12/27/22

In Love and Tolerance

“Bill’s Story,” the first chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, told of how Bill W. got clean and sober. He wrote: “An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature.” Yet there was a realization of the importance of carrying the message to the newcomer, in love and tolerance, from the very beginning. The weakest, most unpresentable members of A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) or N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous) are often newcomers.

Early A.A. met frequently so that “newcomers may find the fellowship they seek.” Genuinely feeling that “the newcomer is the most important person at a meeting” is a maxim within each Fellowship. N.A. said it this way: “The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting because we can only keep what we have by giving it away.” Within a 1946 Grapevine article, “Ours Not to Judge,” Bill W. said: “We have begun to regard these ones not as menaces, but rather as our teachers. They oblige us to cultivate patience, tolerance and humility.” Chapter seven of Alcoholics Anonymous, “Working with Others,” says:

Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail . . . Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.

The need for tolerance appears regularly throughout the A.A. Big Book. In the “We Agnostics” chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, the hypocrisy of pointing to religious intolerance when the alcoholic was intolerant towards religion itself was pointed out. The importance of tolerance for healing family relationships was noted. The essential requirement of tolerance in relating to others—within and outside A.A.—was underscored repeatedly. Succinctly in the “Into Action” chapter, Bill W. said: “Love and tolerance of others is our code.”

We find the same awareness in the N.A. Blue Book. In their “How It Works” chapter, N.A. noted that one thing will defeat them more than anything else in recovery, “an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. With these we are well on our way.” As recovery progresses, principles such as “hope, surrender, acceptance, honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, faith, tolerance, patience, humility, unconditional love, sharing and caring” touch every area of their lives, leading to a new image of themselves. “Honesty and open-mindedness help us to treat our associates fairly. Our decisions become tempered with tolerance.”

Parallel to this thinking, In My Utmost for His Highest on May 6^th, Oswald Chambers said: “It takes God a long time to get us out of the way of thinking that unless everyone sees as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God’s view.” Love and tolerance flow from a self-conscious recognition in A.A. that not only are individuals corporately members of the larger body, but they are also dependent upon one another. They need one another for sobriety.

A.A. and N.A. have been successful in maintaining solidarity within their respective fellowships by remembering that despite their open-ended criteria for membership (the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking or using drugs), they are individually members of one another. This diversity of membership with minimal formal guidelines raises the potential for conflict over everything from how to apply the Twelve Steps in ongoing recovery, to where donations for service projects within the local regions and groups of the two fellowships should be allocated. These and other disputes exist within each fellowship, sometimes with heated and vehement ‘discussions’ of the issue.

But so far, the internal disputes have not led to the demise of A.A. or N.A. To the contrary, each fellowship has reported yearly increases in the number of groups established worldwide for more than thirty years. Nor has there been a disgruntled splitting of the fellowships, which seems more commonly to have occurred within the local churches and denominations of Protestant Christianity. I’d suggest this is because A.A. and N.A. are more effective in living out Romans 14:19 than the church today seems to be: “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding,” despite their diversity.

Paul’s warning in the next verse, Romans 14:20, has been too often disregarded by the church: “Do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God.” In chapter 14 of Romans, Paul discusses the way in which the church in Rome can accommodate diverse opinions on how individuals should live out their lives as members of the kingdom of God. The two disputed issues Paul gave as examples were whether or not members of the church should be vegetarian; and whether individuals should continue to honor the holy days within the Jewish religious system. Paul’s response has an almost postmodern, live-and-let-live sense to it: Each person should be fully convinced in his own mind on the rightness of his position (Romans 14:5). But as John Murray pointed out in his commentary on Romans, Paul was not just acknowledging options here, rather he was giving a command:

The injunction to be fully assured in one’s own mind refers not simply to the right of private judgment but to the demand. This insistence is germane to the whole subject of this chapter. The plea is for acceptance of one another despite diversity of attitude regarding certain things. Compelled conformity or pressure exerted to the end of securing conformity defeats the aims to which all the exhortations and reproofs are directed.

What keeps this from becoming a self-styled sense of merely doing what was right in your own eyes (Judges 21:25) is Paul’s clear reminder that the church in Rome does not live for its own purposes, but for the Lord’s (Romans 14:7-12). In other words, he reminds them of their surrender to and calling in Christ; they are not their own (1 Corinthians 6:19b). Everything we do in life is in reference to this basic fact. Our daily lives are a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1-2): “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord” (Romans 14:8). The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith makes the same point, declaring that the chief end of humanity is “to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” The Scriptural support given for such a declaration comes from both the Old and New Testaments:

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. (Psalms 73:26-28)For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36) So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Co 10:31)

The context which permits Paul to exhort the church in Rome to “pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding” in their relationships with one another is that his command is grounded in recognizing that their primary purpose is to “live to the Lord.” Again, we can turn to John Murray and his comments on Romans 14:12:

It is to God each will render account, not to men. It is concerning himself he will give account, not on behalf of another. So, the thought is focused upon the necessity of judging ourselves now in the light of the account which will be given ultimately to God. We are to judge ourselves rather than sit in judgment upon others.

