of the “yes?... ‘yes’ answer to
prayer came from a former sponsee named Elwood. Elwood was
exceptionally bright, holding an advanced degree from an Ivy
League school, but his drinking problem had caused both his
personal life and his career to unravel. When I met him, he was
unemployed and newly sober. While he had _ experienced
floundering sobriety for a few months, Elwood was miserable and
fraught with neurosis. We began the process of working through
the Twelve Steps. He responded, as most miserable sober
alcoholics do, like a fish to water.
One of Elwood’s prominent character defects was his
smoking. He chain-smoked ravenously, and his urge for nicotine
dominated a substantial portion of his day. Furthermore, his
smoking worried him. I encouraged him to smoke and not to

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worry about it, to focus his attention on working the Twelve Steps
instead of on quitting. “We will get there,” I told him.76
So Elwood worked his way through the steps vigorously,
cranking out an incredibly thorough 4% Step. He started to
become a bit happier, and his life slowly found a more solid
footing. It wasn’t long before a job interview turned up.
The morning of the interview Elwood woke up early,
smoked ten cigarettes back-to-back, took a shower, put on a suit,
Febreez’ed himself all over to destroy the slightest hint of a
cigarette aroma and then went in to the interview. It went really
well, and he was hired a few weeks later.
This precipitated a serious dilemma for him, because
Elwood was convinced that being a smoker and being a successful
banker were at odds with each other. He did not want anyone he
worked with to even suspect him of smoking. Consequently, he
developed an incredibly complex routine in the mornings that
involved smoking half a pack of cigarettes and then cleaning
himself up with a shower and a thorough deodorizing ritual. He
would then work all day, white-knuckling his cravings away — with
the help of secret stashes of Nicotine gum — only to return home
immediately following the end of the work day, where he would
smoke an entire pack of cigarettes before going to bed. He
repeated this cycle day in and day out, and it was causing him
serious misery.
It wasn’t long after he got the job that we finished the 5”
Step and compiled a list of character defects. At the top of his list
was “smoking.” While I tried to relinquish some of the guilt he felt
about living a double life where nicotine was concerned, this did
little good. I encouraged him to begin praying for God to remove
his defects of character, including smoking, but not to try to quit
_ in the meantime. Since his multiple attempts to quit smoking in

76 With this comment to Elwood, I was anticipating Steps 6 and 7.

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the past had failed, I encouraged him to smoke away, but to pray
every day for God to remove “smoking.” I suggested he do this
for an entire year without trying to quit and Elwood agreed.
Evety day, he started the day with a 7% Step prayer, asking
God to remove his defects. Smoking, he said, was always at the
forefront of his mind. Meanwhile, his insane ritual continued. I
believe he even smoked while saying the prayer! Six months after
we began going through the Twelve Steps, I moved away from
New York and lost regular contact with him.
I had seen, even in that short time, how Elwood was being
transformed by God’s grace. He had begun to smile, to enjoy his
life and his work. He even sponsored others and took them
through the Twelve Steps.
A year and a half passed. One day I got an email from him,
out of the blue. In it, he told me that after praying daily for eight
months for God to remove his smoking, he visited a doctor who
prescribed him a medication that alleviated some of the cravings.
He had then been able, with the help of Nicotine gum and patches,
along with the prescribed medication, to quit. He had not smoked
a cigarette in almost a year. Not only that, but he was writing in
part to ask if I would be willing to sponsor his upcoming run in
the New York City marathon, which he was doing to raise money
for a charity. He was overjoyed to relay all that had happened, and
I was once again, bowled over by the awesome power of God and
His ability to remove character defects outright.
In preparing to write this document, I contacted Elwood
again via email. It had been four years since we had last been in
touch. I informed him that I was in the middle of writing some
reflections on the Twelve Steps, and that I always think about his
story when I spoke on the 7® Step. I wondered if he was still a
non-smoker. ;
He almost immediately responded, “I quit smoking six years
ago and haven’t looked back!” Sure enough, God had continued

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 STEP'7

to answer that prayer in the best way we could have hoped for.
When God decided it was time for the defect to be removed after
eight months of prayer, Elwood quit. He couldn’t even finish out
the last four months of our agreement!

A 7 Step Epilogue

The word “remove” deserves a little more attention because it

suggests the intriguing way in which God tends to work upon us.
It implies that when a character defect is taken away, something
else—something spiritual—is found beneath it or, rather, in its
absence. The notion that we become more spiritual through
deconstruction is not common, but it is helpful and true, to both
life and Christianity.
The 7® Step suggests that God’s work is primarily
deconstructive and not constructive. He does not so much build
oobi? Toca tear us down, in order to_turn-us into new people. |We
find thisis dynamic” powerfully articulated in The 39 Articles of
Religion, a series of 16%-Century theological propositions that
formed the basis of the Protestant Anglican Church. Two of them
ate particularly relevant:

“Good works spring out necessarily of a true and lively

faith...but we have no power to do _ good
works...without the grace of God preventing us, that we
may have a good will, and working with us, when we
have that good will” (Articles XII & X).

The word “preventing” implies that it is when God hinders us that

we bear spiritual fruit in our actions.
Sometimes our confidence in our own efforts to change
ourselves, as well as problems of pride and control that

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accompany such efforts, actually hinder spirituality. While we

affirm the insight that “in serving God, there is perfect freedom”,
we also do well to wonder if His work in our lives occasionally
limits our freedom to free us from the burden of selfhood, thereby
allowing us to serve Him all the better.

164
 Step 8

“Made a List of All Persons We Had Harmed,

and Became Willing to Make Amends to Them
All”

Step 8 has two familiar themes: the first involves making another
list, this time of people to whom we need to make amends, and
the second has to do with confronting one’s unwillingness to
accept what the list represents.
In the 8% Step, we simply make a list of the people we have
harmed, if at all possible, without thinking about the emotional
implications or logistical issues that might apply in any effort to
make amends. We do not need to waste mental energy figuring
out whether we can or should be able get in touch with these
people — we just make the list. Step 8 and the actual making of
amends should be treated as two completely separate things.

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“Made a List...”

At this point, we’ve gathered a bit of experience with list-making,

especially from the 4 Step. The person who listened to our 5%
Step may well have encouraged us to make a substantial portion of
an 8% Step list during that 5% Step session. When listening to a 5®
Step, if I notice that the person mentioned in an inventory has
been harmed by the behavior of the step-worker, I simply ask
them to make a star or asterisk next to the name of the person.
Then, at the end of the 5% Step, I encourage them to compile the
names of all the people with stars next to their names into a fresh
list. That list becomes the beginning of their 8 Step work.
Whom have we harmed with our self-centered behavior?
Which people and institutions have been .affected by our
resentments? We write them down on a fresh piece of paper under
the heading “Step 8.” Again, some of the people on our lists are
usually loved ones, spouses, siblings, and other family members.
Another category of people who should be featured on the
list are people with whom we are “no longer speaking.” What
relationships have disintegrated due to differences of opinion or
argument? Who did we used to be friends with? Did we contribute
in some way to the collapse of that relationship? If the answer is
yes, then we add them to the list. One helpful way to figure out
who these people are involves using our imagination.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are sitting in a coffee shop.
Picture all of the people you have ever known walking into the
shop (including people who have died), one at a time. Ask yourself
whether or not an interaction would be awkward. If you could
keep the person from recognizing you, would you? Who would
you cross the street to avoid? Is it because you have caused some
kind of harm that amounted to a bridge-burning? Is there anyone
that you hope you won’t have to see again for the rest of your life?

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 STEP 8

It may be the case that restitution has already been made to

a particular individual. Perhaps apologies have been made. Or
maybe the victim of an action is “over it.”” We add those names to
our list anyway in the spirit of thoroughness.
The Big Book points out that there is also a category of
people or institutions who may not have made an appearance in a
4% Step but who nonetheless need to be featured on an 8% Step
list. They are people whom we have harmed but do not resent,
battles we have won. Often this category includes financial
institutions or places to whom we have an outstanding debt. Bill is
quick to remind us that “most alcoholics owe money” (78).
Perhaps one of us stole something from a store and did not get
caught. This incident may not have appeared in a 4% Step, but the
action still caused harm to that institution. “We put them on
paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with
them” (68).

“..And Became Willing to Make Amends to Them All”

Here we come to the second part of Step 8, “becom|ing] willing to

make amends to them all.” This is the part that commonly
outsmarts us. It shows us what we most need to see about
ourselves, namely that we are un-willing to make amends.
The idea of reconnecting with the people whom we have
wronged is uncomfortable — of course it is. But we need to be
honest with ourselves about this fact instead of keeping it buried
or trying to justify it. Here we see the general angle of spirituality
again, that it goes against the grain of our instincts and thereby
deflates our overgrown egos. Our reluctance reveals to us just how
_ important the next step may be for us. The extent to which Step 8
makes us uncomfortable will be roughly equivalent to the relief

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that Step 9 brings. The discomfort points to a whole new world

that God has for us. It points to a momentous amount of freedom
from guilt, the kind of freedom that most people desperately need
for mental health.
The Big Book wisely suggests that we enter into this place of
reluctance through prayer: “If we haven’t the will to do this, we
ask until it comes” (76). The pathway to willingness begins with
unwillingness. If we ate reluctant to revisit past grievances, then
we ate unwilling to make amends. In the same way that we
become “entirely ready” in Step 6, we become “willing” in Step 8.
We therefore proceed by asking: which amends are we unwilling
to make? Then we say a prayer about them, one which we think is
just as useful for non-alcoholics. A simple 8% Step prayer goes as
follows:

“God, help me to see where it is that I am reluctant to

let you help me. Please remove my unwillingness and
my fears. Help me to become willing to make all the
amends that You would have me make.”

A Side Note: The Necessity of Amends (and Another A-

Word)

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

-Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:12

A recognition of the power of guilt and remorse shapes the

Twelve Steps. Indeed, the form of the Steps suggests that lasting
sobriety (and spiritual health) occurs only to the extent that past
regrets and trespasses have been addressed and, in some way,
resolved. Once the most painful matters in a person’s past have
been processed, a sense of serenity will take their place.

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 STEP 8

Although the pervasive, irrepressible sense of guilt for past

wrongs practically beats us over the head with the need for
resolution, Step 8 acknowledges the persistent fact that people are
typically reluctant to revisit past grievances. Instead, we prefer to sweep
problems under the rug and pretend as if we have no outstanding
sense of debt, thereby fostering a superficial sense of self-esteem.
One of the main rules for radio broadcasting, for instance, is
“never draw attention to your mistakes.” But the rule has a much
wider jurisdiction than the airwaves.
Where I live in South Carolina, a refined code of etiquette
governs social interaction. In theory, the system can enable a
person to avoid all awkwardness and unpleasantness with the
utmost of ease. Upon meeting someone for the first time, for
example, it is customary to say, “It’s good to see you” rather than .
“It’s good to meet you.” “Meeting” implies that the other person
was a complete stranger until the encounter happened. And to be
a stranger is to be out of place, even to be in the wrong place. To
“see” someone, on the other hand, implies kinship, mutual friends,
and a shared social milieu.
In this sense, manners allow new facets of life to be
incorporated gracefully into daily life, interpersonal distance to be
downplayed, and discord and conflict to be circumvented.
Consider manners, however, when it comes to the making of
amends. How do they fit into a brutally awkward apology? Or
what is their role in a coffeehouse meeting with a person whose
life you nearly ruined years ago? Entering into places of personal
sin and past suffering explodes the notion that mannered
pleasantries can enable a person to actually deal substantively with
any form of brokenness. In the same way, Step 8 and 9s
confrontation with one’s past crushes the illusion that we are able,
_ through careful strategizing, to ignore or evade the ugly parts of
life.

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Another example of avoiding unpleasant interactions comes

in the form of “boundary” talk. We may stake off a portion of our
emotional landscape as being inaccessible to someone who has
harmed us, walling ourselves off from sources of potential pain.
We see this in romantic relationships that take breaks for a short,
specified period of time — unsurprisingly, the problems that caused
the break usually reemerge very quickly. Similarly, many children
choose colleges or jobs far away from home to escape theit
overbearing parents, but this often just increases emotional
distance without really solving the underlying problems.
Sometimes, people go so far as to cut ties with another
person altogether. As a minister, I’ve discovered the sad truth that
many funerals feature a startling absence of the deceased person’s
son, daughter, sister, or other immediate family. In some cases,
this occurs with parents who have engaged in crime, marital
infidelity, and other harmful (i.e. abusive) behaviors. In other
cases, the adult children have simply made the decision to sever
ties with their parents or siblings. While some situations seem
broken beyond repair, and some indeed are, AA would still affirm
that reconciliation is far healthier than a permanently closed door.
Again, relational difficulties cannot be sidestepped by either
subtle or overt methods of avoidance. Pain and misfortune do not
come from bad manners or wicked stepmothers, as much as we
might sometimes wish they did. We cannot avoid the evil of our
past by simply ignoring it. With sharp insight, Nobel Prize winning
author Alexander Solzhenitsyn critiques this mentality of solving
problems by avoiding them:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously

committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to
separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But
the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of

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 STEP 8

every human being. And who is0 to destroy a

piece of his own heart?”’7”

The same could apply to our desire to suppress memories of the

harm we’ve committed in the past. Even if we do try to pretend
our mistakes away, the more egregious ones have a way of forcing
themselves to the surface of our conscience. In fact, past hurts are
substantial precisely to the extent that they cannot be swept under
the rug. The alcoholic whose life has imploded often tries to turn a
blind eye and create a pretend-world where things ‘are not really
that bad.’ The wreckage a newly sober alcoholic faces, however,
eventually demands confrontation: past offenses and sufferings,
like a trail of breadcrumbs to a bird, eventually leads him into the
rooms of AA. Once there, the alcoholic concretely encounters the
universal need for reconciliation with his past. For this reason, it is
sometimes said in AA that, “it’s not drinking that brings a person
to AA; it’s trouble.”
In this sense, AA’s head-on approach for dealing with
shameful and embarrassing events lacks the superficiality of more
conventional approaches, which tend to either minimize the
wrong or offer some flimsy version of self-absolution. Not
surprisingly, it is also this driving force of extreme honesty that
undergirds the recognition of both our guilt and our need in
Christianity.
The Gospel message exposes the notion that we can move
gracefully through all of life as a myth, one in which we pretend to
play the role of the righteous, conquering hero. No one can or
does live without regret, and the universality of our guilt confirms
this insight. Rather than opting for an illusory feeling of
blamelessness, Christianity assumes our guilt...and forgives tt.

77 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (William Collins, Sons:

Glasgow, 1974), 168.

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

By implication, it’s not hard to understand why the Gospel

message places so much emphasis upon the cross: it is the place
where debts are paid and sins forgotten, where God reconciles
Himself to sinful men and women. Suffering and guilt are not
avoided; rather, the cross confronts them, beats them, and
resolves them. Jesus didn’t pretend that everything was all right
with people. Instead, he identified with human sin so much that
the New Testament writer says he was “made to be sin” itself for
our sake (2 Cor 5:21). Were it not for guilt, Jesus could have died
painlessly in old age. True forgiveness and reconciliation requires
an honest confrontation of the problem, both in Christianity and
in daily, Step 8 life. This will sound exceedingly harsh to those who
ate convinced they can live an unblemished existence. It is
unromantic in the extreme. But it brings us to two crucial points
about amends-making.
~e=f-—-~ First, AA and Christianity agree on the universalneed_for
2. reconciliation with one’s past. As William Faulkner said, “the past
is
s never_dead, Iv’s-not_even past.78 Living a truly peaceful life in
the present requires resolution. Christianity does this with the
death and resurrection of Christ; AA does it with amends-making.
Christian theology understands the cross to have made true,
teal, and living amends — one which actually removes guilt and
makes us innocent before God. AA amends, on the other hand,
are merely a horizontal shadow of this vertical reality. Despite their
often conciliatory effects, Step 9 amends do not attempt to undo
the past wrong so much as therapeutically to ameliorate its impact
on the victim. To do this requires direct, often face-to-face
acknowledgment with the person harmed.
Indeed, amends-making consists of surrender before the
other person, a surrender that comes from a confrontation with

’® William Faulkner, Reguiem for a Nun (New York, NY: Random House,
1950), 1.3.

12
 STEP 8

one’s own guilt. It is a place of death, in other words. Both AA

and Christianity, in this sense, locate our best hope for peace in the
death of our delusions of blamelessness, that is, in our unveiling
before the person or standard we have violated. The peace and
fulfillment that amends-makers often receive from Steps 8 and 9
flow out of the painful, experiential, concrete confession of one’s
sin in an interpersonal context.
The need to have our guilt forgiven defines the movement
of the steps accordingly.” For some of us, the importance of
amends-making points to a larger, more existential need for
forgiveness and reconciliation.
It may not be a fashionable sentiment, but as our lives and
relationships and the Twelve Steps and the Bible attest, the
balance sheet needs setting straight. The dream of accomplishing
this through our performance is just that: a dream. Minimizations,
evasions, and justifications will not do the trick either. In God’s
grace, however, there is a wider net. It is one that can handle
anything that swims its way. In Christianity, forgiveness is the final
word.®9 It transforms a heart and, were it more present in the
world, it might alter the plight of humanity. Steps 8 and 9 assume
as much.

79 The theological word for this is ‘atonement.’ One of the chief ways of
understanding this in Christian theology is through the image of the law
court. In this account, the mechanism of Christian salvation is above all one
of God, in a sort of divine ‘courtroom’, passing judgment over humanity for
its sins. Out of love, Christ, who is sinless, steps in as a substitute to be
judged in place of the sinner. This substitution is understood primarily in
terms of the satisfaction of God’s justice through a transfer of merit. The
result is that a person’s sin is forgiven, God’s favor is restored, and the way
to eternal life is opened. Where amends are concerned in AA, the goal is a
kind of horizontal reconciliation, spurred on by the (vertical) inclination of
God’s greater good will. The Christian faith undeniably turns the volume up
on such a picture of things, seeing the cross of Christ to be the ultimate locus
~ for all reconciliation between that which is broken and a God who is holy.
80 As the Reverend John D. (“Jady”) Koch puts it, “The judgment of God is
forgiveness.”

