Regardless of the influence of genetics, personal history, or environment, Twelve Step recovery is centered upon the hope that the addict or alcoholic can actually choose to establish and then maintain abstinence from drugs and alcohol. Powerless they may be over the influence these substances exert over them once the substance is coursing through their veins, but the individual is not powerless over the decision to ingest the substance. In order to recover, the addict or alcoholic must believe that they can really choose to not pick up a drink or a drug; and that they can surrender their life to the God of their understanding. They are powerless over alcohol and drugs, but not the decision to use them.
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.
As explicit as this statement in the A.A. Big Book seems to be, the spiritual relativity of the Twelve Steps meant that “our Creator” could be a variety of things; and often meant the recovery program itself. Narcotics Anonymous said this explicitly in their basic text: “It wasn’t until we came to Narcotics Anonymous that recovery became possible. This program can do for us what we could not do for ourselves.” The author of “What We Could Never Do” in the AA Grapevine used language reminiscent of an individual testifying of their “born again” experience. They said: “The central fact of my life today is the absolute certainty that AA has entered into my heart and life in a way which is indeed exceptional.”
This postmodern avoidance of absolutes, especially about God, was firmly embedded in Twelve Step recovery from the beginning. The recovery program described in the A.A. Big Book was merely suggestive. Although God existed, you didn’t have to believe in him all at once; and could even fashion your own understanding of a “Higher Power.” The ability to imagine God as you understand Him has remained a hallmark of the spiritual worldview of A.A.
In a 1949 address before the American Psychiatric Association, Bill Wilson explicitly stated that A.A. was not a religious organization because it had no dogma. He also stated that the only theological proposition—of a Power greater than one’s self—would not be forced on anyone. There was a self-conscious avoidance of the absolute certainty with which the apostle Paul declared that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Even while acknowledging the parallels to religious conversion within the recovery program of A.A., Wilson said that too many people were afraid of being “God-bitten.”
In 1961, Wilson said the following in “The Dilemma of No Faith” for the AA Grapevine: “Our concepts of a Higher Power and God—as we understand Him—afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.” He suggested that this was perhaps the most important expression in be found in the entire vocabulary of A.A. Every kind and degree of faith, together with the assurance that each person could choose his or her own version of it opened a door “over whose threshold the unbeliever can take his first easy step into . . . the realm of faith.” So, recovery does not require that you acknowledge and worship Jesus Christ as your Higher Power. At this point, Twelve Step recovery wanders off in a different direction from the Romans Road.
Confess and Believe
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:9-13)
Here is one of the classic summaries of the fundamental elements of faith leading to salvation. The confession of Jesus as Lord here refers to the position Christ has because he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, where he was given authority over all of creation (Ephesians. 1:20-23). The order Paul uses in verse 9 (mouth and heart) corresponds to the order of Deuteronomy 30:14, which he just quoted; but then he reverses that order (heart and mouth) in verse 10. Paul is not presenting a recipe or magical formula for salvation. Rather, he is emphasizing the central importance of believing in your heart for the process of salvation, for everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.
There is a principle in Scripture with regard to human nature that inexorably links heart and behavior: whatever rules your heart rules your behavior (Matthew. 6:21; Luke 6:45). So here we see that even in salvation, this principle applies: we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray said: “Confession verifies and confirms the faith of the heart. . . Confession with the mouth is the evidence of the genuineness of faith.” This is equivalent to the discussion of faith in works in James 2:17-22. Faith without works (behavior that does not proceed from faith) is dead.
The Big Book described in chapters five and six how the program of recovery embodied in the first eleven of the Twelve Steps works. It ends with these words: “But that is not all. There is action and more action. ‘Faith without works is dead.’The next chapter, “Working with Others,” is entirely devoted to Step Twelve. It suggested the “works” for the practitioner of the Twelve Steps was carrying the message to others. The spiritual experience of faith in the first eleven Steps should lead to helping others. Step Twelve says: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and practice these principles in all our affairs.” Without citing the biblical origin of the quote, Bill Wilson relayed a saying that had relevance to his own recovery and almost played a role in the naming of A.A. itself.