If a “weaker” individual has scruples about whether or not they should eat meat, the “stronger” person should not look down upon him or her. Conversely the “weaker” person should not judge the “stronger” person because they do not keep to the same restrictions. Keeping or not keeping certain holy days was similarly a matter of personal preference; and the keepers and non-keepers were not to judge or despise the others for their position. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

The proper attitude towards those with different ideas on how to glorify and enjoy God should be to avoid placing any stumbling block or hindrance in the other person’s way. Emphasizing the relationship between the two sides—abstainers and non-abstainers, keepers and non-keepers—Paul refers to them as brothers; members of the same fellowship body. If you think of your position as “stronger” because you don’t have the same scruples to avoid eating meat, “Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.” (Romans 14:20a) The kingdom of God is a matter of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Again, this freedom presupposes that the primary purpose for a believer is to live to the Lord; to worship and enjoy him forever.

Self-conscious recognition of the unity of individual believers should lead to their harmony in corporate relationships. Here there can be no distinction between Jew or Greek, strong or weak, “for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.” (Romans 10:12) Bill W. commented on the inclusiveness of A.A. by noting how one day he talked privately in his office with an A.A. member who was a countess and that night met a man at a meeting who used to be part of Al Capone’s mob. After retelling this anecdote in the Grapevine, the anonymous editor said: “In AA, our very diversity is a measure of our unity.”

Perhaps the ultimate example of how Twelve Step recovery and the epistle to the Romans correspond in their thinking about tolerance, unity and fellowship is when they each turn to the Golden Rule, what Jesus said was the second greatest commandment, loving your neighbor (Mark 12:28-31). In the Big Book chapter, “A Vision for You,” Bill W. commented how the newcomer would make lifelong friends in A.A., bound together by their common escape from disaster and shoulder to shoulder journey of recovery. “Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will learn the full meaning of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’”

At the current time in our culture and political climate, Christians need to see how loving others—even those we strongly disagree with—is a decree of Scripture. Paul commanded the Roman church to owe no one anything except the continuing debt to love each other, for then they will have fulfilled the law. Every one of the commandments was summed up in “‘You shall love you neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8-10). For more on the Golden Rule, see “Doers of the Word.”

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 17th in the series. Enjoy.

09/6/22

What Does Religious Mean?

As Terence Gorski has pointed out, A.A. is now legally a “religion” within the US. But I don’t think this really settles the dispute over whether A.A. is or is not religious. Legal rulings can be changed, as they have for many issues such as abortion and marriage. So I’d suggest that A.A. as a “religion” is based upon a particular sense of what “religious” means in modern culture and that could change. There is at least one other view of religion that would not consider A.A. to be religious.

It seems that there two main starting points to define what being “religious” means in modern culture. One follows Edmund Tylor and focuses on the belief in the supernatural, while the other emphasizes Emile Durkheim’s notion of the sacred and the profane. Within American culture, Tylor’s understanding seems to have influenced legal decisions on constitutional issues of the separation of church and state as well as legal rulings on the religiousness of A.A. At this point in time, Tylor’s sense of religion rules the day.

Tylor (1832-1917) simply defined religion as “the belief in spiritual beings” and held that this belief existed in all known cultures. He suggested that a belief in spirits and deities grew out of a belief in souls, which itself was a result of attempting to explain phenomena such as dreams, trances, visions and death. An evolving understanding of religious belief, Tylor’s theory said that all religions were based on animism, which had two parts: belief in a human soul that survived bodily death and belief in other spirits or deities. Animism led to fetishism, the veneration of animals, idols trees and so forth.

This belief was extended to the veneration of spirits and gods which were less attached to objects; leading to the concepts of gods, demons, spirits, devils, ghosts, fairies and angels. The next stage was the association of gods with good and evil, leading to belief in very powerful deities. Another pathway to these powerful gods was to seek after “first causes” for reality. The attribution of good and evil or first cause to the idea of gods and spirits then led to the concept of a Supreme Being. “Animism has its distinct and consistent outcome, and Polytheism its distinct and consistent completion, in the doctrine of a Supreme Deity.”

This seems to have built on the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach, who wrote The Essence of Christianity in 1841. Feuerbach argued against both the divinity of Christ and the existence of God, stating that all theology could be resolved into anthropology—with God as the projected essence of Humanity. What ranked second in religion, namely humanity, must be recognized as first:

If the nature of Man is man’s Highest Being, if to be human is his highest existence, then man’s love for Man must in practice become the first and highest law. Homo homini Deus est— man’s God is Man. This is the highest law of ethics. This is the turning point of history.

Tylor’s ‘evolving’ understanding of religion was similar to that of Carl Jung. Jung saw Western religions as unsophisticated. He said there were five main stages in the evolution of the idea of God.