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 Step 9

“Made Direct Amends to Such People

Wherever Possible Except when to Do So
Would Injure Them or Others.”

Step 9 is the amends-making step. It scares the daylights out of

people. It involves making restitution for past harms. But the
Twelve Step version of an apology is a very stylized thing, much
more than a simple ‘sorry’ and much mote effective too. Step 9 is
where we learn how to mend broken relationships.

The Purpose of Amends

“Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and

the people about us.”
- -Big Book (77)

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

A newly healed bone is strongest at the point where it was broken,

or so the conventional wisdom goes. Step 9 bears this out. Indeed,
broken relationships and past harms provide us with a fantastic
opportunity to grow in the experience of God’s grace. The injured
places in out lives are where healing and new life are most readily
attainable.
We have begun to see how this is true in our own lives, but
seeing how it is true in the lives of others — and how we can play a
role in bringing it about — is one of the greatest blessings found in
the Twelve Steps. You will not want to miss Step 9. As the Big
Book tells us, “If we are painstaking about this phase of our
development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through”
(83).
As we find new footing with God through the Twelve
Steps, it is remarkable how we become able to help our neighbors
do the same. To the extent that we have harmed other people, we
have stifled and frustrated their ability to have peace in that area of
their lives. Imagine a person’s life as it moves along a single dotted
line from one point to the next. At the moment where my line
intersects with that of another person, my negative impact halts
the ease with which he is able to continue along an unimpeded
path. Like a river that hits a rock, his trajectory is forcibly rerouted.
The rock in question is what we call harm. And while people
clearly learn to compensate for the harm we have caused them,
compensation is not the same thing as healing.
Step 9 is where we enable those we have hurt to progress
past the harm we have caused. The amend functions like the
untangling of a knot in a piece of thread. With Step 9, the bad
begins to heal, but any good that may have developed in wake of
the harm remains as well. It’s a classic win-win.
Maybe it’s not surprising to discover that our lives are being
straightened out for the sake of others, but Step 9 drives this
reality home. The Big Book describes the process as being, “fitted

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 STEP 9

to be of maximum service to God and the people about us” (77).

In this sense, amends are not primarily designed to give us relief
from guilt; they exist instead for the sake of the people to whom
we ate making them. After all, love will always emphasize the
wellbeing of others over and against our own. Yet if we make
amends correctly, we will usually experience an incredible new
freedom and resolution with our past. Plus, there is the joy of
knowing that we have tried our best to give the other person an
Opportunity to sort through the wreckage we caused. Making
amends actually helps to shore up our future against many of the
pitfalls that have dragged us down in the past.

The Making of Amends Does Not Begin with the Making

of Amends

If we have made it this far in the program, chances are that we’ve
statted making amends without even being aware of the
technicalities of Step 9. An increased desire to acknowledge
shortcomings and apologize quickly is part of the fruit that comes
from working the Steps.
But it is also the case that external factors play a role in
creating this readiness to make amends. Perhaps you hear from an
old acquaintance out of the blue, or bump into someone you
haven’t seen in years. Many a recovering alcoholic has reported
that the Steps almost seem to be happening # them, of their own
accord, and nowhere is this more apparent than with Step 9. I
knew one AA who found himself seated on a plane next to one of
the people on his 8% Step list, just a week after finishing his 5
Step. When it’s time for this sort of healing to occur, God often makes it
_ obvious, both by preparing us and the recipients for amends-
making. Which is not to say that we should ever recklessly make

1
GRACE IN ADDICTION

amends without serious teflection and consultation with a

sponsor. Fresh enthusiasm is not the same thing as wisdom. Step 9
has as much new material to teach us as any of the other steps.
Amends-making ideally begins with a talk with your sponsor
or spiritual mentor. As a general principle, we avoid making any
amends that we have not run by an understanding person first. Out sponsor
will be able to help us figure out how to make amends to the
people on out list.8! Personal experience, filtered through the 4®
step moral inventory, has likely taught us to be skeptical about our
knee-jerk inclinations. How often we have heard about the newly
sober alcoholic, eager to connect with an ex-girlfriend, who has
used Step 9 as an excuse for doing so. Few and far between are the
sponsors who would encourage us to start our amends-making by
calling up an ex!
The other desire that we hope to counteract is the urge to
make amends for selfish reasons and at the expense of another’s
well-being. Airing past grievances can be a huge relief, but it is not
always helpful. To the extent that doing so is unhelpful, it is
probably not a good idea. For instance, a wise sponsor would
probably discourage someone from telling tell his 85-year-old
grandmother that he — the apple of her eye — has just gotten sober
after a long battle with drug addiction and incarceration. This is
the “except when to do so would injure them or others” part of
Step 9. While he may wish to tell the whole world about the
newfound freedom he is enjoying, the news may not be received
as watmly by those who have been protected from his ruckus

8! For those doing application with this step: if you don’t have a sponsor or
person to run this list by, it’s a good idea to go through the next section
where we describe much of the material that a sponsor or the Big Book
would offer. Using common sense, try to figure out which type of amend
each person on your list should receive, and proceed accordingly. But please
be on the lookout for a person, perhaps a buddy from a Bible study, who
you can bring into your life in this way. They might be just as eager to ‘try on’
the Twelve Steps themselves if presented with the opportunity.

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 STEP'9

behavior. To them, the revelation about his past may prove jarring,
especially when sobriety is a particularly recent development.
Someone would do much better revealing this material after many
years of sobriety.
The guiding sensation behind these kinds of novice actions
is not unlike the urge that drives gossip and the telling of secrets.
There may be a natural desire to do so, but it is almost always a
bad idea. The Big Book considers this matter carefully. Where is
truth-telling at odds with love? Considers the example of adultery:

“A man so involved often feels very remorseful at times,

especially if he is married to a loyal and courageous girl
who has literally gone through hell for him. Whatever
the situation, we usually have to do something about it.
If we are sure our wife does not know, should we tell
her? Not always, we think. If she knows in a general way
that we have been wild, should we tell her in detail?
Undoubtedly we should admit our fault. She may insist
on knowing all the particulars. She will want to know
who the woman is and where she is. We feel we ought
to say to her that we have no right to involve another
person. We are sorry for what have done and, God
willing, it shall not be repeated. More than that we
cannot do; we have no right to go further. Though there
may be justifiable exceptions, and though we wish to lay
down no tule or any sort, we have often found this the
best course to take...Good generalship may decide that
the problem should be attacked on the flank rather than
risk a face-to-face combat” (80-82).

Notice that with amends-making, the well-being of others is

always the primary concern. There is occasionally a tension
" between trying to make amends in order to allay our own guilt and
making them for the good of another; when this tension arises, we

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

may etr in the direction of the former, selfish way. Again, the
stickiness and complexity of our past (and our own feelings about
it) is simply another reason why the wise counsel of another is
almost always beneficial.
Truth be told, the pitfalls associated with amends-making
ate almost impossible to avoid completely without God’s help. We
have learned that such help often comes through the mouth of
other people. If we waited until our motivations were perfect, we
would wait forever. Rather than let these pitfalls deter us,
therefore, perhaps they can inspire us to test the substance of
having God at the center of our lives — such an attitude rarely
disappoints. “Into your hands I commit my spirit” makes for a
good motto during the amends-making process (Psalm 31:5,
quoted by Christ on the cross in Luke 23:46).

How to Make Amends: Four Kinds of Amends

There are four types of amends described in Step 9 of the 12 ¢e

12. They are: 1) the face-to-face amend, 2) the wait-and-see-but-
be-willing amend, 3) the letter/email amend, and 4) the living
amend. At the start of Step 9, preferably with the help of a
sponsor, each name on your 8% Step list should be grouped into
one of these four categories. Let’s look at each of them.

1) Face-to-Face

The face-to-face amend is the bread-and-butter of the 9t Step. It’s

the classic. Chances are that you’ve actually heard stories of
members of AA making amends to someone you know. You may
even have been the recipient of one yourself.

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 STEP 9

After we’ve figured out which of our amends fit into this
categoty, we’re encouraged to dive tight in and make them as
quickly as possible. If people are not sure which one to start with,
I sometimes repeat the advice that one sponsor gave to me: “Start
with the scariest one first.” Having fun yet?
Once we've settled on a name, the first thing that needs to
be done (with every type of amend) is prayer. Perhaps something
along the lines of, “God, please help me to make amends to N. in a way
that ts beneficial to him and to you. Amen.”
Following the prayer, we try contacting the person either by
email or phone. We do not make the amend over the phone; we
simply set up the opportunity to connect with them. Coffee shops
typically make fantastic settings. The invitation to meet up may
receive an abrupt “no way, (Jerk!)”’, or no response at all. If we do
not hear back from the person after a week has gone by, we might
ask our sponsor if we should try getting in touch one mote time. If
we are not encouraged to do so, we consider our work with that
one name on the list to be “done” for the time being. We never
know; we may hear from that person two months or even two
years later, at which point we will know it’s time to make the
amend. We do not say to ourselves, “Oh well, she didn’t reply to
my email within a week of my sending it, so I now have nothing to
say to her. You snooze, you lose!” Step 9 only shows us how to
begin the process of healing our broken relationships — it does not
end the process.
But let’s say the person is willing to meet. To understand
how recovering alcoholics are encouraged to go about amends-
making, imagine for a moment that you’re the one making an
amend. Your goal is to put the person at ease, which means you
want to be especially sensitive to the fact that he may not really
_ want to meet with you even though he has consented to do so.
Tread lightly, in other words, and do not assume that you are now
about to meet a new best friend. That is unlikely.

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Let’s say you meet her at a coffee shop. While the situation
may vaty slightly from case to case, in general most sponsors
would have you follow something close to these guidelines:
First, you say a ptayer before the time you are to meet with
them. Next, you get to the meeting place early so as not to
inconvenience the person in any way. You might offer to buy her
coffee if she wants some. Make light small talk and reassure them
with a smile and calm demeanor. You ate not there to pounce,
which would likely be the exact way you got yourself into needing
to make amends in the first place.
After a few short minutes, the person will make it clear
(using body language or perhaps words) that she is ready to hear
why you have called her to the rendezvous. You would then say
something like the following:

“Thank you for meeting with me. I’ve been trying to

make some changes in my life, and part of those
changes has involved a fair amount of reflection. ’m
awate that I have not treated some of the people in my
life well, and I think you are one of them. Looking back,
I see that there were times in our past when I acted
selfishly. It was not fair to you, and I regret it. I’ve asked
you to meet me here today so that I could tell you I’m
sorry for the way I acted and the things I did. Is there
anythingIcan do to make it up to you?”

Notice that the amends-maker does not initially need to highlight

any particular incident. After we have said our piece, we should
shut out mouths and allow the other person to process what we
have said. We should listen to whatever he has to say. We
encourage amends-makers not to be afraid of silence. We are not
looking for any particular response, other than the one which
comes naturally to the recipient. God will guide the other person.

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 STEP 9

The recipient may or may or may not wish to revisit the past
with us. Obviously the 9% Step creates a somewhat awkward
interaction. The recipient may wish to move on quickly, demurring
with a line like, “Don’t worry about it. I forgive you. I’m glad
you’re doing well...” If this is the response, it’s a fine one. After
all, we only want the response that God gives him.
Another common response is, “What exactly are you talking
about?” If this is the case, we might speak in brief, general terms
about the particular circumstance involved (e.g., remember when
we were in Spain? Or remember when we went on that double
date...?). A short answer should be enough to trigger a more in-
depth response, which is the very thing you are looking for.
The recipient may reply, “Well, I’m glad you’re finally aware
of how your behavior affected me. It was really upsetting!...”” We
allow him to vent, taking whatever poison he wishes to throw at
us. In no case are we to discuss the recipient’s behavior. Criticism
of him has no place in Step 9. We are there to sweep off our side
of the street, not his. As the book reminds us, “His faults are not
discussed” (78).
People should feel free to plan what they want to say in
advance. You could use the script above if you like, or you could
create your own as long as the basic elements are covered: we are
there to apologize for the harm we caused, acknowledging that we
know we behaved badly and that we realize it was selfish. We
regret it. And then we ask if there is anything we can do to mend
the tear. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” Even if
there’s nothing we can do, the other person will hopefully
recognize that we know sincerely we have wronged them. If
someone does request we make it up to them, we do so as best we
can and within reason. These are the building blocks of an
_ effective 9% Step amend.

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2) The Letter

Making amends by writing a letter is a common and helpful

practice when a face-to-face meeting is not possible. Perhaps a
person on the list lives far away and cannot make a trip just to
settle with you.8? In that case, a brief letter or email may be
appropriate, in which we acknowledge our wrong-doing and let
the person know that we would like to make it up if there is any
way to do so, covering the same essential bases mentioned in the
face-to-face section above, but in written form. It need not be very
long. If we have run the situation by our sponsor and have been
advised to proceed with the writing of a 9% Step letter, we might
read it to the sponsor before we send it.
One classic situation that merits an amend letter is the
occasion of a death. Perhaps we treated a loved one horribly at a
much earlier point in life, and then the loved one died. Obviously
we cannot make amends face-to-face. But perhaps we can visit the
grave and read aloud what we would say in a face-to-face
interaction. This can be very powerful.
Letters can also be helpful in cases where a person doesn’t
want to talk—but only if a sponsor advises us to do so. If a person
does not wish to be in touch at all, it’s probably wise not to press
the issue. We might write an unsent letter and read it to a sponsor,
to a counselor or minister, or quietly in a church to God during a
mid-week lunch break.83 Amends-makers sometimes pretend that
the person is there and that they are able to talk, even though they

®? Members of AA will often take a “9 Step Trip”, revisiting places they

used to live with the express purpose of making a series of amends. It’s a
great endeavor, but obviously it’s good to set up as much of it as possible in
advance.
83 Consider a historic parallel: when David was unable to make amends to a
person he had ordered killed, he wrote Psalm 51 to God instead: “I know my
ni a and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I
sinne

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 STEP 9

are not. The experience may sound a bit hokey, but it can be very
helpful and cathartic. Additionally, someone’s reluctance to be in
contact with us may be God’s way of telling us to proceed with a
living amend.

Types 3 & 4: The “Living Amend” and the Wait-and-See-

but-Willing Amend

If an amends-maker and his sponsor, mentor, or spiritual advisor

have decided that some of the amends on the list should be
postponed for whatever reason, then for the time being it
becomes a “living amend.” Perhaps you cannot approach an ex-
girlfriend without arousing a certain amount of jealousy from
either her spouse or his. In the case where making a face-to-face
amend would cause more harm than good, the living amend
becomes the best way to move forward.
Living amends involve creative ways of making restitution
without doing additional harm. In one case, I remember
consulting with a newly sober individual who had at times used
drugs while working as a teacher. She felt terrible about the fact
that she had acted in such a way, but we concluded that she would
not be able to help her former students or their parents by
bringing to light what she had done years after the fact. So the
living amend became the advised approach. Keeping in stride with
the 9% Step, she found an opportunity to volunteer as a tutor at a
local school. This course of action provided her with peace of
mind, a fantastically productive opportunity, and a reminder of
how she had, in fact, been changed by God’s grace.
Despite the focus on action and personal initiative, all four
_ kinds of amends are different from self-reliance because they are
somewhat uncomfortable on the front end. In a sense, we take the
wrong we have inflicted upon another person and bear it

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ourselves, as much as possible. It is by willingly undergoing the

awkward, mostly passive, embarrassing process of amends-making
that we can bear some of the pain from past actions ourselves and,
in so doing, help the other person to move on.
In most cases, the living amend is the opportunity to do the
converse of what we did to cause the harm. It’s the new good — in
exchange for the old bad, something the Book of Common Prayer
calls “newness of life.” For example, it may be the opportunity to
treat people the opposite of the way we used to treat them, to no
longet be a cheat, or a thief, or a womanizet.
While there are a million different reasons why a living
amend might be called for, fear is not one of them. Fear tends to
underscore the need we have to make the amend, and it is rarely a
good reason to avoid a direct amend in favor of the living one.
Ask God to remove your fear and discuss the situation with your
sponsor.

Money

The 72 ¢ 12 adds “money” to the inventory list in Step 4, but we

think it’s a topic better suited for Step 9. This is because money is
an unavoidable aspect of amends-making. For example, all debt is
an outstanding amend that needs to be made. Most alcoholics owe
money, and many of us have, at times in our lives, stolen in some
fashion. How should monetary amends be made? For starters,
probably not by the family man who is sole provider for a wife
and kids putting himself forward for imprisonment over prior
financial deceitfulness. Someone who has stolen, however, might
send some anonymous cash to the department store from which
she shoplifted. Many people do this exact kind of thing multiple
times during Step 9. Someone else might tip hugely for a year at a

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 STEP 9

certain restaurant where he used to work, one where he stole food,

drinks, or money. I remember one sponsee who arranged a
payment plan with his mother after he sobered up. Each month he
gave her $200 until an agreed-upon amount had been reimbursed
in.its entirety. The advice of a third party in these matters is crucial
— and willingness is indispensable.

The Making of Amends Does Not End With the Making of

Amends

The 9% Step gives us an opportunity to lean upon our newfound

trust in God. In my experience it is where the most enjoyable
fruits of the spiritual life are found. Typically, the results of
amends-making are edifying and wonderfully unpredictable. As the
book says, “in nine cases out of ten the unexpected happens” (78).
By making an effort to repair the damage of our past
conduct, we open the door to new events. People will rarely
require us to do anything specific in response to an amend, unless
perhaps monetary debt is involved. But it is important to realize
that while the making of an amend begins with the 9% Step, it does
not end there. Sometimes, a person to whom we have made an
amend will contact us a week or so after the initial approach and
say something like, “I know I said to forget about it, but since we
met, there’s one thing that I’ve been wanting to say about what
happened all those years ago...” Our job in this situation is to
listen and apologize in whatever way we can in good conscience.
This may happen more than once.
In other instances, the amend may involve taking on a new
approach with a family member. We may have to begin the long,
slow process of trying to act differently each year at Christmas. We
may have to start sending birthday cards or making regular phone

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calls home, even though the calls themselves sometimes feel like
torture. Nonetheless, we take these hits as best we can, gladly
turning the other cheek: “...with a person we dislike, we take the
bit in our teeth. It is harder to go to an enemy than to a friend, but
we find it much more beneficial to us” (77).