Bill Wilson lived with Dr. Bob Smith and his wife Anne for about three months after he first met Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio. Every morning they would have a devotional time in which Anne would read from the Bible. The book of James was a favorite; and Anne would conclude their devotional time by saying, “Faith without works is dead.” Not only was this a favorite quotation of Anne Smith, but the book of James was a favorite with early AA’s– “so much so that ‘The James Club’ was favored by some as a name for the Fellowship.”
Paul makes the same connection between faith and works in Romans 10:9-10. Faith, believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, without works, confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord is dead faith. But “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Paul drives this point home in his repeated use of the Greek word gar, (commonly translated as “for”) four consecutive times in verses 10 through 13 of Romans 10. By doing so, he explains the declaration he just made in verse 10:9, that if you confess with your mouth (that Jesus is Lord) and believe in your heart (that God raised him from the dead) you will be saved.
Common Grace and Recovery
How do you obtain salvation? According to Romans 10:9, by believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. How do you obtain recovery? By a surrender to a god of your understanding, fashioned from the knowledge of God revealed in creation (Romans 1:19-25). You can use ritual and language with strong similarities to the ritual and language of those claiming a relationship with Christ, but it’s not the same.
You can be “reborn”; you can believe that your Creator has entered your heart and begun to accomplish things you could not do for yourself. But if this does not rest on the foundation of Jesus Christ it is not salvation in the Biblical sense. The spiritual and theological differences between the two are radical. Biblically speaking, a self-fashioned understanding of God is idolatry since you worship and serve some aspect of creation that manifests “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Romans 11:33) instead of God himself.
In the “We Agnostics” chapter of the A.A. Big Book, Bill Wilson wrote that deep down inside us was the fundamental idea of God. Faith in some kind of God was a part of our human make-up. “Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us.”
Humans beings are naturally in possession of rational and moral abilities. Because of the Fall, these abilities are used in ways that are hostile to serving and glorifying God. But this capacity for rationality and morality has not been diminished through sin. We are not irrational or amoral in this sense as a consequence of the Fall. Through sin we fell ethically and became hostile to God.
A Fallen, sinful person has no ability (they are powerless) to keep that hostility from becoming consistent and full blown. At it says in Romans chapter 7, we can have the desire to do good, but not the ability to carry it out. We are captive to the law of sin inside of us. But there is common grace, which is: “The means by which God keeps [us] from expressing the principle of hostility to its full extent, thus enabling [us] to do the relative good.”
Common grace is then a restraining force that keeps us from being completely hostile towards God, whether or not we believe in Him; whether or not we have a Romans 10:9 relationship with Jesus Christ. The addict or alcoholic is powerless over addiction because it is a manifestation of his or her hostility to God. Apart from the common grace of God within the Twelve Steps, they express this hostility in the horror of their active addiction—independent of their faith or lack of faith. Yet, through God’s common grace, even an atheist or agnostic can stop their previously active addiction.
A self-described atheist went on a week-long drinking binge after three and a half years of abstinence. Returning to her home group, she said she prayed twenty times a day to a God she didn’t believe in to please help her to not drink: “Please, God, if you are there, do not let me do it to myself again. After six months of believing I would never be able to stay sober again, I finally lost the obsession to drink.” She said it took her twenty years to “stop fighting God and to surrender.” She cleaned up her mouth; learned to have relationships; and “found a new friend in God.”
The ‘miracle’ of being relieved of the obsession to drink is accomplished through the common grace of God. And this grace is equally available to those who turn to the program of A.A. or N.A. as their Higher Power as it is for those with a Romans 10:9 relationship with Jesus Christ. God “makes his sun rise of the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:42).
If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, or 1st, 2nd, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is the 11th in the series. Enjoy.