First was the animistic view, where Nature was ruled by an assortment of gods and demons. Second was the Greco-Roman polytheistic notion of a father of Gods ruling in a strict hierarchy. The third stage idea was that God shared human fate, but was betrayed, died and then resurrected. The fourth stage held that God became Man in the flesh and was identified with the idea of the Supreme Good. Christianity conflated the third and fourth stages, according to Jung.

“The fifth and highest stage of belief in God is when the entire world is understood as a projected psychic structure and the only God is the ‘God within’ or the ‘God-image.’” (Frank McLynn Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography, 409-410) The God-image was a special reflection of the Self, the penultimate archetype of the collective unconscious in Jung’s psychology. This Self was not the ‘self’ of everyday language, which Jung typically referred to as the ‘ego.’ Frank McLynn suggested that Jung’s Self was roughly equivalent to the ‘Atman’ of Buddhism.

On the other hand, Emile Durkheim said in The Elementary Form of the Religious Life, (EFRL) that religion was a product of society and not always supernaturally inspired. So religion should not be defined just in terms of the ideas of divinity or spiritual beings: “Religion is more than the idea of gods or spirits, and consequently cannot be defined exclusively in relation to these latter.” (EFRL, p. 35) As a category, Durkheim said the supernatural only made sense when opposed to a modern scientific explanation for natural phenomena. He pointed out that for most of the world’s peoples, including premodern Europeans, religious phenomena were viewed as perfectly natural. For Durkheim, the division into “sacred” and “profane” was a necessary precondition for religious belief:

All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred. This division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought. (EFRL, p. 37)

Durkheim believed that a belief in the supernatural was not necessary or even common among religions. However, the separation of different aspects of life into the two categories of sacred and profane was common. Objects and behaviors seen as sacred were considered to be part of the spiritual or religious realm. Sacred things for Durkheim were not limited to just gods or spirits. Anything and everything could be sacred: rocks, trees, a spring, a piece of wood, a house. Sacred objects were as varied as the diversity of religions. “Sacred things are simply collective ideals that have fixed themselves on material objects.” Profane things were everything else in the world that did not have a religious function or hold a religious meaning.

There was a radical separation between the sacred and profane, so that the two could not approach each and still retain their essence. The sacred was not the profane and the profane was not sacred; they were “more or less incompatible with each other.” (EFRL, p. 40) And yet, they interact with one another and depend upon each other for survival.

Durkheim believed that religious belief was built upon this fundamental distinction. When a number of sacred things were organized within a belief system that can be distinguished from other similar types of systems, “the totality of these beliefs and their corresponding rites constitutes a religion.” (EFRL, p. 41)

There were two essential criteria for religious belief, according to Durkheim. First, there was a division of the entire universe into the sacred and the profane; which embraced all that exists, but which radically excluded each other. Second, religions formed a Church: “In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.”

So then Durkheim defined religion as: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” (EFRL, p. 47)

The spiritual, religious distinction made by William James and embedded in Twelve Step spirituality, seems to be the most widely accepted sense of generic spirituality in American culture today. It embraces Durkheim’s thought on religion and rejects Tylor’s understanding. It does this by self-consciously refusing to formulate a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things and also accepts the naturalness of believing in some type of transcendence. The very heart of Twelve Step spirituality is the permissibility of the individual to formulate a personal understanding of their “god.” So what unites members of Twelve Step groups like A.A. is the diversity of religious and spiritual belief permitted—even to the acceptance of the lack of such a belief.

This is the first of three related articles (What Does Religious Mean?, Spiritual not Religious Experience, The God of the Preachers) that will more fully describe some of the influences I believe helped to shape the spiritual, but not religious distinction of 12 Step recovery.

Originally published on May 22, 2015.

08/30/22

Doers of the Word

Knesset Menorah with Hillel; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

It has been said that the great Jewish rabbi Hillel was asked if he could explain the Torah (the Pentateuch; the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures) while standing on one foot. He accepted the challenge and said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is explanation.” This is the negative or prohibitive form of what has become widely known as the Golden Rule: “treat others as you would like others to treat you.” In one form or other the Golden Rule is found in many religions and embodies the ethic of relationships within Alcoholics Anonymous and self help groups based upon its Twelve Steps.

Christianity gives Jesus credit for stating the positive sense in Matthew 7:12 of the Sermon on the Mount: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus in effect was saying the golden rule was a summary of the entire Old Testament. Leon Morris said in his commentary on Matthew: “The person who consistently lives according to the golden rule is keeping all the regulations in Scripture directing one’s conduct toward other people.” There is no getting around it: if you are a follower of Jesus, you are to be actively doing good to others.