Three Examples of the 9" Step

“In nine cases out of ten the unexpected happens. Sometimes the man we are
calling upon admits his fault, so that feuds ofyears’ standing melt away in
an hour. Rarely do we fail to make satisfactory progress. Our former enemies
sometimes praise what we are doing and mish us well. Occasionally, they will
offer assistance. It should not matter, however, ofsomeone does throw us out
ofhis office. We have made our demonstration, done our part.”
-Big Book (78)

The good news of the 9% Step is that despite the awkwardness and
emotional intensity of the amends-making process, healing is
almost always the end result. Fresh starts occur. Second, third, and
fiftieth chances are given. Grace is extended and received liberally
in the world of Step 9. In more cases than not, huge strides toward
newfound peace ate taken.
But occasionally, this doesn’t happen. The book mentions
that we may be thrown out of an office as part of Step 9. I
experienced my own version of this when I approached the
manager of a radio station I had worked for a few years earlier. I
walked into the station with a bag full of over 50 compact discs
that I had stolen from the station’s archives. I asked to speak with
the manager, who ushered me into his office. I said my bit: I had
stolen these CDs when I worked for the station; I was sorry and
wished to return them and find out if thete was anything else I
could do to make it up.

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 STEP 9

His response caught me off-guard: “Who else stole music

from us? I know there were others!” I told him that I did not
know about anyone else and was not there to incriminate others,
but that I had indeed stolen a lot of CDs while I worked there. He
replied that if I could not name anyone else, he would be forced to
ban me from the station “for the rest of [my] life.” He pointed to
the door. I accepted this punishment and have never returned to
their offices (though I have listened to their station from my car
on occasion, which I have decided is okay).
Fortunately, that’s not what usually happens. The writers of
the Big Book wished to share one of their favorite examples of the
9% Step, concerning a businessman who had acted unethically:

“While drinking, he accepted a sum of money from a

bitterly-hated business rival, giving him no receipt for it.
He subsequently denied having received the money and
used the incident as a basis for discrediting the man. He
thus used his own wrongdoing as a means of destroying
the reputation of another. In fact, his rival was ruined.
He felt that he had done a wrong he could not
possibly make right. If he opened that old affair, he was
afraid it would destroy the reputation of his partner,
disgrace his family and take away his means of
livelihood. What right had he to involve those
dependent upon him? How could he possibly make a
public statement exonerating his rival?
After consulting with his wife and partner he
came to the conclusion that it was better to take those
tisks...He saw that he had to place the outcome in
God’s hands or he would soon start drinking again, and
all would be lost anyhow. He attended church for the
first time in many years. After the sermon, he quietly got
up and made an explanation. His action met widespread

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

approval, and today he is one of the most trusted

citizens of his town.” (80)

A final illustration of amends-making comes from NBC’s

television show Parenthood. In that series, viewers have been
introduced to a single mother, Sarah, and her two teenage
children. Her ex-husband, Seth, abandoned the family when the
children were very young, leaving her to raise them by herself. We
are told simply that he was a musician with a terrible substance-
abuse problem. On a few occasions during the sweep of the
narrative, he re-emerges and wants to see his kids, apologizing for
the harm he has caused them, only to then abandon them when he
takes off on another bender.
In the third season of the show, Seth checks himself into a
rehabilitative hospital, finally serious about sobering up and getting
his life together. But his teenage kids are skeptical, and their guard
is up; they have been hurt and disappointed too many times
before. Sarah’s parents are understandably very uncomfortable
about Seth causing more trauma to their daughter and
grandchildren. Plus, Sarah has a nice new boyfriend, who is
somewhat turned off by the whole situation, and everyone is
worried that Seth will chase him away.
When “Dad” finally makes it out of rehab, his daughter
allows him to crash on her couch for a few nights, making it clear
to him that the best way he can make amends to her and her
brother and mother is to stay sober for a while. Seth sees that his
presence is jeopardizing Sarah’s budding relationship and bringing
unwanted tension into his former in-laws’ home, and knows he
has to leave town.
Before he does, he finds a birthday card that he wrote to his
daughter on her eighth birthday in a drawer in her kitchen, the
only birthday card that he ever gave her.

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 STEP 9

The next day his daughter returns home from work to find
that her dad has indeed left. You can sée the relief on her face. She
then notices something on her kitchen table: two manila
envelopes, one bearing her name and the other her brother’s. She
opens the envelope to find nineteen birthday cards, one for every
year except her eighth birthday. Inside each one is handwritten
note from her father. She sits at the table reading through all of the
catds from her father that she never got, and as she reads them
she cries. The tears stream down her face, and the healing is
palpable. As I watched it, I cried right along with her. It is a perfect
portrait of amends-making, one which incorporates all four of the
Step 9 categories we have been discussing.
The Twelve Steps bring with them a series of “promises.”
The most famous set of promises come at the end of the Big
Book’s section on Step 9. It is right that we too close this section
with them:

“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.” (83-84)

191
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 Step 10

“Continued to Take Personal Inventory and

when We Were Wrong Promptly Admitted It.”

“The sacrifice ofthe Ego elements must be total, or they will soon regain their
ascendancy.”
-Dr. Tiebout, “E:go Factors ofSurrender in Alcohoksm”

The spiritual life that we discover in the Twelve Steps has little to
do with avoiding mistakes. It is much more concerned with how
we deal with our mistakes once we make them or, you might say,
with our mistake-making selves. As Chuck T. bluntly put it:
“You'll never be so perfect that you don’t have a crack in your
a**! In the preceding Steps we’ve learned a new set of skills—
how to take a moral inventory, how to pray for God to remove
out defects, how to make amends--and Step 10 weaves much of
what we’ve learned together into a single reiteration.
The opening word of Step 10, “continued”, is somewhat
off-putting. It brings to mind all of the failed New Year's

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resolutions that have ever been attempted. Most of the time, it

seems the character defects that have plagued our lives are the
only things we have managed to keep up with any consistency.
Yet Step 10 introduces us to the ongoing reality of the
spiritual life. Can we maintain? Of course, in a simple sense, the
answet is no. We ate bound to lapse on some front at some point.
So we are warned in the same step about the times “when we were
wrong’, implying that even in sobriety, we will be “wrong.” In
AA, people often say, “With Step 10, it’s when and not 7” A return
to the state of being in the wrong 1s imminent.

The Ego That Wouldn't Die

We never grow out of our need for Step 10. It never becomes
extraneous or irrelevant. This is because the ego, which functions
like a wedge between our selves and our appreciation of God,
constantly seeks to rebuild itself. The great psychiatrist and friend
of Bill Wilson, Dr. Harry Tiebout, wrote extensively about the
ego’s irrepressibility. In his prescient essay The Ego Factors of
Surrender in Alcoholism, he writes:

“Therapy is centered on the ways and means, first, of

bringing the Ego to earth, and second, keeping it there.
The discussion of this methodology would be out of
place here, but it is relevant to emphasize one point,
namely the astonishing capacity of the Ego to pass out
of the picture and then reenter it, blithe and intact.”

Next, and quite wonderfully, he draws attention to the Christian

roots behind AA’s concern, for deflating the ego:

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 STEP 10

“Tt is the Ego which is the arch-enemy of sobriety, and

it is the Ego which must be disposed of if the individual
is to attain a new way of life...Life without Ego is no
new conception. Two thousand years ago, Christ
preached the necessity of losing one's life in order to
find it again. He did not say Ego, but that was what he
had in mind...As one sees this struggle in process, the
need for the helping hand of a Deity becomes clearer.
Mere man alone all too often seems powerless to stay
the force of his Ego. He needs assistance and needs it
urgently.’’5+

Put It All Together and What Do You Get?

Step 10 calls us to keep doing the things we have already been

doing. When a resentment arises, for example, we pray for it to be
removed and focus on how we can be helpful to the person we
‘resent. If the resentment does not budge, we write an inventory,
looking at our part and then sharing it with a sponsor or another
wise person. This allows us to keep track of how particular defects
from our 6% Step list have re-emerged, and in that eventuality, we
add the removal of these defects to our daily list of prayer
requests. If we have acted out against the person with whom we
are angry, we can also ask our sponsor whether or not amends
should be made. Steps 4 — 9 are tools that we can carry with us
into the future.
The 72 ¢» 12 suggests a few different ways to work Step 10.
Again, most importantly, we continue to take inventory, observing
new resentments, fears, or sex problems when they crop up in our

84 Harry M. Tiebout, “The Ego Factors of Surrender in Alcoholism”,

Quarterly Journal on Studies ofAkohol, December (1954).

1
GRACE IN ADDICTION

lives. Hopefully, this constant reiteration of Steps 4 — 9 will

become habitual. As the Big Book encouragingly describes, “What
used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually
becomes a working part of the mind” (87). We start to sense
God’s involvement in our lives because of the way He enables us
to see our limitations. In other words, the Steps have given us a
new perspective and a new understanding of ourselves.
Similarly, we may find that we value forgiveness more than
we once did, confident that it is the only way to live at peace with
our enemies—even if we ate not able to do so on our own power.
Consequently, we begin to seek God’s help more of the time. It’s
hard to imagine that such an inclination could ever overreach
itself. We are describing the actual “easier softer way” of doing life
(58).
One major Step 10 tradition is the nightly inventory, taken
at the end of the day:

“When we retire at night, we constructively review our

day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do
we owe an apology? Have we kept something to
ourselves which should be discussed with another
person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all?
What could we have done better? (86)”

Many people choose to begin their evening inventory on their

knees at the foot of their bed, with the prayer, “God, please show
me what it is about my day that you would have me see.” Then we
replay the day in our minds. What did we do? Who did we interact
with? Were there any important phone calls or emails? As we
remember each particular interaction, we might briefly say a prayer
for these people, “Dear Lord, please be with N. and help him with

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 STEP 10

Y. And if there’s anything I can do in the future to be of service to

him, please help me to become awate of it.
Others may prefer to do their evening inventory in written
form. Over time, such a journal often inadvertently turns into a
record of answered prayers, which can be very meaningful to flip
through. We realize how God has helped in each of the situations
that used to concern us: “Wow! I remember when I was totally
consumed about . It’s been months since I have even
thought about it!”
As we make our nightly review, we may find that one or two
events from the day stand out uncomfortably. It may be that a set
of circumstances remain unresolved. Pray about those
circumstances. It might also be the case that we did something we
regret, that we wish we could undo, or that we could have done
better. Here we ask for God’s help in the future with similar
situations or with a particular person. We might also consider
whether or not there is anything further we need to do as a result
of the prickly instance. Do we owe an amend, or do we need to
run the situation by another person?
Another form of inventory that the 72 ¢> 72 describes is
known as the “annual or semi-annual housecleaning” (89). This is
where we take a bit of a retreat to review and inventory a larger
chunk of time. This annual or semi-annual inventory is also useful
for slow-building resentments that, like rolling snowballs, gradually
accumulate in our lives. Again, for AA step work is continual.
Because this inventory process is so critical, we cannot do it
alone. A big part of Step 10 has to do with keeping at least one
other person abreast of our progress and the things in our lives

85 Praying for people is a wonderful thing we can do for the people in our
lives. It is a very practical thing, and usually requires few words. Just pray
about the things you see that are going on in a particular person’s life,
expressing your concern and care, while putting their future in God’s hands.
You might visualize the person you wish to pray for standing in the palm of
a huge hand.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

that ate most pressing, a la Step 5. Have we found some new

friends who are going through the same type of reorientation? If
not, they can almost always be found at any Twelve Step group or
church Bible Study. If we have not made some new friends since
beginning working the Twelve Steps, something is amiss. “Going
it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous” (72 e 12, 60).
Personally, I live by the following maxim and associate it with my
experience of working the Twelve Steps: “Make sure that at least
one person, but not the whole world, is abreast of everything that
is going on in my life. No mote secrets about myself.”

“The Steps Work So Well That I Don’t Do Them All the

Time.”

“Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God,
it 1s not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times... We
alcoholics are undisaplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we
have just outlined.”
-Big Book (87-88)

Let’s not be fooled—we wi/] botch the job of recovery. We will

say the wrong thing, we will offend people unintentionally. We will
make poor decisions, and we will make them for selfish reasons.
Our egos will re-emerge. We will have days when we feel not at all
spiritual. This is a normal part of being a human. To quote one
old-timer: “Some days all I am is just sober.” That is, some days he
feels the absence of alcohol more than the presence of any kind of
serenity. These are the realities of sin in a fallen world. Step 10
starts from that place. It understands, and it offers a way through
the missteps and laziness. -
Step 10 assumes that the Twelve Steps w// work as well as
they ave worked. We do not need to acquire mote skills; we only

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 STEP 10

need to keep using the ones we have already learned. These focus,
of course, on an awareness of our own limitations and continuing
presence of our defects of character. People often quote the Step
10 motto, “Be your own harshest critic, and everyone else’s most
lenient.” The Big Book summarizes a similar ethos: “Continue to
watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When
these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss
them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we
have harmed anyone” (84).
We have already seen how the crucial ingredient of
desperation enables miraculous things to happen. The Step 10
experience often involves discovering the proportional lack of
perseverance that accompanies “good times.” When things are
good, people tend to not work the Steps with as much regularity.
They do not take inventory as diligently or pray as often. The Big
Book is wise to warn us about this: “It is easy to let up the spiritual
program and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we
do” (85). But the good news of Step 10 is that when you need
them, the Twelve Steps will still be there to be used. There is
nothing we can throw at them that they cannot handle.

Spiritual Progress in the Church and AA: Linear or

Cyclical?

The reason why people continue working the steps over and over
again has to do with AA’s understanding that spiritual progress is a
cyclical phenomenon rather than a linear one, an understanding
which is somewhat atypical. The ever-booming self-help genre of
books, for instance, promises fast, easy fixes to many of life’s
. problems. Popular titles like The Seven Habits ofHighly Ejfective People
suggest that making ourselves over is as easy as reading a book and

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simply changing our behavior on the basis of it. This would reflect
a linear understanding of progress: we move up and up in a
straight line, becoming more disciplined, successful, or “effective”’,
improvement being the touchstone of any fulfilling life.
Despite traditional Christian literature’s skepticism about
self-help, in practice the idea of linear progress has also permeated
many Christian churches. Too many churches seem to spend their
time emphasizing a check-list seties of behaviors that need to be
put into practice for growth to occur. Their “teachings” are
entirely dominated by moral exhortation and platitudes, only
punctuated occasionally with any form of comfort or sensitivity to
the realities of daily struggle in the Christian life. As Christian
author Michael Horton put it, “we are getting dangerously close to
the place in everyday American church life where... Jesus Christ is
a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior
who has already achieved it for us.8° In effect, these churches are
dominated by what the Bible calls “Law”, which is shorthand for
any form of moral or ethical demand.’
While the encouraged habits may be desirable, AA would
claim that they are not necessarily achievable through the
individual’s effort and willpower, regardless of whether a not a
person has a serious relationship with God. You might say that
AA suspects human nature to be naturally regressive; we lapse just
as much in matters of spirituality as we do in New Year’s
resolutions. Spiritual progress, or sanctification, viewed through
the lens of Step 10, is therefore cyclical: we are bound to struggle

8° Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: the Alternative Gospel of the American

Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), 19. For more on this train of
thought, see Mark Galli’s “Why We Need Mote ‘Chaplains’ and Fewer
Leaders” in Christianity Today, December 2011.
87 One of the things that most perturbed Jesus about the church leaders of
his time was that they shaped church life in this same way. In Matthew 24, he
criticized the Pharisees, saying, “They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and
put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to
lift a finger to move them.”

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 STEP 10

with sin again and again, in spite of our best efforts and desires not
to. The main thing that discernibly grows in the experience of
coming to know God better is one’s dependence upon Him and
the knowledge of our need for grace.
Because the struggles of life remain essentially the same for
the sober and drinking alcoholic, there is little stratification
between the members of a recovery group; both the 25-year sober
drunk and the 5-day sober drunk need the same thing, which is the
gift of sobriety, God’s gracious gift of reprieve. From the outside
looking in, then, AA would appear to have a more pessimistic
view of the spiritual life than most Christians are typically willing
to acknowledge. AA seems to embrace a mote one-way, or
monergistic, view of God’s work in the life of a believer. Another
one of AA’s classic sayings is: “Of myself I am nothing, the Father
doeth the work.”
Theologically speaking, this means that those who hold a
more optimistic view of human agency and sanctification over
time tend to emphasize moral living, unintentionally downplaying
grace. In practice, a heightened understanding of human capability
renders the need for grace irrelevant. This has an important
implication for how we view others: if you think people have the
option to choose differently, then, when they make bad choices, it
will be very difficult to have compassion for them.*®
Does the idea of cyclical sanctification deny that people
really do change on account of spirituality? It doesn’t; AA is one of
the most lucid examples of the exact sort of change that many
churches like to advocate. But the results are achieved through an

88 Paul Zahl puts it this way in his book Grace in Practice: “One of the reasons
we need to embrace the fact of the un-free will is for the sake of its effect on
love. A benefit of the un-free will is that it increases mercy in daily
relationships and decreases judgment. ..Forms of Christianity that stress free
will create refugees. They get into the business of judging, and especially of
judging Christians... Ironically, it is judgment — the absence of it — which
drew people to Christ” (108-9).

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entirely different set of emphases. Rather than emphasizing

growth, a lack of growth is highlighted. Rather than worry about
virtue, the pitfalls of self-involvement are decried. For these
reasons, we would hesitate to call sanctification “progress” in the
moving-forward sense.
Instead, alcoholics in AA are simply sober by the grace of
God. The person considered to have the longest-running sobriety
of anyone in an AA meeting is whoever woke up earliest that day.
If there is indeed anything we can do to keep ourselves sober, it’s
working the steps — and even our desire to do that relies on the
crucial ingredient of desperation. We have already seen how, in the
program, our only contribution to spirituality lies is examining our
sinfulness, character defects, and reluctance to change. As some
fans of the Reformation are quick to say, “we bring nothing to the
table but our sin.” The rest is left up to God, while we continue
working the steps again and again. With this foundation, change
happens of its own accord. Indeed, the Big Book promises it.8?

