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Made a Decision

( 59)

The God Problem

"Just do the fucking Steps first and then worry about God afterwards."

So said my AA friend (herself a card-carrying atheist after a couple of decades-plus of good AA sobriety) to a rebellious newcomer complaining about all our program's God stuff.

I couldn't have said it any better. 

I have a lot of sober atheists and agnostics in my life, my own sponsor being one of them. I seem to attract them. I consider myself fortunate. 

They keep me on my spiritual toes. 

Bill W. and Dr. Bob liked them, too. Here following are some samples from letters between them on the subject:

       I have had many experiences with atheists, mostly good. Everybody in A.A. has the right to his own opinion. It is much better to maintain an open and tolerant society than it is to suppress any small disturbances their opinions might occasion. Actually, I don't know of anybody who went off and died of alcoholism because of some atheist's opinions on the cosmos. 

     But I do always entreat these folks to look to a 'Higher Power' - namely, their own group. When they come in, most of their A.A. group is sober, and they are drunk. Therefore, the group is a 'Higher Power.'

      That's a good enough start, and most of them do progress from there. I know how they feel, because I was once that way myself.   LETTER, 1962

And this, written shortly after the publication of our Big Book:

... Our group conscience was at work to construct the most acceptable and effective book possible. Every voice was playing its appointed part. Our atheists and agnostics widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.  LETTER, 1954

       The fact is, some of our members never find a personal God - and they stay sober anyway. 

But I've noticed, among the sober agnostics and atheists I know personally, they've also all cleaned house, are active in service, have a home group, go to lots of meetings, sponsor others through the 12-steps, share their experience, strength, and hope when asked and are often the first ones to step up to welcome a newcomer.

I've attended a few atheist AA meetings myself over the years (they exist all over the world). It felt to me like being served a good meal lacking salt, but group members there got their own needs met. To each our own. Our program is big enough to fit all of us.

Many new members (being all or nothing people) want to understand everything right away. We want our God-doubts erased and all our questions answered now. It generally doesn't work that way. Each of us arrives carrying our own baggage:

Some arrive angry over having been raised with a hellfire and brimstone god. They're often relieved to find a God they can tailor to their own needs and readily start their spiritual journey over again. 

Others enter recovery with a working understanding of a Higher Power and can plug right into the God concept. 

Then there are those who are content knowing other members' belief in a Higher Power has kept them sober.  They feel if it has worked for those other idiots it can also work for them.

Someone in AA once said: 

"The Twelve Steps were designed for desperate people like us - as a short-cut to God." 

When I arrived in AA I was willing to believe, but didn't think it would actually be possible. I had enough confusion and distrust about this God thing then to fill and sink a battleship.

Mainly I believed that God - if there was one - was not a Christian, Jew, Muslim,  Buddhist, Hindu, or anything else. 

I had decided all organized religions were systems my species had created to control other people - or maybe (on my more generous days) - to attempt a framework for people to find some relief from the pain of living.

My brother describes the world's religions in a way I now quite like: 

"Take a pie, cut it up and label each piece as a major world religion. Every piece of that pie has some important spiritual truth in it. And the only problems arrive when one piece of it wants to become the entire pie."

I arrived in AA, as so many of us do, unable to trust a God I couldn't see or feel. I didn't believe an unseen being could care for me or my petty problems.

 Out of desperation I surrendered my alcoholism to AA's Higher Power, but I held tightly to every other problem I had, convinced I could handle the rest of my life in my own way.

Gradually, over a long length of time, I cautiously began to hand these issues over - one at a time - to that unseen power. 

And gradually, over a length of time, I saw resolution of problems that had always baffled me.

(An AA friend once gave me a mug bearing the words: "Everything I've ever surrendered has my claw marks all over it.")

My God-answers always showed up in ways I never would have thought of, too - in radio commercials; a sign on a bus; an overheard comment; voiced in a meeting by someone I didn't like; in a song lyric or a display in a shop window - to name just a few.

Like when my Higher Power indicated I might need more balance in my life. 

The word BALANCE was everywhere during that "lesson." 

If I turned on the radio I'd find a lecture about "living in a more BALANCED way." If I sat on the toilet there would be a box of detergent nearby bearing the words: "For a BALANCED washing ...", 

A television program offered, "... watch in amazement as this man BALANCES on the thin wire between these buildings  ...  and so on.

It can take some of us a long old time to find a "God of our understanding." 

I'm grateful I eventually got there. I now know for sure my life has become easier since I stopped trying to get along without God's help. 

And what I find most interesting is that the connection I found remains one that is ever evolving - and ever expanding.  

Or, as I read recently and then jotted down in my journal: 

"God is continually expressing Himself in new ways - but this is not improvement; it is unfoldment. Your life is simply part of this unfoldment, and that is the only reason for you existing at all. 

You are the living expression of God now - and to understand this is salvation." 

As Bill Wilson wrote about his own "aha" experience:

 "Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes.A new world came into view."

                      Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Bill's Story, pg. 12

   The God of my own understanding is all around us, a loving and guiding (when we let it) spirit that pervades the universe. 

But  I no longer think that our finding God is even the point. 

Continually seeking God is the point.