Jesus states both the Golden Rule and the two greatest commandments can be seen as summaries of the Hebrew Scriptures—the Law and the Prophets. In Matthew 22:34-40 Jesus was challenged by a Pharisee to give the great commandment of the Law—to summarize the law in one commandment. His response was to say there were two great commandments. The first one was: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second one was: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He then declared: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said he came to fulfill, not abolish the Law and the Prophets. He repeatedly sharpened and clarified for his listeners various teachings in the Old Testament and he did so again here in Matthew 7:12. Other references to the Golden Rule in Jewish literature are primarily in the prohibitive or negative form. Here for the first time Jesus stated it positively—do to others what you would have them do to you. Timothy Jacobs observed Jesus’ formulation here was “a stronger interpretation of the command to love one’s neighbor.”

According to Timothy Jacobs in the Lexham Bible Dictionary, referring to this phrase as the “Golden Rule” can be attributed to the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus (225-235 AD) who had it inscribed in gold on the wall of his chamber. The earliest reference to a variation of it seems to be from Egypt’s “Elegant Peasant” story, dating to around 1800 BC, but the translation there is uncertain. Various forms of the Golden Rule may be found in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, Scientology, Wicca, and others. “In philosophical traditions it has a presence in Existentialism, Humanism, Platonism, modern psychology, and countless others.”

Criticisms of the Golden Rule center on its lack of nuance, as it implies we should always do to others what we would want them to do to us. These critics have suggested a change known as the “Platinum rule.” George Bernard Shaw said one should not do others as they would want done to themselves because “their tastes may not be the same.” Karl Popper wrote in The Open Society and Its Enemies: “The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever reasonable, as they want to be done by.” A response to these critiques is “the Golden Rule implies a consideration of how the other person wants to be treated.” This so-called Platinum rule and the negative or prohibitive form of the Golden Rule may at first seem to be merely saying the same thing in a different way; not so. According to Leon Morris:

It is often urged that it matters little whether the golden rule be cited in its positive or negative forms, but this is not so. If we did nothing at all, we would satisfy the negative form! In the great judgment scene in chapter 25 [of Matthew] those who are condemned might well claim that they had fulfilled the golden rule in its negative form. Their condemnation lay in the fact that they had failed to do good, not in any evil action that they had carried through.

In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, D.A. Carson said the difference between the positive and negative forms of the Golden Rule are profound. The negative form teaches that if you don’t like being cursed at, don’t curse. If you don’t like being robbed, don’t rob others. Yet the positive form extends beyond the mere avoidance of wrongdoing. It says: if you enjoy being loved, love others. If you like receiving things, give to others. If you like being appreciated, appreciate others.

The positive form is thus far more searching than its negative counterpart. Here there is no permission to withdraw into a world where I offend no one, but accomplish no positive good, either. What would you like done to you? What would you really like? Then, do that to others. Duplicate both the quality of these things, and their quantity—“in everything.”Why are we to act in this way? Jesus does not say that we are to do to others what we would like them to do to us in order that they will do it to us. At stake is no such utilitarian value as “honesty pays” or the like. Rather, the reason we are to do to others what we would like others to do to us is that such behavior sums up the Law and the Prophets. In other words, such behavior conforms to the requirements of the kingdom of God, the kingdom which is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. It constitutes a quick test of the perfection demanded in 5:48; of the love described in 5:43ff.; of the truth portrayed in 5:33ff.; and so forth.

In chapter 11 of the A.A. Big Book, “A Vision for You,” Bill W. described the fellowship and friendship formed in A.A. He said you would make lifelong friends and be bound to them by escaping disaster together. Then, he said, you will know what it meant: “to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life.”

You will learn the full meaning of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Although the Golden Rule itself cannot be found in the Big Book, or the Twelve Steps, it lies at the heart of carrying the message of sobriety in the Twelfth Step. In the November 1970 issue of the AA Grapevine, F.F. pointed out that although the Twelve Steps do not include the words of the Golden Rule, “it does advise members to help other alcoholics.” You become a member of A.A. because “some other member was implementing the Golden Rule.” In response to the question “What Do I Get Out of AA?” in the January 1952 issue, Robbie said he got fellowship with folks he could respect and trust, “folks who believe in and practice the Golden Rule of life.” In the January 1948 issue, P.O.L. said among other things, sobriety was “honesty, tolerance, humility and the Golden Rule.” There are dozens of other references to it in the AA Grapevine.

It is likely that many within A.A. think of the Golden Rule in the broader sense of a moral or ethical principle of reciprocity and not because such behavior sums up the requirements of the kingdom of God. D.A. Carson observed that as the overwhelming demands of “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” drives home our spiritual bankruptcy, God gives us “a burning desire to turn to him with humble, persistent asking, seeking, knocking. Out of this we shall become ‘doers’ of the Word, and not just ‘hearers.’”

This is part of a series of reflections dedicated to the memory of Audrey Conn, whose questions reminded me of my intention to look at the various ways the Sermon on the Mount applies to Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery. If you’re interested in more, look under the category link “Sermon on the Mount.”

Originally posted on August 28, 2018.