The 10% Step Promises

While the 9 Step “promises” are more well-known in the world

of AA, the Big Book describes another set of promises related to
Step 10:

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone —

even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned.
We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we
recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and

* Lutheran theologian Mark Mattes elaborates a Christian expression of this

AA idea: “To be sanctified is to acknowledge God’s glory in his
imputation... Hence, sanctification is not the goal of the Christian life but its
soutce”’ (71).

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 STEP 10

normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been
given us without any thought or effort on our part. It
just comes! That is the miracle of it.” (84-86)

It may seem that this passage is primarily concerned with alcohol,

but the ramifications are more far reaching. Indeed, what’s being
described here is the way that growth and transformation actually
occur. As we make peace with our past, our future is transformed.
The changes that need to happen do so almost entirely of
themselves. Life becomes smoothed-over, almost of its own
accord. “Automatically” is the word the Big Book uses.
Notice how different this is from most self-help thinking
about personal improvement. There are no real goals. The rational
mind is not consulted in these considerations. It is put in charge of
the back of the bus, since that’s where it’s understood to have
been living the entire time leading up to that point anyway.9? The
person we are to become barely enters into the discussion. That
side of things is left up to God. But that’s also the fun of it — the
adventure comes with trusting God with both our lives and the
lives of others. And is it not better that changes should happen
this way? Our only alternative involves changing through our own
effort and control, and we’ve seen in Step 1 how well ¢hat worked!
This is a creative enterprise.
Years ago, my sponsor told me something that I will never
forget. As I grew more discouraged about giving up smoking, he
told me, “When it’s time, the cigarettes will just slip away, John.” I
wondered how I could ever stop without trying to quit, but then I
also remembered how many times I had tried to quit. So it is with
the removal of character defects. Along these lines, Dr. Tiebout
offers another piercing insight:

90 An old Christian proverb: “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and
the mind justifies.”

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

“Those who view the prospect of Afe without abundant

| drive as unutterably dull and boring should examine the
\ life of members of Alcoholics Anonymous who have
truly adopted the A.A. program. They will see people
who have been stopped — and who, therefore, do not
have to go anywhere — but people who are learning, for
the first time in their lives, to live. They are neither dull
not wishy-washy. Quite the contrary, they are alive and
interested in the realities about them. They see things in
the large, ate tolerant, open-minded, not close-minded
bulling ahead. They are receptive to the wonders in the
world about them, including the presence of a Deity
who makes all this possible. They are the ones who are
really living. The attainment of such a way of life is no
mean accomplishment.’””?!

One Day ata Time

"One day at a time forces you to reckon with the instant you actually occupy,
rather than living in fantasy la-la that never arrives."
-Mary Karr, Lit (208)

Alcoholics have often noted how the Big Book discusses what we
are to do at the end of the day in Step 10 before it discusses the
way we begin the day in Step 11. It’s as though looking back takes
precedent over looking forward. This is indeed the case with the
Twelve Steps, and it operates on the insight that if we wish to have
a bright future, we must deal with the past on a daily basis. Such
reconciliation allows us to live in the present and leave the future
up to its own devices. In other words, without Step 10, Step 11 is
relatively useless.

°! Harry Tiebout, “The Ego Factors of Surrender in Alcoholism.”

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 STEP 10

This dynamic plays out perhaps most evidently in a

counseling setting. As a minister, I’ve learned that when a person
comes into my office to discuss something important, it is almost
impossible to do so until we have first done some catching up.
Consequently, I always begin a session by asking, “So what’s
happened since we last met?” or even, “How was your day?” By
answering this question, which involves revisiting the recent past,
the subject actually prepares himself to consider the future. Until
he has brought himself up to speed with where he is and how he
has gotten there, he cannot engage well with where he or I or God
would have him go. The answer to my question is not important;
the catching up is.
For this reason, “one day at a time” has become arguably
AA’s most famous slogan. It oozes insight, especially for people
who are dealing with hardship and confusion. The future is an
abstraction, and AA knows it.
I remember a Christian who entered the rooms of AA. He
was frustrated with how he would ever “figure out God’s will” for
his life if he took things “one day at a time.” The two ideas seemed
to be at odds with each other. Then a savvy old-timer asked him if
he had a relatively clear idea about what the rest of the day would
require of him. The newcomer said he did and rattled of a list of a
few errands, a meal, a phone call, and some TV before bed. The
old-timer responded, “Then you know what God’s will is for
you.” In AA, the future unfolds in twenty-four hour increments.
And in my experience, the stories relayed in each AA meeting
blow even “the best laid plans of men” out of the water! God’s
will certainly does unfold, and often in an awe-inspiring fashion, in
the life of sober alcoholics. AAs often say that “history ends at
midnight.” Even if this is not true, Step 10 encourages us to
pretend that is.
We will approach tomorrow morning — which means “the
future” — in Step 11. Before we do, let’s dwell for one more

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moment on the importance of looking back, with the help of a

few words from a man who had little concern for his own safety
and future:

“If you ate offering your gift at the altar and there
remember that your brother or sister has something
against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.
First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer
your gift...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will worry about itself.” (Matt 5: 23-24, 6:34)

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 Step 11

“Sought through Prayer and Meditation to

Improve Our Conscious Contact with God As
We Understood Him.”

‘We constantly remind ourselves that we are no longer running the show,
humbly saying to ourselves many times each day Thy will be done.’ We are
then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or
foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tre so easily,
for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to
arrange life to suit ourselves.”
-Big Book (87-88)

There’s a tale of two lumberjacks from the Pacific Northwest who

were cutting timber in Oregon.°? In that neck of the woods, the
older of the two was regarded as the greatest lumberjack that had
ever lived. Everyone in the region knew of his famed ability with

92 | first heard a version of this story in a sermon by minister Tony Evans.

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an axe. We'll call him Yoda. But there came a time, toward the end
of Yoda’s life, when a young upstart named Conan started
receiving extraordinary acclaim for his stamina, brute strength, and
tree-cutting speed.
Eventually, Conan got tired of living in the shadow of
Yoda‘s fame, so he challenged Yoda to a contest to see who could
cut down mote trees in three days. The winner would, without a
doubt, be the greatest lumberjack of all time. After a lot of
pressure, Yoda finally accepted the challenge.
The day of the competition soon arrived, and when the
starting gun went off, both men started chopping at a furious rate.
After an hour or so, Conan noticed from afar that Yoda was
taking a brief break, sitting on a stump for five minutes before
resuming work. “The old man is washed up”, Conan thought to
himself, all the while continuing to chop. An hour later, the same
thing happened: Yoda stopped chopping and took a little break
before returning to the fray. The next hour, the same thing, and so
on. Soon Conan was confident that he would surpass his rival’s
tree count.
At the end of the three days, a judge calculated the number
of trees felled by each lumberjack. To Conan’s complete surprise,
Yoda had cut down twice as many trees as Conan. He approached
the old man and asked, “I don’t understand. I’m younger than you.
I’m stronger than you. I chopped more than you. And you took all
those breaks! How did you cut down so many more trees than
me?”
Yoda replied, “Every time I paused, I sharpened my axe.
After a while, only one of us was chopping with a sharp axe.”
Step 11 is the Twelve Steps’ way of teaching us to “sharpen
our spiritual axe.” You know your axe isn’t sharp if you notice one
day that your car, your wife, your job, and your house aren’t nice
enough anymore. Working Step 11 saves us a lot of money and
heartache, and it usually transforms a bad car into a fine one, a

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difficult relationship into an easily improved one, and a bad job

into “the place where God needs you.”

Prayer and Meditation

To stick with the metaphor, the primary stones we use to sharpen

our axe are prayer and meditation. Hopefully by the time we get to
Step 11, we should already have quite a bit of experience with its
inner workings. Indeed, it is impossible to work the first ten steps
without doing at least a little bit of praying. But even outside of the
Twelve Steps, people who didn’t grow up in a religious home may
have had experience praying for a grandparent in the hospital,
talking to God at a summer camp, or crying to God (ie. “if you’re
out there...’’) alone at the foot of the bed in certain low moments.
Step 11 also mentions meditation. Though the two are quite
similar, many have found it helpful to think of prayer as “talking to
God” and meditation as “listening to God.” Meditation may be
more commonly associated with Eastern religions, but the Judeo-
Christian tradition also boasts a rich history of meditative practice.
In essence, Step 11 involves any vehicle or practice geared toward
spiritual growth or deepening. This deepening both improves our
perspective and reminds us of our continual dependence on God.
For those who have found more contemplative meditation to be
frustratingly boring, difficult, or un-engaging, reading and
reflecting upon a bit of scripture is a perfectly legitimate option
here.93 But reading the Bible, in this context, has less to do with
studying it and more to do with contemplating its implications for

93 Likewise, there are heaps of daily devotional books out there. A couple
favorites include the forthcoming Mockingbird Devotional and Bo Giertz’s To
Live with Christ. Many people read a page of the Big Book every day or night.

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one’s life, A wise Christian once said that “We don’t read the
Bible; the Bible reads us.’’4
While some suggest that you must have a devotional time
every morning to live an actively spiritual life, we simply encourage
people to do it whenever they can. “We are not saints. The point is
that we ate willing to grow along spiritual lines” (84). In fact, it’s
astonishing how many members of AA talk about working their
11% Step in the morning while sitting in a stall in the bathroom at
work. That’s okay too. “It works — it really does... We found that
God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him’
(88, 46). Another important avenue for the 11% Step is church
involvement, which supplements individual spiritual practices with
the vital element of group fellowship.
My favorite old-timer, Chuck T., was known for asking his
sponsees about their 11% Step practice at the oddest moments. He
would receive a phone call from an anxious sponsee, seeking
advice about some situation involving a girlfriend or a co-worker.
After hearing him out, and without in any way addressing the
phone call’s main concern, he would ask, “What book ate you
reading at the moment?” “But Chuck, didn’t you hear what I said
she did?!” “Yes, I heard you’, he would respond, “and I asked you
what spiritual book are you reading at the moment?””>
Without being at all legalistic, we must admit that we regret
when the practice of Step 11 falls out of our daily routines. To use

4 This “charismatic” approach to reading the Bible contrasts with some

Christian ideas that demand precise, academic methods, for fear of someone
misinterpreting the Bible. The person who has reached Step 11 will be quick
to question the selfish motives that might warp his reading. In spite of
Luther’s insistence that “when the enthusiast reads the Bible, all he sees are
his own dreams”, we still believe it is important to consider Scripture
through the lens of its personal impact, as though it were a “living word” —
written fresh for the reader each morning and designed, in part, to illuminate
or speak to some aspect of her life.
°° Here is a list of some of my favorite Step 11-related books: The Bible
(NIV, ESV, or NRSV) and the Mockingbird list, which can be found online
at: http://www.mbird.com/2011/04/2011-nyc-conference-book-table/

PA's
 STEP 11

an image from the 72 ¢» 12, Step 11 functions in a human being’s

life the way sunlight does to a plant. It offers us time to connect
with the source of our being and the One who knows all that we
need, Chuck’s pointed question draws attention to the helpfulness
of daily Step 11 practice. When it’s combined with the daily
practice of Step 10, a profoundly practical spiritual life blossoms:

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination,

meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices
can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are
logically related and interwoven, the result is an
unshakable foundation for life. Now and then we may
be granted a glimpse of that ultimate reality which is
God’s kingdom.” (72 ¢ 12, 98)

Experimenting with Prayer: “Pick a Card”

‘In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to
determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an
intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle.
We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for
a while.”
-Big Book (86)
7
pte =~
@ ¢

“God's office is at the end ofyour rope.” we A

-Unknown

The 72 ¢> 12 encourages imagination in our prayer lives. Prayer

opens us up to possibilities. Prayer tears down the walls of the ego.
It takes us from the place of hubris to the place of humility. It puts
our lives back in the hands that can handle them. For this reason,
the practice of Step 11 feels quite natural once we begin to do it.

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Those of us who have come to make use of it cannot imagine

going back to a life without prayer.°
Again, like the rest of the Steps, Step 11 encourages a
person to yield passively to God’s activity. °7 One practical way to
approach Step 11 in this way is via a so-called “prayer
experiment.” For example, you might consider a situation in your
life with which you are not pleased. Do any of your current
circumstances or relationships cause you anxiety? “Pick a card, any
card.” Whatever issue comes to mind will be the topic of your
prayer experiment.
Usually we experience anxiety in a situation to the exact
extent that our “activity” has failed to solve our problem. Can you
not conclude that you have tried to fix the situation on your own?
Have you not exerted yourself in an attempt to change it? People
usually don’t get to the point of needing Step 11 until their efforts
have failed them. We might say that fa7th begins at the point where your
individual power ends.
With a topic in mind, the prayer experiment hopefully
enables us to cease in our attempts to bring about a particular
outcome. We agree to pray every day for thirty days about the
situation, doing our best to trust God to deal with the situation jor
us. If we have an understanding friend whom we can tell about

*6 See also: Aaron Zimmerman’s “boulder-carrying” story quoted in Step 3,

in the section entitled “True Mysticism: Life in Reality.”
*’ The inspiration for this principle originally came from the Reformational
distinction between passive and active righteousness. Martin Luther drew this
distinction in his famous Commentary on Galatians. He suggested that the
world is obsessed with what he called “active righteousness.” The idea is that
human activity is the force that creates breakthroughs in life, and the
contemporary expressions of it are commonplace terms like “being pro-
active” and “Type A.” In contrast, Luther suggested that where the spiritual
life is concerned, passivity is actually more important than activity. Passivity
yields to God, while activity often shuts Him out. Thus, he said, for the
Christian who puts their faith in Christ, God confers upon them “passive
co aaa Step 11 affirms the importance of passivity in the spiritual
e

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 STEP 11

this new prayer topic at the outset, we should. It will be exciting

for that friend to see what, if anything, happens. After 30 days of
praying, we discuss the results with our friend. We might even
touch base with our friend on a weekly basis to see if anything
fresh unfolds. In almost every instance, this approach yields far
better results and far more change than the alternative (and more
intuitive) method of asserting our willpower to get what we want.
By taking our hands off the wheel, we end up treating God like he
is, indeed, God.
A common Christian maxim says that “We are the only
hands and feet that God has on Earth.” While these words may
sound profound, the prayer experiment approach assumes the
exact opposite about God: we are not God’s hand and feet; God is very
capable ofworking upon a situation without our being involved in the fixing of
it. We treat God like He has His own hands, thank you very much.
Christians call these spiritual appendages of their higher power the
Holy Spirit. Prayer experiments are our attempts to give God
more credit and ourselves less, acknowledging that His work in
our lives is creative and not contrived. “Let go and let God” is the
classic AA way of saying this.
Consider an example of this approach, which involves my
friend Benson and his fiancé, whom we'll call Harriet. Benson and
Harriet fell madly in love. After a year of dating they eagerly got
engaged to be married. This all occurred at a time when the
economy was taking a nosedive, and just a few months into their
relationship, Harriet lost her job working at an architecture firm.
Fortunately, her parents were able to help provide for her needs as
she began to look for a new job.
Fast forward to the beginning of their engagement, when
Benson came to the church for a pastoral visit. Benson was
concerned that Harriet was not very motivated about her job hunt.
He was about to start a teaching career, and worried that she
would soon become frustrated by his inability to provide her with

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a lifestyle comparable to the one she had experienced growing up.

He did not want to marry a girl who didn’t want to work,
especially if he thought she would be disappointed with (or resent)
his financial means.
Unfortunately for Harriet, Benson soon started trying to
motivate her to find a job himself. He would ask her how many
resumes she had sent out at the end of a work day. “Have you
called that place back to follow up?” If Benson didn’t like Harriet’s
answers or felt that she hadn’t done “enough”, he would treat her
somewhat coldly, withholding love until he felt she had earned it
from him in her job hunt. Not only did she have to deal with
unemployment on her own time, now she had to put up with
Benson’s passive-aggression as well. Poor girl! Needless to say, she
had withdrawn a bit too, always careful to dodge certain topics,
lest they prompt yet another uncomfortable exchange about her
job search.
I suggested that Benson try a prayer experiment. He agreed
to start his morning each day with a prayer that he be given the
ability to trust God with Harriet’s job search. Benson tried his best
to avoid the topic unless she brought it up, at which point he
would listen and only offer advice if it was asked for. He kept me
abreast of any progress. Initially, the status of Hartiet’s job search
remained the same, but Benson reported that he felt differently
about it.
After about a month, Harriet did something that surprised
Benson: she applied for a job at a local supermarket. It impressed
him that she valued the simple importance of bringing home a
paycheck, even if the job wasn’t glamorous. He was excited to
relay that she had done this of her own volition, and that he had
been able to tell her how great he thought it was. I thought it was
great too.
Then a few weeks later, she also found a part-time job
teaching tennis lessons. Suddenly Harriet was working two jobs.

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 SUE ali

Benson was impressed. We decided the experiment was working

so well that it should be continued for another month.
One day, while Harriet was working at the supermarket,
something happened. A former co-worker from an architecture
firm came into the supermarket. Harriet had to check her out and,
as they made small talk, the fact that she had not been able to find
another job in their field came up. Needless to say, Harriet felt
humiliated. When Benson picked her up from work that evening,
she burst into tears in the car. He was able to be incredibly
affirming and sweet. It gave him an opportunity to tell Harriet
how much he respected her willingness to humble herself for the
sake of bringing in an income, in spite of the fact that her parents
were willing to support her financially. He told her that what he
saw in her was much more important than an impressive job; she
had character and backbone. That’s why he wanted to marty her,
and not the girl from the check-out line. It was a tender moment.
And then a few weeks later, Harriet got another — a third! —
part-time job working in an architecture office, working a job
more in line with her graduate school training. Benson reported,
first and foremost, that she was happy. He couldn’t believe how
dimwitted he had been, thinking she wasn’t capable of finding a
job. God had taught Benson that Harriet was capable of working
harder than him, holding down three jobs simultaneously. By the
time their wedding day arrived, Benson was convinced that he was
the luckier of the two patties being joined together as one. He
knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could trust God with
her in such a way that he could focus his attention on being a
supportive spouse and ally, instead of a critical parental voice.
What’s more, the whole experience had brought them closer
together and taught them how to lean on each other in times of
difficulty. They were ready and excited to spend their lives
together.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

All this to say, we prefer passive spirituality to active

spirituality any day of the week!

