A friend who is
not in recovery and not personally familiar with the 12 Steps asked me how the
whole “God as we understand God” thing works. As in, Step 3: “We turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood [God] him.” How can a roomful of people meet
regularly and discuss God (among other things) and not all be on the same page
about who God even is? If one person defines God as Jesus, and the person to her left defines God as the Tao, and the person on her right isn't even yet sure he believes in God, how does that work?
It’s a good question.
I don’t know that I have the
definitive answer to the question, but I have my suspicions and my opinion as
to how that works. And let me just say that I’m extremely grateful that it does
indeed work as well as it does or I would have walked away many years ago…
like, at the very beginning of the journey. Hey, wait, I did walk away several
times - and it was largely because I thought “they” were telling me I had to believe in “their”
God. I wasn’t interested in any group telling me what I had to believe about
God. By the way, there truly is no “they” and no one has once told me that a)
this is God and this is how you need to believe, or b) your belief in God is
wrong. I find that incredibly amazing, given the fact that I’ve met thousands
of recovering addicts and alcoholics in 12 Step programs, each with their own
personal belief about God. Now, after the meeting, people gather with those who share similar concepts of God, I'm sure. But while in the meetings, for that hour, it doesn't matter.
There is a reading in Narcotics Anonymous called, “We Do
Recover.” In the meeting I go to it is read at the end of each meeting. It goes
like this: When at the end of the road we find that we can no longer function
as a human being, either with or without
drugs, we all face the same dilemma:
What is there left to do? We can either go on to the bitter ends: Jails,
institutions, or death, or, find a new way to live. In years gone by, very few
addicts ever had this last choice. Today, we are more fortunate. For the first time
in man’s entire history there is a simple way proving itself in the lives of
many addicts. It is available to us all. This
is a simple, spiritual – not religious – program known as Narcotics
Anonymous.
That last line is the key. It is a spiritual program, not a
religious program. There is a huge difference. Religions tend to dictate what
you should believe, or at the very least, guide you toward a certain dogma or
belief system. 12 Step programs do not do this. At all. In fact, the steps
encourage every person to figure it out for themselves. That’s pretty much all
the guidance you get: Figure it out. Well, and this: Step 2 says, “We came to
believe in a Power Greater than ourselves who could restore us to sanity.” So one's concept of a Higher Power should be big enough for that. And there is this: Step 11 says, “We continued to improve our conscious contact with God as
we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power
to carry that out.” This reminds one of how important it is to maintain the spiritual connection that one has built. But that's it. Those are the instructions, those are the only 3 steps that
mention God (or Higher Power) specifically (Steps 2, 3, and 11). The rest is up to the individual. I find that simplicity incredibly personal and altogether beautiful.
I’ve shared before that I tried using the God of my
childhood, or the Higher Power of my parents, or the concept of God that
someone else had formed, and it didn’t work. How could it, really? If I am
going to rely on a Higher Power, on God, to keep me clean and fill the
spiritual void that is left after I quit getting high – and probably the very
void that I tried to fill in the first place once I started using drugs and
alcohol – hadn’t I better believe in that concept of God that I'm going to be relying so heavily on? Hadn’t
I better trust in that Higher Power?
Since I kept hitting a wall as I came up on steps 2 and 3, the only thing I knew to do when I got clean this time
around, since past attempts didn’t exactly work out for me, was to throw out
every single thing I ever believed about God, every single thing I was ever
taught about God, every single thing I thought I knew about God… and start from
scratch. And that is what I did. In doing so, I discovered new concepts and theologies I had
never been exposed to. I added back, slowly, over time, and with meticulous vetting, many
things I was taught about God growing up, and I’ve left behind other things I
once thought I believed, and I’ve left behind much of the new concepts and
theologies I’ve learned along the way. It has been a long process, and it is a
process that will never end. However, I am so very, very grateful that I found
a safe place to do this because I don’t know that I would have had the courage
or the determination to do it without the support and complete acceptance of others doing the same
thing for themselves.
Most people in 12 Step meetings don’t talk in specifics when
they talk about what they believe about God. What I mean by that is that most
people don’t name their God when talking in meetings. They actually do share
very specifically about what God means to them, what God does in their lives, how their Higher
Power is evidenced in their recovery, and about the vital connection they have
with God. But there is no need to give God another name, like Jesus, or Buddha,
or Allah, or the Holy Spirit, or the Great Spirit, or the Tao. Naming God is
not the point. Figuring out what I, as an individual, believe about God, is the
point. And in the end – or for that matter, at the beginning and every step
along the way from beginning to end - it all comes down to me and God, anyhow.
That’s the difference between spirituality and religion, in my opinion. In religion,
it usually matters very much what you believe and what I believe and in those
similarities. In spirituality, unencumbered by any particular religion, neither
the similarities nor the differences are going to influence me, demand anything of me, cause disagreement or tension, drive me away, or turn me
off, because they just don’t come into the conversation during that safe, sacred hour during a 12 Step meeting.
And for this reason, it works... it really does work.
I’m Maze and I’m an addict.
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