08/16/22

Reinhold Niebuhr and the Serenity Prayer

In May of 1943 Reinhold Niebuhr completed teaching his classes at Union Theological Seminary and left for a two-month series of meetings, conferences and lectures in England and Scotland. The German Axis forces in North Africa surrendered on May 12, 1943. Four days later, German troops crushed the last resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, killing thousands of Jews. The rest were sent to Treblinka. Soon after Niebuhr returned to his family in Heath Massachusetts, Allied troops landed in Sicily on July 10^th. On July 24^th, the Allies began bombing the German city of Hamburg. By July 25^th, Mussolini was overthrown and the new Italian government began peace talks. Somewhere in the midst of these earth-shaking events, Niebuhr preached a sermon at the Heath Union Church and uttered what would become known as the Serenity Prayer for the first time.

The above-described origins of the Serenity Prayer were given by Elisabeth Sifton, the daughter of Reinhold Niebuhr, in her book: The Serenity Prayer. Sifton deftly placed its origins in the midst of the work and ministry of her father during WW II. She said at some point in late 1943 or early 1944, a friend of her father’s, Howard Robbins suggested this little prayer about “grace, courage and wisdom” would be appropriate for inclusion in material he was preparing for army chaplains in the field. Niebuhr gave Robbins a copy of the prayer, and in 1944 it was included in the Book of Prayers and Services for the Armed Forces.

This was its first publication in any form and in any language, and its because of this little booklet that eventually it became famous. . . . A short while later Alcoholics Anonymous, then a fledgling small organization scarcely a decade old, with my father’s permission, also started to use the prayer in their regular meetings.

Sifton said she doesn’t know when or how A.A. simplified the text of her father’s original version of the Serenity Prayer. And although he let it happen “and didn’t fuss when the wordings were altered,” he did mind the changes. But Niebuhr never copyrighted his prayer. Sifton said it was inconceivable to him to construe prayers as a source of revenue. So he could not and did not control its misquotation, misattribution or embellishment. The original text for Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer is followed by the shortened A.A. version, and one of the longer versions.

Niebuhr’s 1943 version: “God give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

The AA version appears in the Third Step essay of the A.A. book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

One version of the so-called “Complete” Serenity Prayer is in the linked article below by Nell Wing, an A.A. archivist. It is as follows:

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that He will make all things right; if I surrender to his Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.

Elisabeth Sifton said she has no idea where the additional clauses of the “complete” version came from. But their message and tone were not in any way “Niebuhrian.” She noted how the A.A. version simplified the opening and framed the prayer in the first person singular, rather than the first person plural of her father’s original text. It also omitted the spiritually correct, but difficult idea of praying for “grace to accept with serenity that which we cannot change.” Instead, it focused on the simpler idea of obtaining “serenity to accept what cannot be changed.”

Nell Wing, an A.A. Archivist, wrote a paper in 1981: “Origin of the Serenity Prayer.” There she described several different purported “origins” for the Serenity Prayer that A.A. was told over the years. Bill W. and A.A. have attributed their initial discovery of the Serenity Prayer to Niebuhr, but still seem to repeat information about it that conflicts with Sifton’s above-described version—which was told to her by her parents. For example, A.A. attributes their initial discovery of the (then) anonymous prayer to an obituary found by an early A.A. member in a New York paper in June of 1941. The connection to Dr. Niebuhr didn’t come to A.A.’s attention until the late 1940s.

Wing said an A.A. member reported seeing the prayer in Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings, “as if it were original to him.” She also quoted from a 1951 letter by an A.A. member to Bill W. The man had been in contact with Dr. Niebuhr, who confirmed that he did write the prayer and that it had been distributed to soldiers during WWII. Bill W. responded by saying that it was probable the Serenity Prayer existed in some form or other before Dr. Niebuhr. “Now it is pretty certain that Dr. Niebuhr did write the prayer in its present form and we also have on file a letter from him to that effect.” Bill then referenced a September 1950 article by Jack Alexander, which Wing quoted:

Originally thought in Alcoholics Anonymous to have been written by St. Francis of Assisi, it turned out on recent research to have been the work of another eminent nonalcoholic, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, of Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Niebuhr was amused on being told of the use to which his prayer was being put. Asked if it was original with him, he said he thought it was, but added, “Of course, it may have been spooking around for centuries.” Alcoholics Anonymous seized upon it in 1940 [actually 1941], after it has been used as a quotation in the New York Herald Tribune. The fellowship was late in catching up with it; and it will probably spook around a good deal longer before the rest of the world catches up with it.”

Wing also referred to several other “origins” of the prayer that have been sent to A.A. at one time or another. There was even the reprint of a letter written by Ursula Niebuhr, Reinhold’s wife, which briefly reviewed the background to the Serenity Prayer given above by her daughter.

In the January 1950 issue of the AA Grapevine, there appeared an article entitled: “The Serenity Prayer,” that attributed the prayer to Niebuhr, and even gave what they said his original text. The prayer attributed to Niebuhr in the Grapevine article was not the version quoted above as the Niebuhrian 1943 version. The A.A. article also dated the origin of the Serenity Prayer to 1932. Howard Robbins is said to have received permission to place it in a compilation of prayers he then published in 1934. An A.A. member saw the prayer in an obituary in 1939, and brought it to the attention of Bill W. and others in A.A. The history described here seems to contradict that given above by Sifton. For more on the A.A. understanding of the origins of the Serenity Prayer, see: “The Serenity Prayer and A.A.”