The Difference between God and Santa Claus

“Although we have a ‘merit badge’ mentality, prayer shows us that we are

actually ‘punished’ by any expectation ofmerit and reward.”
-Richard Rohr

The Big Book offers an important word of warning about Step 11

and the possibility for selfishness that prayer sometimes brings:

“We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are

cateful to make no request for ourselves only. We may
ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We
are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us
have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t
work.” (87)

Here we encounter the difference between God and Santa Claus.

Prayerful petitions are not the same thing as a child’s Christmas
list. As we have mentioned, God’s will and our own often find
themselves at odds with each other. We are rarely inclined to ask
for the right thing from God, and we do well to realize that God
can answer a prayer in many different ways: “yes”, “no”, and 29 ce 22

“...later” are all options. Step 11 is the Step that shows us how
these should be our answers for ourselves as well. “At no time had
we asked what God’s will was for us; instead we had been telling
Him what it ought to be” (72 ¢ 12, 31). The Reverend R-J
Heijmen eloquently points out the implication of this disconnect
between self-interest and (true) spirituality:

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“In our constant quest for happiness, for peace, the

answer is to be found not in the quest for control, but in
the release of it...As we walk thtough life, constantly
frustrated by our inability to be and do what we want,
the answer is not self-mastery, but rather the love of the
Master.’’98

Step 11 is where we begin to realize both that prayer typically

changes us more than it changes God, and that this truth is
actually good news. The Big Book’s necessary reproof against self-
centered prayer has been known to lead AAs far afield from ever
praying about anything specific for fear that they will infect the
prayer with their own self-centeredness. Just like impure motives
for amends-making or Bible reading, AA understands selfishness
in the arena of prayer to be unavoidable. At the same time,
however, some of our motives for praying will be good, and God
can use the bad ones too. If we had to have pure motives to
engage in spiritual practices, no one could ever seek a higher
power in the first place. °°
Despite the danger of selfishness, therefore, we believe that
praying about specific situations ts a good thing, Praying out loud and with
other people at appropriate times is an important and helpful skill
that many of us ate glad to offer and use. The classic “...if it be
Thy will” tag line, far from a pious rejoinder, can be a useful suffix
for any particular concern.

8 Heijmen, R-J, entry in the Mockingbird Devotional, Ed. Ethan Richardson

(Charlottesville, VA: Mockingbird, forthcoming). '
% Christianity also affirms God’s ability to work through humans with
impure motives. Three books of the Old Testament were ascribed to
Solomon, an ancestor of Jesus, who was born as a result of King David
committing adultery and murder. Similarly, the New Testament authors take
great care to show how Peter, the founder of the Christian Church, had
consistent failures as a disciple and a church leader. Again, God works
through human limitations.

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One of my favorite personal examples of Step 11 impact

comes ftom when I first graduated from college. I had a girlfriend
with whom I was quite infatuated, too much so in fact. In a sense
she had become my god, the source of my security and hope for
the future. I had come to need her affirmation too much, and not
surprisingly, she began to withdraw. Like many men before me, I
tried all kinds of ploys to keep her interested. But the more I
became dependent upon her, the more I actually chased her away.
It's no wonder. After all, who could possibly handle the
responsibility of being another person’s god?
When all of my attempts to keep the relationship going had
run out of steam, I finally turned to Step 11. For the first time in
years, I prayed a specific, on my knees, out-loud and heartfelt
prayer: “God, please don’t let her leave me. I'll do anything?
I believe that God heard my prayer clearly that day...and
then she dumped me! At the time, I felt like a part of my very
being had been amputated. I later came to appreciate the
seemingly callous words that my friend Nick had offered me at the
time: “One day you'll thank God that you didn’t marry that girl.”
It wasn’t long afterward that I found myself in an Episcopal
church service of Morning Prayer for the first time in years. We
opened our prayer books and recited the classic words of
confession that I hadn’t heard since my youth: “We have erred and
strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices
and desires of our own hearts.” That moment was the beginning my
return to church, which eventually led me to the ministry.
Perhaps even more importantly, these experiences paved the
way for the day that would come three years later in Brooklyn,
when I met my wife for the first time and fell in love in a way that
I had never dreamed possible.
Bearing all this in mind, here are two suggestions about how
to pray: First, don’t be afraid to begin with the words, “Thank you
for ” Second, consider completing the sentence, “Dear

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 STEP 11

Lord, today I need your help with | ” Such prayer helps

us to keep the emphasis on God’s ability to use us, rather than on
our desire to use Him.

On A Personal Note

As a longtime member of AA, I’m convinced that Christianity

offers an enormous amount to people in recovery. For me,
Christianity has been a deepening of the things I learned from the
Twelve Steps about human nature and God.
Lest we forget, in Step 11 the Church’s contributions are
welcomed and encouraged. The Big Book reminds us to “Be quick
to see where religious people are right” (87). A crucial way for
alcoholics to pursue their spiritual lives is through the fellowship
and the massive theological resources of organized religion. But it
takes some time for the new member of AA to reach that point;
rarely will a person in the first six months of sobriety be ready to
re-connect with the Church.
It's unfortunate that the Christian Church often gets
frustrated with AA for not beginning the Twelve Steps with Step
11. They fail to realize that AA is so effective precisely because it
starts with the problem and not with the solution. Martin Luther
famously claimed that an awareness of sin always precedes a
person’s ability to hear the good news of Christianity, that the
thirst must come before the drink, that the Gospel follows the
Law. In a similar fashion, the alcoholic will not find sobriety until
he cannot stay sober. Surrender presupposes a lost battle. So we
must caution Christians who want to make Step 11 into Step 1 and
Step 1 into Step 2. Rushing the newly sober person to church does
- not benefit anyone.

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 GRACE IN ADDICTION

On the other hand, we find that many who have

encountered this message of God’s grace in AA soon start coming
to church of their own accord. They have the hard-won ability to
read the Bible with fresh eyes. My own congregation contains
many people who have returned to the Christian faith after three,
four and five years sober, because “now it all makes sense in a way
that it never did before.” Their enthusiasm is inspiring. Whenever
recovering addicts start showing up at a particular church, it’s an
encouraging sign that the church is keyed in to the message of
God’s grace.

pais
 Step 12

“Having Had a Spiritual Awakening as the

Result of These Steps, We Tried to Carry this
Message to Alcoholics, and to Practice These
Principles in All Our Affairs.”

“But obviously you cannot transmit something

you haven't got.”
-Big Book (164)

“To progress is to begin again.”

-Martin Luther

The recovery and sense of peace that AAs often experience after
completing the first eleven steps naturally makes them want to
share them with others — this was Bill Wilson’s motivation behind
the program in the first place. Step 12 makes such outreach
- official, providing yet another important means for us to focus, in
a life-long capacity, on our usefulness to others. In fact, far from

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being an epilogue to recovery, Step 12 is as integral a part of the

program as the eleven Steps that precede it. It is useful to divide
this step into several parts: 7) “Having had a spiritual awakening as
the result of these steps”, 2) “we tried to carry this message to
alcoholics”, and 3) “to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
We'll discuss them in back-to-front order, beginning with the
third.

Part 3 - “We Tried... to Practice These Principles in All

Our Affairs.

In a general sense, this third part refers to the importance of

continuing to practice the first 11 Steps. They never get old. There
is nothing life can throw at us that they won’t enable us to deal
with. “Third verse, same as the first” (Violent Femmes) .
The first 11 Steps follow a single guiding principle,
summarized by the well-known AA slogan: “honesty is the best
policy.” Love may be the highest virtue for most people, but in
AA two other virtues receive a similar elevation. These are honesty
and humility. Perhaps these two virtues are so acclaimed in the
world of sobriety because addicts ate so familiar with their
Opposites — dishonesty and egotism. Honesty in particular
provides the foundation for part three of Step 12’s reiteration of
the first 11 Steps.
AA teaches that the person who is incapable of being
(rigorously) honest is also incapable of staying sober. The Big
Book says this in very frank terms in a famous passage which is
read, almost liturgically, at the beginning of most AA meetings:

“Those who do not tecover are people who cannot or

will not completely give themselves to this simple
program, usually men and women who are
constitutionally incapable of being honest with

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 STEP 12

themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not

at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are
naturally incapable ofgrasping and developing a manner of living
which demands rigorous honestly. There ate those too, who
suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but
many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be
honest.” (60)

The Twelve Steps require honesty, even though it’s often easier
said than done. Indeed, like all virtue, honesty is a gift from God
that cannot be inwardly generated. In the same way that water—
while capable of boiling—cannot heat itself, you and I may be
capable of being honest but we cannot make ourselves so. For this
reason the Twelve Steps are shaped in such a way that they invoke
honesty, thereby inspiring either acquiescence or flight. People
simply do not work the Steps dishonestly — it would be an
oxymoron. If they cannot keep from being dishonest, they will
balk at some crucial point, usually in the middle of Steps 4 and 5
ot just before they get to Step 9. Consider the words of the Big
Book:

“Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to

themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to
avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to
easier methods fi.e., ones that don’t require ‘rigorous
honesty’. Almost invariably they got drunk...they had
not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and
honesty, in the sense we find it necessary...” (72-73)

While we are skeptical about the helpfulness of exhortation and

the efficacy of “speaking the truth in love” for the alcoholic, we
must acknowledge that secrets are very dangerous. “You're only as
sick as your secrets,” goes the maxim, and most alcoholics have
lived lives that were deeply enshrouded in deceit and manipulation.

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In the context of recovery, too much honesty is far preferable to

not enough of it.
In fact, as far as Twelve Step spirituality is concerned, it is
impossible to love effectively without honesty and humility. You
could say we need to “ger straight before we can give straight.” We
get straight through the working of Steps 1 through 11, which
requires no small measure of honesty.
As we’ve noted, desperation may be the only thing that can
produce the spiritual fuel needed to work the steps. The Christian
who understands this dynamic might say that we cannot repent
unless the Holy Spirit quickens the human heart. If we are not
aware of our shortcomings, we will not be able to identify with
others in the midst of their suffering. And if we cannot empathize
with others, we will not be able to love them. As long as we
remain incapable of being honest, therefore, we will remain
incapable of loving.

Part 2 - “..We Tried to Carry This Message to

Alcoholics...”

“You've got to give it away to keep it.”

-AA slogan

It is important to note that the original version of Step 12 read

slightly differently: “We tried to carry this message to other peoph’,
not “other alcoholics.” So when AAs talk about “doing 12% Step
work”, they are usually referring to an act of charity, designed to
benefit a person other than the one making the effort. It may
involve something as meaningful as leading people through the
Twelve Steps as a sponsor, or as thankless as cleaning ash trays
before meetings. It will probably involve drinking a lot of coffee.

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 STEP 12

Maybe it means taking a guy out to breakfast before a morning

AA meeting. The Big Book paints an even more dramatic picture:

“Helping others is the foundation stone of your

recovery. You have to act the Good Samaritan every
day, if need be. It may mean the loss of many nights’
sleep, great interference with your pleasures,
interruptions to your business. It may mean sharing
your money and your home, counseling frantic wives
and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts,
sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone
may jangle at any time of the day or night. Your wife
may sometimes say she is neglected. A drunk may
smash the furniture in your home, or burn a mattress.
You may have to fight with him if he becomes violent.
Sometimes you will have to call a doctor and administer
sedatives under his direction. Another time you may
have to send for the police or an ambulance.
Occasionally you will have to meet such conditions.”

(97)
Remember Jesus’ “blessed are the meek” line from the Sermon on
the Mount? The Twelve Steps agree. The driving virtue behind
this crucial aspect of life, “being of service’, is humility. I recently
overheard someone saying, “I’ve become convinced that nothing
matters more in this life than confidence.” It’s a view that
epitomizes the opposite of AA’s standpoint. In Twelve Step
spirituality, humility is king. Many AAs think of it this way: helping
another person will help you more than anything you can possibly do for
yourself.
Because AA holds humility in such high esteem, people in
recovery spend a lot of time finding ways to setve other people.
You could say they seek out opportunities to be selfless for selfish
reasons. A short throw-away line in the Big Book makes this clear:

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“If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into

helping others. We think of their needs and work for them. This
takes us out of ourselves” (70). It may sound contrived or
disingenuous, but the results of this outward focus quickly change
one’s attitude toward it. Even if the initial gesture feels fake or
forced, the attendant happiness is often transformative, not to
mention alluring.
This leads into another, now-familiar AA motif that real
virtue is born of necessity — we help others because it keeps us
sober. We do not become sober and then move to a position of
service; instead, the two are inextricable. The newest member of
AA is capable of and benefits from service work. This is another
AA insight that Christians may find helpful in an environment that
too often divorces personal spiritual ‘recovery’ from service to
others. Some of the perceptions of self-righteousness in the
Christian Church may derive from its focus on service as
something that strong, spiritually ‘mature’ people do with their
newfound spiritual resources of virtue and strength of will, rather
than the work of the weak and needy themselves.
If people in AA didn’t find that being helpful made them
happier than any other alternatives, they would have stopped
doing it in the 1940s. Instead, AA has become a beacon of
tangible hope, in part because of its allegiance to the importance of
humility.

Humility: Three Stories

“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from
drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other
activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other
alcohotics!...Life will take on new meaning.”
-Big Book (89)

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 STEP 12

No more important example of the 12® Step ever occurred than

the one in Akron, Ohio in early June of 1935. A sober alcoholic
who had recently become sold on the Twelve Steps found himself
on a business trip and in jeopardy of falling off the wagon once
again. He came to believe that the most effective way for him to
remain sober was to carry his message to another alcoholic.
At first, a string of clergymen refused to let him contact any
of the alcoholics in their congregations, fearing that the only thing
worse than one alcoholic is two. But they were wrong, thank God.
Eventually he was put in touch with a local doctor who also had a
notorious substance-abuse problem. He called the number only to
find that the poor doctor was currently passed out under his
kitchen table, but that they could meet up the next afternoon.
So Dr. Bob reluctantly walked into an awkward encounter
with a complete stranger, thanks in large part to his wife’s
prodding. He led with the line, “I don’t think you can help me
with my drinking problem.” Bill Wilson then responded with the
famous words: “I’m not here to help you mith your drinking, I'm here to
help me with mine.’ That interchange marked the official birth of
AA, and it’s a testament to the 12 Step’s brilliance. As we’ve
suggested, AA teaches that the best way to sell a person on
humility is to appeal to his sense of self-interest. While we don’t
glorify self-interest, it’s such an innate part of the human condition
that true humility can only begin once we recognize the selfish
character of what often passes for our virtue.
The following story illustrates the same point more
concisely. A young man freshly sober, having only recently
finished his first eleven steps, sought out a newcomer in a meeting
and offered to take him through the Twelve Steps. After only a
few interactions, the newcomer went on a binge. The confused
young sponsor called his wiser, more experienced sponsor and
confessed, “I’m not good at the 12 Step. My sponsee just got
drunk.” His sponsor promptly replied, “It sounds to me like your

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12t Step efforts worked perfectly. You’ still sober, aren't youp
Clearly your work with him did the trick!” That’s the AA angle —
and it’s a good one. Bill writes about this dynamic in his chapter
on “Working with Others”’:

“Actually, he may be helping you more than you ate

helping him. Make it plain he is under no obligation to
you, that you hope only that he will try to help other
alcoholics when he escapes his own difficulties.You ..
should not be offended if he wants to call it off, for he
has helped you more than you have helped him.” (94)

Perhaps no man in the history of the world has come to

understand this principle better than Paul of Tarsus. His epistles
that make up much of the New Testament display this other-
worldly concern for others in a most striking way. The fact that
many of these letters were written from a prison cell speaks
volumes. Here was a man who learned to find great joy in the face
of extreme difficulty and persecution by focusing on the well-
being of others.
One of the most moving portraits of this humility (and its
impact on others) comes from the book of Acts. After being
“flogged severely” (read: beaten), Paul and his traveling
companion, Silas, were thrown into a prison cell for disturbing the
peace at a local synagogue in modern-day Turkey:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing

hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to
them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that
the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all
the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came
loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison
doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill

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himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all
here!”
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell
trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them
out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all
the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer
took them and washed their wounds; then immediately
he and all his household were baptized. The jailer
brought them into his house and set a meal before
them; he was filled with joy because he had come to
believe in God—he and his whole household. (16:23-
34)

Notice that Paul’s attention is entirely directed toward the other

inmates, who were no doubt surprised by the way that Paul and
Silas kicked off their prison stay. How could two men, after being
beaten and imprisoned, sing songs of praise to God? And Paul’s
concern for others was clearly striking to the other inmates, who
soon became his friends. The author points out that “the other
prisoners were listening to them.”
The impact that Paul and Silas had upon the other inmates
was so gteat that the others followed their lead when the doors
flew open, staying in the cell. The entire group now turned their
attention to the jailer, whose life was, according to Paul, more
important than leaving the confines of a prison: “Don’t harm
yourself We are all here!” The jailer was astonished and
immediately embraced a life lived according this new set of
concerns. He was converted, in other words, and it is not too
much of a stretch to say that a Holy-Spirit driven version of Step
12 inspired him to make the leap from hopeless despair to
infectious, deep-seated joy — all in a matter of minutes.

Zot
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Self-centeredness focuses energy upon only one individual.

Humility, by contrast, focuses on everyone but the self. In this
passage from Acts, we see Paul’s concern was for Silas, then the
prisoners, then the jailer, and then the jailer’s family. The result
was fresh conviction in the goodness and reality of God’s grace.
Those who came to find it also found “joy”, “because he had come to
believe in God—he and his whole household.”
The Episcopalian evangelist John Burwell describes this
dynamic through the image of two Israeli lakes. In the northern
part of Israel there is an enormous lake that, in spite of the arid
climate, is surrounded by verdant banana plantations. This lake,
the Sea of Galilee, is fed from the north by the small Jordan River.
At the south end of the lake, the river continues to flow for miles,
all the way down to a second lake.
But unlike the first lake, this second one does not have any
tributaries leading out from it. All the water that comes into it
stagnates and eventually evaporates. That lake is called The Dead
Sea, because nothing grows in it.
The first lake gives all it has. The water that comes into it
soon flows out. Because of this, the lake is full of large fish and the
soil surrounding it is nutrient-rich, ideal for tropical crops. The
lake has supported life in the area for thousands of years.
Meanwhile, the Dead Sea supports no one. It is a repellent place,
visited for the sheer extremity of its buoyancy and desolate
atmosphere. “Remember the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It
is more blessed to give than to receive”’ (Acts 20:35). Perhaps his
familiarity with these two lakes served as an illustration of this
truth.

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 STEP 12

The Secret to “Carrying the Message”

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

-Old Southern saying

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

-1 Corinthians 8:1

The story of old-timer Dick A’s first encounter with AA illustrates

what it means to “carry the message”’:

"So I walked up to the payphone and dialed the number

for AA. I started crying, saying, ‘I’m an alcoholic.’
Instead of rejecting me, she said, ‘just a minute, you wait
right there’ and sent out a guy named Ed.
..-l actually resisted listening to him for while,
because I thought he wasn’t hip like me; I knew that I
was just down on my luck. Ed, on the other hand,
looked like he’d never had any luck in the first place.
But then I saw his eyes. He did what it talks
about in the Big Book: he relived the horrors of his past
with me. He told me about himself, and he did
something that I learned a great lesson from.
He asked about me. He said, ‘what do you dor’,
and I started crying. I said, ‘I think I’m an alcoholic.’ But
he cut me off and said, ‘No, what did you do for a living
before drinking got the better of you?”
And I told him about my writing. He actually
recognized some of the things I’d written, and he said:
‘that’s great stuffl You’re very talented. God must really
have something in mind for you.’
Then I just broke down and started crying,
because no one had said anything kind or hopeful to me

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in years. And if he hadn’t done that, I would not be here

sober today.
He had read the Big Book and he understood
that we don’t get anyone into recovery by being tough
on ‘em, but we get people here by unconditional love.
They’re already hurt and they’ve already been through
enough hell. We don’t need to add to it. We need to let
them know that there’s a place where there’s hope. And
that’s what Ed did for me.
After we had talked for a little while, Ed put me
into his Pinto to get me something to drink so that he
could help me taper off the booze, because I was now
starting to vibrate. He realized that I was going into DTs
[delerium tremens], because he had worked with wet
drunks before. He asked, “Are you going to be okay?
I’m going to stop here for just one minute to get some
money so we can get you on track.” And he got out of
the car to use an ATM. It was the first ATM machine
I’d ever seen. They wete pretty new in 1977.
It was a hot day, June the 8, 1977 in Atlanta. So
he goes up to the machine to get his $20 or whatever,
and before he can get back to the car, I couldn’t get the
door open because my hands were rattling so much, and
I had thrown up all down the inside of his brand new
Pinto. And the only thing that he did when he opened the door
and saw what had happened, was put his arm around me. He
said: Tt’s going to be okay.’ If he had been critical of me, I
wouldn't be here tonight.
But Ed knew that we don’t have new cars, new
jobs, or new lives unless we're willing to work with
another alcoholic, and he loved me and he cated for me
and he took me to a place where I could weather the
withdrawals.”

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 STEP 12

Dick’s story reveals the profound impact that grace has upon
people. He is quick to contrast grace with criticism, and the
distinction is a helpful one. Encouragement and affirmation are far
more powerful in straightening someone out than any amount of
advice. The one-way love of grace can accomplish what no
amount of criticism can, and it tends to be most effective in the
cases where all other attempts to create change have failed,
alcoholism being the perfect example.
For this reason, most talk therapy is helpful for someone
going through a tough time. Even a totally inexperienced
counselor or a novice lay minister can benefit someone who is
looking for help. Indeed, the primary impact of therapy does not
come from anything the therapist says, but from their affirming
and focused presence. The simple power of having someone “in
your corner’, listening to you, taking an interest in you, entering
into your life from the outside and caring, does wonders for a
suffering person. !°° The therapist models the nourishing love of
God. She embodies the good news of the Gospel — that God
desires to help and not to punish the sinner — in a concrete way
John 3:17). We all need it, and most of us have too little
experience with encouragement. But we are unable to impart or
benefit much from true compassion until we have become aware
of our own failings.!°!

100 Stephen Ministry is a great contemporary example of a lay ministry that

understands this material implicitly, providing people going through rough
times with a Christian friend who will listen and pray, but without any agenda
other than helping the person to connect with God in the midst of difficulty.
101 For the person who doesn’t want help, all you can do is highlight the
truth as you've seen it play out and then abandon him to the surprisingly
effective hand of consequences. 12 Step work originally involved sober
alcoholics sharing the reality of their hopeless plight with wet drunks. Many
embraced the program of recovery once experience convinced them that the
AAs were tight about their condition. I saw this play out in an Alabama
meeting, where a girl in her twenties shared that she wasn’t “sure if I’m an
alcoholic or not.” An old-timer piped up with a callous but brilliant response:
“Well honey, you go back out and do some more drinking. We’ll be here

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

The 12% Step understands the therapeutic insight that in

order to help a downcast person, presence is the key. The ability to
empathize and affirm are all that is required. Ed gives us a perfect
illustration of this reality. Too many people, both in AA and the
world at large, believe that troubled people need “advice” and
“exhortation” in order to get their life sorted out after a misstep or
collapse. As we’ve noted, people in the last several decades have
been leaving Christian churches in droves because of unwanted,
demanding, and ultimately ineffective advice, advice which is
almost always perceived by the targeted audience as judgment. The
truth is that compassion achieves all of these things and more.
You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Part 1 - “Having Had a Spiritual Awakening as the

Result of These Steps”

The first part of Step 12 describes a final, all-encompassing

promise. If we work the program, we'll experience a “spiritual
awakening.” It’s impossible to work the Steps fully without
experiencing the fruit that accompanies the program. We have
already described the various shifts in perspective that constitute
such a change, but Bill Wilson’s insightful definition of “spiritual
awakening” is nevertheless a helpful one:

“When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening,

the most important meaning of it is that he has now become
able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his
unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a
gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and

waiting for you when you get back.” Luther called this approach “leading
with the law.”

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 STEP 12

being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is

teally going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not
something to be endured or mastered...He finds
himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance,
unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had
thought himself quite incapable.” (72 ¢72, 107)

We hope that people can identify with this description of spiritual

life. Do we see things differently than we used to? Has God given
us what the famous AA writer Chuck C. described as “a new pair
of glasses”? Perhaps we’ve come to doubt the value of willpower
and self-sufficiency. Hopefully we have come to appreciate the
sublime importance of weakness and being wrong.
I had to answer these questions in my own life when I
decided to go into the ministry. When someone first suggested
that I consider becoming a minister, I thought to myself: “No way!
I don’t want to do that, and God knows I won’t do it unless I
want to.” Two years later, my feelings about that vocation had
completely changed. Somehow it had become all I could see
myself doing, and I was convinced it was the only job in the world
for me. Another friend asked, “Doesn’t it bother you that you
won’t have much control over where you are going to live and
work?” He was surprised to hear me say that that aspect of
becoming a minister — not having to figure out my future for
myself — was one of the most attractive features of the job. The
loss of control constituted a feeling of relief. It was by far the
better of the two options.
In the final section of an essay on Step 12, Bill Wilson
described the way that a spiritual awakening reorients a person’s
perspective on life. It is beautiful portrait of humility, one of the
finest passages in all of AA’s literature. We wish to close with it:

25%
GRACE IN ADDICTION

“Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have

to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order
to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can
be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be.
Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met,
troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the
knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are
partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact
that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the
proof that love freely given surely brings a full return,
the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in
self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no
longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and
belong in God’s scheme of things — these are the
permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for
which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap
of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.
True ambition is not what we thought it was. Trwe
ambition is the deep desire to lve usefully and humbly under the
grace ofGod.” (12 & 12, 125)

238
 Conclusion

What the Church Can Learn From Alcoholics

Anonymous - and Vice Versa

The ironic and sad truth is that in AA one finds a much better
example of Christian community than in many churches. This is a
controversial statement, but there is much evidence to supportt it.
AA presents an impressive model for church, not to mention
evangelism: it started with two drunks in 1939 and today has
almost as many members as the Anglican Communion. The Big
Book is one of the best-selling books of all-time, having sold over
30 million copies. How has this happened? Especially when there
is nobody saying “we have to grow’? There are no altar calls in
AA. A small percentage of people are pushed there by the
courts,!°2 but most attend because they want to be there. AA, in

102 'There’s a South Park episode dealing with this (Season 9, Episode 14),
which, incidentally, I don’t recommend.

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

this sense, is truly phenomenal, having grown far beyond what any
of the founders could have envisioned.
Of course, the same could be said of the growth of
Christendom with regard to the twelve disciples from Galilee, that
they never in their wildest dreams could have imagined the impact
their ministry would have upon the world, even 2000 years later.
But with AA, the growth is so fresh, unavoidable and seemingly
uncontrived. It is no wonder that author Kurt Vonnegut once
claimed that America’s two gteatest contributions to the world
were Alwand jazz-

AA as Church: Hospital For Sinners (No Saints Allowed!)

AA is full of people from all walks of life. There are many

meetings, for example, where in every gathering, “a bum sits next
to a millionaire.” In spite of the differences in circumstance, each
member is vividly aware of his personal history of failure,
demoralization, and weakness.
There are no thrones in AA, no priests, no leaders — only
volunteers who wield no more power than the newest member of
the group. AA’s 294 Tradition states: “For our group purpose there
is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express
Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
servants; they do not govern.” In other words, status is a complete
non-statter, institutionally-speaking.
Consequently, AA believes there is no fundamental
distinction to be drawn between the message that should be given
to newcomers (in Christian terms, non-believers, seekers, and new
converts), and mature AAs (membets of church leadership and
stalwart long-term adherents of the faith). Churches that take this

103 Kurt Vonnegut, “The Work to Be Done”, Rolling Stone, May 28, 1998.

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 CONCLUSION

approach are few and far between. But in AA the same message
that saves a drunk can also perform the miraculous trick of
sanctifying him (.e., keeping him saved), no matter how long he
has been coming. In other words, the same hope that gets you in,
also keeps you in.
This contrasts with a view held by many mainstream
churches, namely that the Sunday message for Christians should
be different from the message for non-believers. In other words,
many churches act on the assumption that the message from up
front should vary depending upon the audience, and that spiritual
growth is a matter of progress or ladder-climbing, rather than a
perpetual cycle of confession and absolution. This tendency is
typically on display wherever one finds a distinction being drawn
between “evangelism” (the message to non-believers) and
“discipleship” (the message for believers). Some churches add a
second level of stratification by emphasizing a difference between
“baby Christians” and “mature Christians” — those feeding upon
milk and those feeding upon meat, “the Timothys and the Pauls.”
AA consciously eschews the suggestion that one drunk is superior
or inferior in sobriety to the next. This lack of stratification among
the members of AA is a crucial contributing ingredient to its
health and growth.
But primarily, AA’s success lies in the dynamic of “grace” as
it plays out in the world of Twelve Step groups. AA offers a
something-for-nothing exchange. Brokenness is met with warmth
and not judgment, and that single emphasis shapes the program
from top to bottom. It offers free, time-tested help to all who care
to seek it. There are no requirements, dues, fees, or even
expectations of the newcomer who walks into their first AA
meeting. The message itself is the only commodity. If it appeals to
you, then you can have it. In fact, people will bend over backwards
to help you to find it, expecting nothing in return and considering
the opportunity they’ve been given to help to be a personal privilege

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for them. Episcopal Bishop Edward Salmon is fond of saying: “If

that’s what you want, then that’s what you should have.” Such is
the sentiment in AA: have as much or as little as you like, but
know that your engagement with AA is an issue between you and
God, not you and the fellow membets of your congregation.
Because of this approach, the openly acknowledged fact in
AA that each member is far from holy is always being
underscored. AAs have mostly lived tragic lives. They have
smoked too many cigarettes, wrecked too many cars, done too
many deceitful things ever to feel justified in their own skin. The
result is that people in “the program” will fight to keep themselves
and others from being overly self-righteous, judgmental, rigid or
serious. When a newcomer walks into a room, that person is not
expected to be anything other than a mess. Failure is the price of
admission. One does far worse in AA to deny one’s weakness than
to acknowledge it. Unlike in most arenas of life, in AA, the
downside of life is played up. The results speak for themselves. A
classic line from the 72 ¢ 72 posits: “Pain [is] the touchstone of
all spiritual progress” (93-94).
By way of contrast, it is not uncommon for churches to
create an environment where people cannot really be open and
honest about their (continued) struggles. They typically give off the
white-washed impression of success where the leading of “good”
moral lives are concerned, in spite of the fact that usually the
Opposite is in fact the case. Ask any minister about the “behind-
the-scenes”’ life of his/her congregation and you will quickly hear
this verified. Divorce, for example, runs rampant in the Christian
community, just like it does outside of the church. The same goes
for mental illness, substance abuse, domestic discord, tragic
accidents, etc... On a related note, in Martin Luther’s day, many of
his own parishioners complained, “Why ate you preaching the
same thing still after all these years?” His response: “Because you
still haven’t understood it.”

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 CONCLUSION

Such facts might shock a Christian who has been led to believe
otherwise, but AA understands these realities, finding in each
instance of besetting weakness an avenue for trusting in God
more. The person in AA who denies the fact of sin in the sober
life is nothing more than a liar. To quote 1 John 1: “If we claim to
be without sin, we deceive ourselves.” Yet it is possible to come
into church on the grounds of an entirely different persona (e.g.,
“[’m an experienced, life-long Christian, a leader in the last church
where I was a member. When would you like for me to start
teaching Sunday School?’’). In AA membership, there is only the
option of sinner: “My name is John, and I’m an alcoholic.”

It is also worth bearing in mind that some AAs tend to think the
category of sinner applies only to alcoholics or other serious
addicts. There is often talk in meetings about two kinds of
humans: “alcoholics” and (normal) “earth people.” The two
conceivably cannot make heads or tails of each other. Alcoholics
understand alcoholics, and earth people understand earth people.
The alcoholic may find that she has a lot in common with a drug
addict or even a gambling addict, but she has nothing in common
with the those people out there who don’t struggle with the
problem of personal powerlessness and the compulsive behavioral
meltdowns that accompany it. This view is naive.
Traditional Christian theology, in contrast, understands the
universalities that unite and define a// people. The Church teaches
that addiction displays, in fact, the true nature of what it means to
be a human being living in a fallen world. The bridge between the
alcoholic and the non-alcoholic is called sin, and faith affirms that
the alcoholic has no greater need for God’s grace than the “earth
person” does, even if the circumstances in one case appear to be
more dite. Both people will die, and both people need love. The
same is true for both men and women, people of different races
and ages and cultures — it’s universal. Is the cancer patient who

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feels “fine” really any less sick than the depressed person who
cannot get out of bed? We are all equal in sin and personal
powerlessness, and although some manifestations may be more
destructive than others, to obsess over one particular expression of
sin is to misinterpret the data. For this reason, church leaders
would do well to recall Christianity’s notion of the bound will. The
fruit of this idea is a compassion borne out of a stark honesty
about the human condition.

The Message, Not the Messenger

“Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam...”
-Numbers 22:28

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone”

-Big Book (85)

Where the Bible talks about God speaking through “earthen

vessels”, in AA the earthen vessels appear to be especially cracked
and ill-suited for the job of teaching. It is in part from the obvious
modesty of the members that God seems to be able to speak so
loudly through the group. There is a basic idea in AA that each
member of the group is no better than any other. Because of this,
no member of the group is completely right about anything. No
membet of AA can speak for AA. You can only speak for
yourself.
This amounts to a sense that each member is but a heretic
unless God chooses to speak through the mouth of such an
individual (which He often does). In AA meetings, in other words,
God speaks exclusively through the mouth of Balaam’s ass. This
benefits the listener in two ways.

244
 CONCLUSION

First, i AA there is no fear of heresy. In fact, heretics get to

speak their mind in every meeting. They are shown as much
respect as are the wisest old-timers in the room. The voice of
heresy is not viewed as a threat to the truth because true wisdom
has its own unimpeachable stature.
Second, AA understands that it is possible to learn from bad
teaching (about good teaching). It can strengthen one’s beliefs far
more than avoiding to engage with alternative positions. In church
history terms, this means that Pelagius gets to preach in every
meeting, and sometimes Augustine only gets a few brief minutes
to rebut. But that is fine. Again, good old-fashioned Twelve-Step
sobriety is not threatened by other less worthy contenders, and so
there is no safe-guarding against their presence in the rooms of
AA. This means that there is little fighting in AA over “theology.”
Or at the least, such fighting is considered to be highly
counterproductive. In AA, all fighting is considered to be
unhelpful.
That God chooses to speak profoundly about Himself
through the mouths of ragamuffins and ne’er-do-wells strikes this
writer as being somehow deeply good. The Bible offers great
precedent for this kind of thing. That God would choose to start
so influential a world religion from a backwater like Nazareth and
with only the help of some country bumpkin, no-diploma
fishermen boggles the mind. Crazy people in AA meetings often
say smart things. Balaam’s ass should be AA’s mascot.
This approach works so well, in part, because AA does not
have any official power structure or hierarchy. There is every
drunk, and then there is God. In this respect, leaders in AA
function much more like deacons than priests or bishops.
Hypothetically, the moment that one individual wields more
power than another, this model would most likely break down,

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with the message itself becoming the primary victim of dilution. 104
In effect, fighting would become necessary in order to hold onto
the torch of classic AA sobriety. But that would also
simultaneously contradict the message itself: “And we have ceased
fighting anything or anyone” (85).
So how then do AAs resolve disputes about the program?
Validity in_AA is demonstrated through competition rather than battle. The
cream rises to the top; the good tree bears good fruit. Sound
doctrine eclipses false doctrine primarily by outshining it. In the
Church, on the other hand, leaders spend an inordinate amount of
time and energy actively trying to sanitize and protect doctrine
from all error. The inevitable conflicts often lead to an
embarrassing amount of fracture and dissolution. In one case in
the upstate of South Carolina, I remember hearing of a church
that split over the issue of home-schooling, and whether or not all
kids should receive such an education.
In contrast, AAs find rest in the knowledge that the extreme
fallen-ness of the alcoholic temperament, even in sobriety, quickly
reveals the limitations of a heretical approach to sobriety by
displaying its catastrophic implications.