Elisabeth Sifton, her mother and father all seem to have a similar sense of the Niebuhrian version of the Serenity Prayer coming from a sermon that he preached at Heath during WWII. Nell Wing reviewed several other possibilities, some of which were shown to be false. Yet the consensus from A.A. seems to believe the 1943 Niebuhrian version wasn’t the first. Writing for the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2008, Fred Shapiro wrote of his own investigations into the origins of the Serenity Prayer, “Who Wrote the Serenity Prayer?”

Shapiro noted that Niebuhr’s version of the Serenity Prayer was selected by the editor’s of the World Almanac as one of the ten most memorable quotes of the last 100 years. In English and German-speaking countries, he thought it was probably the only prayer to rival the Lord’s Prayer in popularity. Shapiro said Niebuhr himself said it was possible he assimilated its concept from some earlier, forgotten source. Nevertheless, Niebuhr made it clear that he believed the prayer originated with him.

Shapiro’s research found versions of the Serenity Prayer in newspaper databases before 1943. He stated how the evidence was by no means, conclusive; and it is entirely possible Niebuhr composed the prayer much earlier than he himself remembered. When he found at least eight versions of the prayer in newspapers before 1943, he contacted Elisabeth Sifton with his evidence. In response, Sifton commented that prayers evolve, are borrowed, transmuted and revised—by their original writers and others.

Sifton herself noted in her own book where the ideas expressed in the Serenity Prayer existed in previous works by her father. She noted how the tone of the Serenity Prayer radiated throughout Niebuhr’s classic work, The Nature and Destiny of Man. Niebuhr gave a series lectures with the same name at the Gifford Lectures between 1938 and 1940 at the University of Edinburgh. She pointed out where the second volume ended with a consideration of the ideas he was to express in his little prayer just a year or so later:

Wisdom about our destiny is dependent upon a humble recognition of the limits of our knowledge and our power. Our most reliable understanding in the fruit of “grace,” in which faith completes our ignorance without pretending to possess its certainties as knowledge, and in which contrition mitigates our pride without destroying our hope.

The following are two examples of what Shapiro found. Follow the above link to his full article for more.

In the January 16, 1936 edition of the Syracuse Herald, the executive secretary for the Syracuse Y.W.C.A. quoted the following prayer in her annual report:

O God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.

In the February 19, 1939 edition of the Ada (Oklahoma) Herald the home counselor for Oklahoma City’s public schools prayer said the prayer for both parents should be:

Oh God, give me serenity to accept that which cannot be changed, give me courage to change that which can be changed and wisdom to tell the one from the other.

Shapiro said it was possible that Niebuhr introduced the prayer by the mid-1930s in an unpublished or private setting. It was then quickly disseminated with his identification largely forgotten. But he said it must be asked why Niebuhr himself never suggested he had used the prayer in the 1930s. However, he believes a second alternative is more likely. The prayer really was “spooking around for years” and Niebuhr unconsciously adapted it from some already-existing formulation.

Sifton responded to Shapiro’s conclusions in “It Takes A Master to Make A Masterpiece.” You can find her response at the end of the link for Shapiro’s article, “Who Wrote the Serenity Prayer?” She still affirmed her father as the essential author of the Serenity Prayer. Shapiro merely demonstrated that her father’s voice reached far more American churches and organizations than they had previously realized. Prayers are presented orally and become famous orally long before they are put on paper.

Yet the great masterpiece prayers don’t materialize in some random, bubble-up way, either: their power comes from a distillation of complex spiritual truths, and for this we need authors, we need the tradition’s most gifted practitioners. In my book, I quoted prayers from various sources that my father knew well and whose cadences and theology feed into the Serenity Prayer’s concise wisdoms, because I wanted to suggest how the rich texture of worship as experienced by generations of believers nourishes the creation of new prayers. To throw light on this long, often anonymous process was one purpose of my book.

Sifton commented that since the Serenity Prayer has become so associated with the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, most people think of it as expressing what we must work on within our “personal self-improvement projects.” Yet it was composed in wartime. It addresses “the inconsolable pain, loss, and guilt that war inflicts on the communities that wage it.”

She said her father drafted his prayers rapidly, or composed them right on the spot, rewording them many times before he felt they were in final form. Most of the prayers she cited in her book were not published until after his death in 1971. But by then generations of student and worshipers had known them well and used them for decades. “The Serenity Prayer was unusual in his oeuvre [body of work], then, only in the odd circumstance of its wartime publication and subsequent diffusion.”