104 Along these lines, Bill Wilson wrote in a letter to Sam Shoemaker:

"St. Louis [the conference where Bill stepped down from his role as
AA's official leader] was a major step toward my own withdrawal, but I
understand that the father symbol will always be hitched to me. Therefore,
the problem is not how to get rid of parenthood; it is how to discharge
mature parenthood propertly.
A dictatorship always refuses to do this, and so do the hierarchical
churches. They sincerely feel that their several families can never be enough
educated (or spiritualized) to properly guide their own destinies. Therefore,
people who have to live within the structure of dictatorships
and hierarchies must lose, to a greater or lesser degree, the opportunity of
really growing up. I think AA éan avoid this temptation to concentrate its
power, and I truly believe that it is going to be intelligent enough and
spiritualized enough to rely on [God as he expresses Himself in] our group
conscience.

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Don't Tell Me What To Do! The Relationship Between

Spirituality and Morality

This need-based model of spirituality brings with it a distinct and

unavoidable implication for community life: people in AA are
quick to draw attention to personal failings, but they place little
emphasis upon morality. “We do not wish to be the arbiters of
anyone’s conduct” (69). This means that AA provides a
community environment that is simultaneously deeply concerned
with God’s active work in the life of people, and deeply
unconcerned with telling people what to do or what they should
do. The response to almost all moral conundrums and life
decisions is: “Have you prayed about it?” The notion that God
alone knows what needs to be done, and that, without Him, all
effort is of little merit, is paramount in AA.
In effect, AA’s primary orientation is vertical (man to God)
rather than horizontal (man to man). Morality comes from God,
not people, and dictating what people should do is understood in
AA as indicative of a lack of faith in God’s ability to act. A critical,
prescriptive attitude actually quenches spiritual inspiration. Thus,
the only command issued in AA operates along the line of: "Find
God or else..." When God is found, hindrances are naturally
faced and dealt with. The results tend to be inspiring.
I remember the story one long-time member of AA told of
his work as a mentor to a newcomer to sobriety, known in the
program as the sponsor-sponsee relationship:

“My faith was really put to the test with this one kid I
sponsored. He started dating a girl who was brand new
in the program when he was only six months sober. It’s
the kind of thing that tends to be a recipe for disaster.
They had a brief ‘honeymoon’ period and ended
up moving in together. It was not long after that that

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the girl started drinking again. She spiraled quickly into a

deep mite of depression and alcoholism, and my
sponsee became her sole care-giver, arguably her
‘enabler’. Everyone knew the situation was terrible, that
his sobriety hung in the balance, and that he was getting
in the way of her hitting bottom, thereby prolonging her
agony. We all used to get together after meetings and
talk about their terrible situation and how he needed to
get out of there pronto.
But my job as his sponsor was not to tell him
what to do; it was to point him to God and encourage
him to seek God’s guidance in all things...So we would
get together each week for coffee and I’d ask how
things were going. The story was always bad, and it took
huge amounts of self-restraint for me to not tell him to
just get the hell out of there. But I would always ask the
following question, as was/is my duty as a sponsor: ‘Are
you praying about it?’
To my disappointment, his answer was always
‘yes.’ One day, after months of this awfulness, I reached
the end of my fuse and decided to try to steer him a bit;
I asked him: ‘Which decision would require more faith
from you: to stay with her, or to leave her?’ I couldn’t
believe his answer: ‘Definitely to stay with her.’ After
that I just told him to ‘keep praying.’
So get this. One day he showed up for coffee
with news. She went to an AA meeting by herself. Next
thing you know, the girl has a sponsor, she’s going to
tons of AA meetings, she’s working the steps, logging in
a string of days of continuous sobriety...Nine months
go by and the girl is still sober, super-involved,
completely unlike her first round in the ptogtam. Soon,
the couple gets engaged. Two years later, they’re
matried, both sober and happy, and they own and run a

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bar together in Brooklyn. And she always cites how

grateful she is that he weathered that terrible time with
her without leaving.
As it turns out, none of us knew better than
God.”

This rather hands-off approach to counseling is born not only out

of an inability to give good advice, but also out of a low estimation
of a person's capacity for receiving "good advice". The problem
lies both in the desire to advise, and in the defensiveness and
rebellion that is often sparked/instigated by criticism.
AA’s 9% Tradition attempts to translate this principle to the
governance of the larger body, and the formulation is striking:
“AA, as such, ought never be organized.” This approach was
inherited directly from the Oxford group, whose motto with
regard to all moral questioning was: “Do whatever God lets you!”
This posture is markedly absent from so many churches.
Consider the following passages where Bill Wilson describes
the thinking behind the 9% Tradition:

“Did anyone ever hear of a nation, a church, a political

patty, even a benevolent association that had no
membership rules? Did anyone ever hear of a society
which couldn't somehow discipline its members and
enforce obedience to necessary rules and regulations?
...Power to direct or govern is the essence of
organization everywhere.
Yet AA is an exception. It does not conform to
this pattern. Neither its General Service Conference, its
Foundation Board, nor the humblest group committee
can issue a single directive to an AA member and make
it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We've tried
it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result.

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At this juncture, we can hear a churchman

exclaim, "They are making disobedience a virtue!" He is
joined by the psychiatrist who says, "Defiant brats! They
won't grow up and conform to social usage!" The man
in the street says, "I don't understand it. They must be
nuts!" But all these observers have overlooked
something unique in AA. Unless each AA member
follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve
Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own
death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not
penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result
from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.
..So we of AA do obey spiritual principles, first
because we must, and ultimately because we love the
kind of life such obedience brings. Great suffering and great
love are AA's disciplinarian; we need no others.” (12 & 12,
172-174)
It is important not to disregard the way in which a low
anthropology motivates a proportionally high view of God’s
work.!° By admitting our weakness in the face of God’s total
sovereignty over our salvation and sanctification, both recognition
of God’s rescuing work and genuine human-to-human
compassion spring forth.
Most AA meetings close with the group standing in a circle,
holding hands. Then the following is said by the person who
volunteered to lead the meeting: “Would those who care to please

105 Theologically speaking, it seems to be the case that AA has managed to

avoid falling into the world of “antinomianism”’, which is the idea that, when
a person is given freedom from the law, they will naturally seek to abuse such
leniency by acting immorally and without any qualms about it. Using this
passage from the 9% Tradition, we see that, where the dire verdict hoisted
over the head of every person who professes alcoholism is present,
responsibility and uprightness usually result. One can extrapolate that where
the law precedes the reception of the Gospel, antinomianism becomes a
non-issue.

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 CONCLUSION

join me in saying the Lord’s Prayer: Who keeps us sober? ...Our

Father who art in heaven...”

Christian Concerns About AA: The Source, The Name,

and the AA Straw Man

Despite the apparent similarities between traditional Christian

doctrine and the flourishing, church-like communal life on display
in AA, one might ask whether or not the source of sobriety and
sanctification in AA is the same as the source of ‘spiritual fruit’
described in the Bible? It is a good question. Personally, I believe
that the redemptive love of God comes from Jesus into the world
in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Where there is redemption to
be found, then there too is Christ. Where there is healing, there is
the presence of the Great Physician. The Holy Spirit must be
present for redemptive work to occur in the rooms of AA. After
all, the Spirit is not some parlor trick for humans to manipulate
simply by saying a magic word. Jesus said: “The wind blows
wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where
it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of
the Spirit” (John 3:8).
Furthermore, it is very difficult to calculate where there is
progress and improvement in a person’s life, especially one’s own.
AA is quick to affirm that God often uses the shortcomings of a
person more significantly than their supposed strengths. In other
words, being overly concerned with locating and quantifying the
work of God (a.k.a. the instinct to pinpoint and/or measure the
source of redemptive power) can be counterproductive and even
dangerous. The very question of self-improvement smacks of self-
righteousness, or at least the inclination toward it.

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As we mentioned earlier, in AA there is only talk of God as

the rescuer of troubled people. Some people worry that the
Christian material contained in AA is not phrased in explicitly
Christian terminology. For example, the word “Jesus” is rarely
used. To our way of thinking, the fact that God in AA is always
understood to operate in a soteriological way is actually impressive,
as well as fundamentally Christian.
We might even take this one step further and say that any
petson who calls on the God who saves is a Christian, whether
they know it or not. This does not mean that everyone in AA is a
Christian, but it does imply that there are many people in AA who
do not attend church but are nonetheless Christians.
There is also the more general distaste that some in the
Christian community seem to have for AA. This is especially true
in the circles of thought most familiar with Reformation theology.
Even the slightest mention of AA often provokes an intensely
negative, knee-jerk reaction from otherwise seemingly charitable
theologians. Such responses usually betray a fear of the unknown,
and a “straw man” understanding of a world of thought with
which they are not very familiar. There is a concern that to affirm
that there is real truth and spiritual insight in AA would somehow
be to affirm a syncretistic approach to Christianity. In this book,
we have tried to explain why such criticisms are unfounded and
lacking in insight. Of course, the two trains of thought can be at
odds with each other, but they are not necessarily so.
We have tried to show whete such concerns do and don’t
have a bearing on the factual material as it stands. Obviously, we
think AA and Christianity have more rather than less in common
with each other, and not the other way around.

252
 CONCLUSION

Pastoral Care for the Addicted

For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his believing wife
and the unbekeving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband.
Othernise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
-1 Corinthians 7:14

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the best way to help those

who are struggling with active addiction is to send them to AA, or
the appropriate Twelve Step group. Until they deal with their
addiction, the church can do very little for an alcoholic in his/her
cups.
This assertion raises some legitimate concerns for
Christians. Would we really recommend AA over and above
church involvement? Some Christians find this idea troubling.
Directing an alcoholic to a church service instead of an AA
group is like asking novices to deal with a situation that requires
experts — when there are millions of experts close by. The
alcoholic needs to be directed to the place where they will hear
about the God who saves drunks.
Along the same lines, many parents who express
happiness about the fact that their young adult child has found
sobriety in a Twelve Step group lament the child’s continued
distaste for the church life that means so much to them. In such
situations, the long view is to be encouraged. Space,
encouragement and love ate to be given to the child, not
religious pressure. At all costs, affirm their Twelve Step work
and AA involvement. In many cases, it is only a matter of time
before the sober individual’s Christian faith becomes ignited.
Parents need to hear: “You just watch, pray and wait. Your faith
will work like a tractor beam.” Usually, after the excruciating
years of parenting a child struggling with substance abuse and
addiction, sobriety in any form is enough to convince an

253
GRACE IN ADDICTION

exhausted parent that God is in fact taking care of their child.

The return to church involvement is simply the cherry on the
top of the sundae.

What Can the Church Offer AA?

‘Not all of us join religious bodies, but most ofus favor such memberships...
Be quick to see where religious people are right”
-Big Book (28, 87).

Despite the lessons that AA’s understanding of human nature and

God’s work can teach the Church, Step 11 makes it clear that the
recovering alcoholic needs the Church, too. Most importantly, the
Church has the story. The old, old story of ‘Jesus and his glory’.
The God of salvation is a revelation, grounded in a very specific
set of historical truths that undergird and underline the spiritual
realities that the addict has experienced. God is more than a
subjective truth — He is an objective reality.
Of course, as we have noted throughout, the Church does
not always do the story justice. Often it puts the cart before the
horse. Sometimes it even gives the wrong story, stating that
Christianity is about morality rather than forgiveness of immoral
people, about good people getting better, not bad people coping
with their failure to be good. But when the Church gives the right
story, the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, “the
friend of sinners” — a story which deeply coheres with the insights
of AA — nothing could be more powerful or profound or positive.
The spiritual picture painted in Twelve Step recovery comes into
amazing focus, and vice versa. The TV show changes from black-
and-white to Blu-Ray high-definition color.
Alcoholics Anonymous does a brilliant job of bringing the
reality of human failings together with the saving grace of a God

254
 CONCLUSION

who is present in the day-to-day aspects of human life. The front

half of the Twelve Steps underscores the importance of holding
onto the Christian doctrine of original sin. But the second half of
the Twelve Steps, which seek to enable the individual to deepen
their spirituality benefits hugely from the road that has been trod
by countless Christians before them. Thus, it makes sense that, as
a study of this sort progresses through the Twelve Steps, more and
more theological material would come to define the landscape of
the life described.
The main principle at work in the Twelve Steps is that God
shows up to meet the defeated and the weak, the lowly and the
paralyzed. It is a principle that Jesus enacted and taught repeatedly
throughout his ministry. He said, “It is not the healthy who need a
doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but
sinners” (Mark 2:17). To the extent that people acknowledge their
failings, they find and appreciate Him. And because there is so
much honest acknowledgement of that reality in the world of AA
and addiction, one very often finds more redemption, more actual
healing and more transformation than in the Church — in spite of
the fact that these are the same people who know themselves still
to be addicts.
In closing, the Church would benefit tremendously from the
presence of more Twelve Steppers in its pews. No one can help
Christians reconnect with the heart of their own message better
than Sober alcoholics. This word of "love for the loveless shown",
distilled so profoundly in AA, is not only what Christians need to
reclaim for themselves; it is also what the wounded world at large
so desperately craves. It works where other approaches fail. It
heals where other approaches hurt. It brings hope where there is
none to be had because it is Hope itself.

259
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 Epilogue: “But the Lord...”

Whitney Houston and the Difference Between

Sobriety and Faith

“On hearing this, Jesus said to them, Tt is not the healthy who need a doctor,
but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’
-Mark 2:17

“However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the
ungodly, their faith ts credited as righteousness.”
-Romans 4:5

A wise woman in AA once remarked, “I ain’t got to feel God, in

otder to know God. I’m sober, ain’t I?!’ Her point was that
spirituality does not depend upon a particular emotional state in
order to be credible and real. This woman’s sentiment reflects
spiritual maturity, in that she acknowledges the reality of suffering
in sobriety without abandoning a belief in God. In AA, the sober
alcoholic can find encouragement in the mere fact of sobriety,

Zo
GRACE IN ADDICTION

even if nothing else in her life seems to be improving. Sobriety is

understood to be the obvious evidence of God’s presence in the
alcoholic’s life.
But Christian thinking pushes the issue even further by
asking whether ot not God can be present even in the life of the
alcoholic who cannot stay sober. When someone falls off the
wagon, is it due to a lack of faith? Perhaps this relapse is a sign that
he was never a patt of the AA “elect” in the first place. In
response to this concern, the Gospel message suggests most
amazingly that God may be even closer to the alcoholic who
cannot remain sober than He is to the one who has found
sobriety. !°° Luther famously remarked that God is closest to the
one who appears to be furthest from Him.'°? To put it in stark
theological terms, the primary issue in Christianity is faith itself —
not the elusive, and sometimes imperceptible, fruit born of faith.
Those who ultimately value the justification of the sinner by
faith in Christ to be the core of Christianity can indeed affirm that
true spirituality is a matter of faith and not works. In most cases,
where faith (of the AA variety that we have been at pains to
describe) is present in the heart of the alcoholic, we will not need
to draw a biblical distinction of this type. Usually, sobriety is a
natural counterpart to newfound faith. Good trees typically bear
good fruit. On occasion, however, it may be the case that faith, in
and of itself, is the only perceptible fruit.
A prime example of this came to the fore during the writing
of this book in the death of singer Whitney Houston. A notorious

'6 T was struck by the implications of this train of thought in an AA meeting

where I heard a man report that his brother had died of alcoholism after
years of failed attempts at sobriety. His comment: “In the case of my
brother, the only hope for him was death itself. My family and I take comfort
in knowing that he is close to God now.”
107 Paraphrased from Martin Luther, “Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16”, in vol.
2 of Sermons of Martin Luther: the Seven Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Books, 2000), 109.

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 EPILOGUE

drug addict whose history of substance abuse culminated in her

death by an overdose in a bathtub, Whitney made the front page
of papers across the world. And so did her funeral, where the
playwright and filmmaker Tyler Perry contributed a profound
message. He made clear the good news of the Gospel: that
forgiveness and redemption stand firm most poignantly in the
places where sin appears to be dominant. He used her life to
illustrate how the love of God comes to us “in spite of” our sin.
We quote from the transcript of his speech. He began by
describing a conversation he had with Whitney four years earlier in
a restaurant in Atlanta:

“... She was telling me about her life. She would talk
about some things that she had went through. Some
things that had made her sad, some things that were
tough. As [she spoke], I would see this heaviness come
upon her... But before I could get words out to
encourage her, she would say "but the Lord..." And the
conversation went on, and we would talk a little bit
more. She would go back into sadness and just when
I'm about to step in, she would say “but my Lord and
my Savior, Jesus Christ and his amazing grace...” It was
at that moment that I knew that I would do all I can to
stand with her...
When I think about her, there's a scripture that
keeps burning in my heart. I keep thinking about the
Apostle Paul in Romans when he is talking about, ‘I am
persuaded that nothing shall separate me from the love
of God.’ (Rom 8:39) [Paul] was describing her life so
perfectly... No matter how far she went in the
stratosphere, no matter how much struggle, no matter
what she had to go through, it still wasn't enough to
separate her from the love of God. So what I know

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GRACE IN ADDICTION

about Whitney is that she loved the Lord. And if there

was a gtace that carried her all the way through, it was
the same grace that carried her home.
And I want to close with something else the
Apostle Paul said: “What then say you to these things,
that if God be for you, who can be against your’ (Rom
8:31) So say whatever you want; God was for her, and
she is resting, singing with the angels.”

His words absolutely dtip with the promise of faith!

While I don’t know about Whitney Houston personally, I
do know about what the Christian faith offers to Whitney-
Houston “types”...and it is good news: God loves Whitney-
Houston types as much as He loves anyone. This is the bittersweet
side of the Gospel message, which people despise unless, of
course, they know themselves to be in the same group as the
Whitney Houstons of the world. People hated this about Jesus’
message two thousand years ago. “He sups with sinners and tax-
collectors”, they complained. We might be inclined to think that
this much grace is #oo much. It “passeth all understanding” (Ph 4:7,
KJV). But such is the promise of faith, regardless of anything.

St. Anthony’s is a home for alcoholics in Minnesota where these

ideas ate pushed to their furthest implications. Unlike most
rehabilitative centers for alcoholism, where drinking is typically
viewed as grounds for dismissal, the residents of St. Anthony’s are
allowed to drink alcohol in their rooms without hindrance. It is a
“wet house”, the only one of its kind that we are aware of. A
reporter from This American Life describes the scene:

“Walking down the hallway I could hear muffled TVs

playing in their rooms, and I got the sense that people

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ate slowly killing themselves behind closed doors.

During that year when ten guys went into treatment,
three of the residents died.”

In his book Thes American Gospel, writer Ethan Richardson offers

the following by way of explanation: “St. Anthony’s is predicated
upon unconditional love...They will celebrate and encourage a
resident’s recovery, but one’s invitation is not revoked if recovery
does not happen’!°8 (79). In other words, St. Anthony’s is
motivated by an understanding of Christian love and hope that
runs deeper than the individual’s ability to respond to it. When
asked whether it is hard to accept the self-defeating behavior on
display, staff member Deacon Jim says:

“Yeah, it is hard. It is hard. But we care for them where

they are. If they’re ready to move, [or] if they’re not
ready to move. That’s really not our call here. Our call is
to love them.”

In the extreme world of alcoholism, that most tragic group — those

who die drunk — deserves consideration. In spite of death’s
seeming finality, the Christian understanding of life offers a hope
that the world cannot see. It views addiction, even in death,
through the lens of grace.
We close with another sermon excerpt, this time taken from
the rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Paul
Walker. He tells of his brother-in-law:

“Robbie was my wife Christie’s older brother. Robbie

was 6 foot 4 inches, dark and handsome — he had dark
auburn hair and a full beard. He had magnetic looks. An

108 than Richardson, This American Gospel (Charlottesville, VA:

Mockingbird, 2012), 79.

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attist once asked him to pose as Jesus! He had a carefree

petsonality; everybody loved Robbie; he was always
where the excitement was.
In our living room, we have a picture of Robbie
on the docks of Cape Hatteras. He has just returned
from a deep-sea fishing trip and is holding up a 7 foot
blue marlin. He looks like a cross between Jesus and
Ernest Hemingway, his muscles taut with the fish’s
prodigious weight. Clearly, this is one of Robbie’s better
days.
Robbie’s better days did not last. As he grew
older he struggled with alcoholism. At one point Robbie
confessed to me, “Paul, this thing is a monster. It’s just
too big for me.” As Robbie suffered, we suffered with
him.
What Robbie called his darkest night happened
during a stint in rehab. He was alone in a detox room,
facing his demons by himself. It was three in the
morning and he was tertified. Robbie was never a
church-goer —but in that dark night Robbie experienced
light and hope and love. Afterward he said, “This
sounds really weird, but in that awful night I felt Jesus
with me. He came to me. I knew everything was going
to be okay.”
Robbie died about a year later. The monster was
finally too big for him. He died alone, but he was not by
himself. Christie has a vivid image of Jesus cradling
Robbie as he died. I imagine Jesus’ face close to
Robbie’s, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. In my Fathet’s house
there are many rooms. This is no idle tale. If it were not
so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place
for your’
Easter means that we do not look for Robbie
among the dead but among the living. Easter means that

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Robbie is alive with Jesus, fit and strong and smiling on

the everlasting docks, free of his and every other
monster. Easter means that for Robbie, for us, for you,
and for the world that Jesus came not to condemn but
to save, everything is going to be okay. The Better Day
will prevail. Amen.”

Grace is the hope that seeks us out when we are at our worst. It
looks forward to the long, hard road ahead. Grace is not worried,
even if everything falls apart and everything goes wrong. It is the
love of God that does not let go. It brings good out of bad, and it
sees hope where there is none. Grace always gives another chance.
Grace waits. It stands when you have fallen; it leaves the door
open. Grace stays awake for you when you can’t keep your eyes
open for another minute, even though you know you should.
Grace works like Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, who
talks with a boy she caught stealing her purse:1

“Tf I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the

woman.
“Yes’m,” said the boy.
“Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman.
She did not release him. [She takes him to her home,
and tells him to wash his face]
j “You gonna take me to jail?” asked the boy,
bending over the sink.
“Not with that face, I wouldn’t take you
nowhere,” said the woman. “Here I am trying to get
home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my
pocketbook! Maybe you ain’t been to your suppet
either, late as it be. Have your”

109 Excerpt from Langston Hughes, “Thank You, Ma’am”, New York, NY:
SRA/McGraw-Hill, 1997.

263
 GRACE IN ADDICTION

“There’s nobody home at my house,” said the

boy.
“Then we'll eat,” said the woman.
[After supper she brings out dessert.] Then she
cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
“Rat some mote, son,” she said.

Grace is the overarching, never-say-never, covenantal, all-

encompassing, law-subsuming, utterly distinct, absolutely
committed, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer, able to jump over a
building in a single bound, non-neurotic, calming, spice-of-life,
surprising, unexpected, unwavering, indissoluble voice of God:

“A bruised reed I will not break; a smoldering wick I will not snuff out.”
-Isaiah 42:3

“Tfwe are faithless, He will remain faithful.”

-2 Tim 2:13

264
 Appendix |: Mortimers and Lulus

Is the Person Who Got Sober in High School Really an

Alcoholic?

"Many people, nonalcoholics, report that as a result of the practice ofA.A.’s

Twelve Steps they have been able to meet other difficulties in life. They think
that Twelve Steps can mean more than sobriety for problem drinkers. They
see in them a way to happy and effective hving for many, alcohohe or not."
-12 & 12 (16)

A friend from early sobriety, who joined AA while he was in high

school, wrote to me expressing doubts about whether or not he
was actually an alcoholic. It’s not an altogether uncommon
situation. There are so many rehabs and therapeutic schools for
troubled teenagers. Many of these institutions funnel their students
into AA at a young age, even though some of them may have had
little actual experience with drinking. We offered the following
response. Maybe it will be helpful to you or someone you know:

265
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Hi Travis,

Thanks so much for writing...

You've been sober a long time and in AA for almost two

decades. It's obviously been an important experience and helped to shape you.
From reading your email, I get the impression that the main question you
have is whether or not you are actually an alcohole.
That's an important question to ask — one that I asked myself
at a similar age — and it's a particularly hard question for people who get
sober as young as we did to ask. So we grow into adults in sobriety, and we
ask. ourselves, "Did I even garner enough experience with alcohol to even
know if I can't control it? Was I just a party-kid? ete..."
I have no doubt that the Twelve Steps would have a positive
and relevant impact on any person's life, whether they're alcoholic or not. I've
actually led classes at my church (I called it "spiritual makeover"), taking
normal people through the Twelve Steps. Every one of them benefited. Things
like looking at “our part” in a resentment, being of service to others, making
amends, prayer, etc. are all absolutely hfe-altering skills to learn for any
person. They make sense in the face of life, more than most other therapeutic
and spiritual approaches I have found. AA's Twelve Steps and the
experience of attending meetings offer a profound method for learning to deal
with life responsibly and spiritually. Who wouldn't benefit from the Twelve
Steps, right? So I would say that the fact that you got a lot out ofAA, and
that it helped you to put the dots together with your life, doesn't really answer
the question of whether or not you need to be an active member.
That question really has to do with whether or not you can
control drinking alcohol. You're obviously not looking at it from the
standpoint of wanting to rage and party and stain (i.e., go on a bender). I
wonder ifyou can or cannot drink without it damaging all the other areas of
jour life. I also assume you're not wanting to see ifyou can "smoke a little
pot" or whatever. I would advise you to steer clear of other drugs, which is a
no-brainer, especially since they're illegal in most places. So I'm just talking
about drinking, really. The distinction between heavy partying and alcoholism

266
 APPENDIX I

is not one that I could have made when I was in high school, as they were
both part of the same lifestyle to me. But then we grow up, and it turns out
that the drinking of wine and cocktails and beer is a different thing entirely
than it was in high school or college.
So can Travis X drink a glass or two of wine at a dinner
party, or order a cocktail when he's out at a bar with friends or on a date
with his wife? I don't know. Do you think he could? I've seen AAs who
have gotten sober young ask themselves that exact question on multiple
occasions.
The first way that I think AA would help a person to answer
that question is to look back at their past experience with drinking. Did you
drink enough in high school to figure out whether or not there's an actual
pattern of lacking control? That’s the key issue that determines whether or
not you're an alcoholic in the eyes ofAA, right?
Tfyou think the answer is yes, then probably you shouldn't
start drinking, as that pattern 1s probably still there. If it's “no” or “maybe”,
then_you might try drinking responsibly, because I don’t think “maybe” is a
good enough answer to justify continued involvement in AA in your case.
Maybe set some guidelines for yourself about it, and see ifyou can adhere to
them. You can keep me posted on how that goes ifyou lke. I would talk that
one over with your wife beforehand, just so that she too is abreast of watching
to see ifyou can control your drinking.
Here's what I've seen: I had a sponsor named Mortimer who
got sober at 17. He was an amazing member of AA and worked as a
graphic designer for a big company. Do_you know the saying, “There's a ship
under every skirt?” Well he started drinking again when he turned 26 after
a break-up and was literally homeless and deeply drug-addicted, following
Phish on tour and couch-surfing within two months ofpicking up that ferst
drink. He was drunk at work the second week after he started drinking
again and lost his job almost immediately thereafter. The guy was an
alcoholic of the first degree. He's still out there and has yet to rediscover
sobriety, though he desperately needs to. He's in bad shape, and he will not be
able to sort things out with his family and life until he sobers up. That's my
opinion, but there are obvious reasons why Ifeel that way.

267
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Then there's my good friend Lulu, who got sober a few years
after finishing college. She got all into AA, got a sponsor, worked the steps,
and was four months sober when we first reconnected. She stayed sober for five
years, but she moved to a new city during her third year of sobriety. She only
went to a few meetings after the move and soon started asking all the same
questions you're asking. "Was I actually an alcoholic?” She benefited hugely
from the steps and from adopting the AA approach to life, but she wondered
if the Twelve Steps had worked with her vulnerability more than with an
actual alcohol problem. And bear in mind that Lulu actually did a fair
amount of drinking and partying, both in college and afterwards.
So finally), after fie years sober and two years without
meetings, she decided, after discussing it with some friends from AA, to order
a glass of wine at a dinner with her husband. She's been drinking again
socially and a having a glass or two of wine at home on occasion for more
than two years, and it's turned out not to be a problem. She got really black-
out drunk once, when an old friend from high school showed up and got her to
take a bunch of shots — which is not her styl — but nothing severe or
troubling otherwise. She still functions as a responsible human being and
values the Twelve Steps, which she still makes use of. She doesn't need to be
sober in order to be of service to other people, to hold down a job, etc for the
Twelve Steps to work for her.
That's the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic.
The truth is that there are both Mortimers and Lulus in AA. The
Mortimers can't drink. The Lulus can.
Are you a Mortimer or a Lulué I think you might be a
Lulu, no offense. ;) What do you think? Is this helpful? Keep me posted
and let me know what you decide. I would love to track with you on it...

Cheers, bioluminescently yours, JZ

P.S. What I've said lines up with the Big Book, I think: ‘If anyone who is
showing inability to control his drinking can do the right-about-face and

268
 APPENDIX I

drink, like a gentleman, our hats are off to him...you can quickly diagnose
yourself Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking.
Try to drink and stop abruptl). Try it more than once. It will not take long
foryou to decide, tfyou are honest with yourself...” (31-32).

269
 Appendix II: Mingling with Alcohol
in Sobriety

“In our beef any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield
the sick man from temptation 1s doomed to failure.”
-Big Book (107)

Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it ts
what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
-Mark 7:15

So what are we to do about the presence of alcohol in the midst of

a sober life? Very little, if anything! The fact that lots of people in
the world drink while many alcoholics are in the midst of getting
sober is of little concern. Here again, we find that AA’s insight is
somewhat counter-intuitive. Alcoholism is understood in AA to
be an inner problem, and not an outer one: “Any scheme of
combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from
temptation is doomed to failure” (101).

271
GRACE IN ADDICTION

To the outsider looking in, the assumption typically is that

sobriety is first and foremost about learning how to effectively
avoid alcohol. Taking such an approach overestimates the power
of the alcoholic’s will power with respect to alcohol and, in effect,
misunderstands the problem and solution that thousands of
people have found in AA.
Instead, sobriety is about experiencing a spiritual change that
comes from God’s grace through the working of the Twelve
Steps. In discussing Step 10, the Big Book describes the sobriety
of a “spiritually fit’ alcoholic in the following terms:

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone —

even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned.
We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we
recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and
normally, and we will find that this has happened
automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward
liquor has been given us without any thought or effort
on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We
are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptations.
We feel as though we had been placed in a position of
neutrality — safe and protected. We have not even sworn
off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not
exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.
That is our experience. That is how we react so long as
we keep in fit spiritual condition.” (85)

It is not uncommon for the significant other of a newly sober

petson to assume that they to need to adopt a life of sobriety. This
may or may not be helpful, but people should certainly not assume
it to be necessary. When the, time is right, alcoholics can get sober
regardless of any particular set of circumstances (98), Eventually,
any form of healthy sobriety will realistically require the ability to

272
 APPENDIX II

be around alcohol without making a big deal about it. In many

cases, the appropriate imbibing of others will actually strengthen
the sobriety of the sober individual.
This happens for three reasons. First, it helps the sober
alcoholic to see that, indeed, they have been granted reprieve from
their besetting weakness. They are no longer the person they used
to be. Such an experience is incredibly encouraging, and for the
sober alcoholic who is actively involved in recovery, it will in no
way lead to some kind of false assumption that they are cured for
life.
Second, seeing the normal, convivial drinking of a non-
alcoholic drives home the ongoing reality of the alcoholic’s need
for sobriety. I remember seeing my mother drink half a glass of
wine while working on her taxes. That is not alcoholism.
Third, when people avoid drinking for the sake of the sober
alcoholic, they are actually hoisting the state of his prior
destructive life style over his head like a kind of guillotine. The
impact can be a bit like being held in “time out’, or placed in a
penalty box. It can be a subtle form of punishment, a kind of
holding the past against a person in a way that is unnecessary and
also un-insightful. In most cases, the sober alcoholic feels
immense relief the moment other people take that first drink in his
or her presence without making a big deal about it. You may find
that one of the best ways to minister to your sober friends is to
have a drink or two in front of them.
Perhaps you are familiar with the Baptist Church’s strict no-
drinking-of-alcohol policy for all of their missionaries. The basic
idea behind this approach suggests that any kind of indiscretion
will damage their ability to effectively witness to the truth of the

PES
GRACE IN ADDICTION

Gospel. For the most part, AA disagrees with this approach in

spite of its advocacy of sobriety for problem drinkers.!10
AA instead suggests that they can mote effectively share
sobriety with the world (and especially with those in need of it) by
not shunning alcohol. Shunning is viewed to be both counter-
productive and ineffective for dealing with real alcoholism.
Consequently, AA implies that drinking around recovering
alcoholics is probably more helpful to them than not doing so.
The writers of the Big Book dealt with this issue at some
length. They wanted to help the world to better understand their
approach to sobriety. Please take the time to read the original
source material that has fueled our thinking about this issue:

“Assuming we ate spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of

things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have
said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not
have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink;
we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking
scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide
their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think
ot be reminded about alcohol at all. Our experience
shows that this is not necessarily so.
“We meet these conditions every day. An
alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic
mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual
status. His only chance for sobriety would be some
place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an

110 Of course, the newly sober individual will need to separate themselves
from alcohol in the initial experience of recovery. In-patient rehabs are
recommended for this reason primarily. In such places, alcoholics can begin
the much need work of the recovery and the Twelve Steps. Until the habit of
attending meetings has become grooved, and the working of Twelve Steps is
under way, the sober alcoholic is simply in between drinks, and far from
transformed in the way that AA respects.

274
 APPENDIX II

Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin

everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband
to distant places on the theory that he would escape the
alcohol problem.
“In our belief any scheme of combating
alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from
temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to
shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually
winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have
tried these methods. These attempts to do the
impossible have always failed.
“So our one rule is not to avoid a place where
there is drinking, if we have a legitimate reason for being
there. That includes bars, nightclubs, dances, receptions,
weddings, even plain ordinary whoopee parties. To a
person who has had experience with an alcoholic, this
may seem like tempting Providence, but it isn’t... Your
job now is to be at the place where you may be of
maximum helpfulness to others, so never hesitate to go
anywhere if you can be helpful. You should not hesitate
to visit the most sordid spot on earth on such an errand.
Keep on the firing line of life with these motives and
God will keep you unharmed...
‘We ate careful never to show intolerance or
hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows
that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new
alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is
immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch
burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics
whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for
such stupidity.” (101-103)

205
Appendix Ill: The Serenity Prayer

God, give us grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

-Reinhold Niebuhr

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 Bibliography

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| Made in the USA
672424 13R00158 Charleston, SC
07 February 2017
 hurch basements are curious places. Playing host
to the vibrant world of Twelve Step Recovery, they
witness the sort of healing and redemption that would
make those on the ground floor proud, and maybe even envious
Yet despite the Church and Alcoholics Anonymous both being
in the business of bringing “hope to the hopeless”, the two
worlds seldom seem to interact. Packed with vivid illustrations
good humor, and practical wisdom, Grace in Addiction attempts
to bridge this divide and carry the unexpected good news of AA
out of the basement and into the pews—and beyond!

Martin Luther once said that pain had made him a better theologian
than any book he had read. John Z is a good theologian because he knows
firsthand that ‘God’s office is at the end of our rope.’ In these pages he
beautifully lays out the gracious truth that when addiction—of all stripes
and flavors—brings us to the end of ourselves, we are brought to the place
of honesty, faith, and freedom.”

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN, PASTOR OF CORAL RIDGE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AND AUTHOR OF

GLORIOUS RUIN: HOW SUFFERING SETS YOU FREE

John Z. lives in Charleston, SC with his wife, daughter, and greyhoun

His favorite film is Red Beard.

||
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