The Niebuhrian version of the Serenity Prayer seems to have clearly come from Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1943 sermon. It also seems likely that the concepts within the prayer had been part of his teaching, thinking and writing in the years prior to that fateful sermon. And yet, religious believers and philosophers for thousands of years have struggled to be at peace or in harmony with the things in life that cannot be changed; to find courage to change the things they can; and to know the one from the other. The dilemma of the Serenity Prayer strikes at the heart of all religious and philosophical quests to know the will of God. Lord, by your grace grant us the serenity, courage and wisdom to know and do your will.

Originally posted on 01/17/2017

11/2/21

The Plan for Salvation and Recovery

“This is a Program of Total Abstinence.” (Narcotics Anonymous, 5^th edition, p, 81)

Addiction recovery based upon the Twelve Steps makes a distinction between abstinence and recovery, where abstinence is simply not using drugs or alcohol, and recovery is the result of combining abstinence with the change that occurs when an addict or alcoholic applies the Twelve Steps to their life. There is a ‘formula’ used to capture this, abstinence + change = recovery. This simple formula recognizes that mere abstinence without change is a ‘dry drunk’ that involves ‘stinking thinking.’ The desire to get high or drunk remains and will manifest itself in behavior and attitudes consistent with those the person did during their active drinking or drug use. A merely abstinent alcoholic or addict acts, talks, and feels like they did when drinking or drugging.

Change that is not based upon abstinence is not sustainable. It will not lead to recovery. Yet, you can sometimes achieve radical changes in addiction-related thinking, feeling and behavior without total abstinence. There can be a drastic reduction in the harmful effects of active drug and alcohol use. But for recovery, a change of heart and soul is needed—a progressive spiritual growth process that diminishes the need and desire for the mind altering and mood changing effects of drugs and alcohol.

Continuing to use drugs and alcohol, even in moderation, while working to change the need and desire for the high is like taking an antibiotic only until you feel better, and not for the full course of the required treatment. You only manage to diminish the harmful effects, which can return even stronger without a complete eradication of the original infection. Using drugs and alcohol is part of the problem; and simply diminishing the need and desire for getting high or drunk without concurrent abstinence cannot eradicate an addiction. Abstinence plus change equals recovery. As the Blue Book of Narcotics Anonymous says, “Complete abstinence is the foundation of our new way of life.” In other words, recognizing the need for ongoing abstinence is a prerequisite for recovery.

Terence Gorski, in Understanding the Twelve Steps, noted there were four tasks to completing the First Step. First, you admit that the use of alcohol or drugs has caused major problems in your life. Second, you admit the you are powerless to control the use of alcohol or drugs. Third, you admit your life has become unmanageable as a result of alcohol or drug us. And fourth, you admit that you are powerless to manage your life effectively as long as you continue to use alcohol or drugs. “When you have completed all four of these tasks, what decision do you have to make? What’s the only rational decision left. . . . You have to stop drinking.”

Things were starting to make sense. It was like a large jigsaw puzzle slowly being put together. The picture was beginning to appear. I started to feel good about being clean and having complete abstinence from all mind altering or mood-changing chemicals. (Narcotics Anonymous, p. 198)

Where does an addict or alcoholic go from here? If they are convinced by working through the First Step or living through the unmanageability of an active addiction that they are powerless over alcohol and drugs, they are right where addiction wants them to be. They have no hope; there appears to be no help. They crave another drink . . . joint . . . pill . . . fix . . . whatever. Their options are to die quickly or slowly; with or without their drug of choice. Psalm 86 says, “How long will your wrath burn like fire? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” “Forever” and “no one can” are the only possible answers. But there is a Second Step: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

I took my last drink one week into my second treatment. I was overcome by the obsession to drink after a hot day of fishing. The only thing I could find was a bottle of liqueur with about an ounce left in it. I guess I needed that last drink to show just how powerless over alcohol I was. In my heart, I surrendered. I couldn’t drink, and I couldn’t not drink. I hoped there was a Higher Power that could restore me to sanity, because I am sure couldn’t. (AA Grapevine, vol 62, no, 9)

The significance of this “Higher Power” is as essential for recovery as Jesus Christ is for salvation; but they are not the same thing. The ability to “worship according to one’s own understanding of the spiritual” was referred to as the saving grace of the 11th Step:

Sought through prayer and meditation 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.

Any kind of prayer and meditation is very difficult for many in early recovery. In the 11th Step there is a reaffirmation of “the freedom to worship according to one’s own understanding of the spiritual.” By the time anyone joins A.A. to address their alcoholism, he or she has been “out of touch” with spiritual things for a long time. For them to suddenly accept all that they had been rejecting would be almost impossible. “The principle of freedom embodied in the 11th Step opens the door to any individual seeking spiritual help by whatever path and through whatever concepts he himself prefers” (AA Grapevine, vol. 3, no. 4).

Although it is not the same path, this plan for recovery runs parallel to the plan of salvation.

God’s Plan for Salvation and Recovery

In Romans 6:1, Paul asked if we should continue sinning as a way to experience more of the grace and righteousness of God, then immediately answered with an emphatic denial: by no means! Through 6:11 he proceeded to describe our union with Christ; how we were baptized into His death (6:4) so that we too can walk in newness of life (6:4). Christ died to free us from sin (Ro. 6:6). Because if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him and be free from sin (6:7-8). Just as Christ died to sin, once for all, and lives to God, we should also consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:9-11).

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:12-14).

When Paul exhorts us to not let sin reign in our bodies (Romans 6:12), he is telling us to abstain from sin. Because if we do sin, we open the door to be ruled by sinful passions (Romans 1:28-31). Since we are powerless over sin, we cannot control or resist our craving for more. There is no possibility for compromise. We cannot simply have a small taste of it every once and awhile. If we continue to sin, we will be ruled by our desire for it. In his commentary on Romans, Robert Mounce warned, “Sin continues in force in its attempt to dominate the life and conduct of the believer.”

Paul then more specifically exhorts us to not allow any part (or member) of us to be an instrument or weapon for unrighteousness; but to instead present our members as instruments for righteousness. See also Romans 12:1, where his exhortation is for us to present (the same Greek verb) ourselves as “living sacrifices.” There cannot be a corner or part of our being that is given over to sin. It will eventually lead to sin reigning in our “mortal bodies,” forcing us to obey its desires. In the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Martin Hawthorne said: “Union with Christ (Rom 6:2–11) compels behavior which is consistent with it (Romans 6:12–23).”

The fact that Paul commands us to not allow sin to reign in our mortal bodies means that it is possible for us to do so. Otherwise, it is a taunting mockery to command an individual who is powerless over sin to not sin. Such a command would only reinforce the despair and hopelessness of being under the dominion of sin (or addiction). Even though we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), sin will not have dominion over us because we are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:14).

We are not doomed to the eternal powerlessness and unmanageability of sin if we believe that Christ can save us from our body of sin and death (Romans 7:24-25). There is a power greater than sin and therefore Paul can command us to not sin. According to John Murray in his commentary on Romans, “Deliverance from the dominion of sin is both the basis of and the incentive to the fulfillment of the exhortation.”

Again, the parallel to recovery is clear. The addict or alcoholic must fully abstain from mind altering, mood changing substances. They can’t “present” themselves again to drugs or alcohol. If they do, they open the door once again to eventual domination by or slavery to addiction and its passions. Surrender to God in the Third Step means that after we present ourselves to him, we are no longer subject to the slavery of alcoholism or addiction—as long as we remain abstinent with God’s help in working the Steps.

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 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 9th in the series. Enjoy.

10/27/20

Bill W. and His LSD Experiences, Part 1

Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, has an acknowledged history of LSD use in the 1950s. This was when LSD was an unknown, experimental chemical, with no regulations or restrictions regulating its use. The A.A. published story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, Pass It On, openly discussed Bill’s interest in LSD. It mentioned individuals who were known by or became friends to Bill—Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond—and who also happen to be important figures in the history of psychedelics. Yet by 1959, “Bill had personally withdrawn from the LSD experiments,” so that he would not compromise the future of A.A. But there is more to the story of Bill W. and LSD than what is found in Pass It On.

It began in the winter of 1943-44 when Bill and his wife Lois set out on a cross-country trip visiting A.A. groups that had sprouted up since the 1939 publication of the Big Book. According to Susan Cheever in My Name is Bill, Bill and Lois met Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley while they were in Palo Alto, California and there was an immediate attraction between Wilson and Huxley. Heard and Huxley believed the betterment of society would come from an experiment in community and community education. Bill and A.A. were the practical application of that philosophy. Heard and Huxley invited Bill and Lois to spend New Year’s week at Trabuco College, a retreat center in the desert established by Heard to study comparative religion, and research meditation and prayer. The Wilsons returned to New York on January 22, 1944, but an important friendship was formed.

Pass It On said Bill and Huxley had an immediate rapport, one that Bill was immensely proud of. “They had much in common, although Huxley was not an alcoholic.” Huxley would later say he considered Bill to be a “modern saint” and “the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.” It was through Bill’s friendship with Huxley that Bill first heard about, and eventually decided to try LSD.

Humphry Osmond began his research with LSD and mescaline at St. George’s Hospital in London, where he was employed after WW II. In 1951, he moved to Saskatchewan, Canada to join the staff at Weybrun Mental Hospital. At Weybrun he organized the hospital as a design-research laboratory where he conducted a variety of studies into the use of hallucinogenic drugs. He was initially investigating the possibility that schizophrenia arose primarily from distortions of perception similar to those experienced by individuals under the influence of mescaline or LSD. But unexpectedly, Osmond began to see the potential of these drugs to foster mind-expanding, mystical experiences. It was during this time of experimentation that Aldous Huxley began a correspondence with Osmond and eventually asked him if he would kindly supply Huxley with a dose of mescaline.

In May of 1953 Osmond traveled to the Los Angeles area for a conference, where he provided the requested dose of mescaline and supervised Huxley’s experience with mescaline. Huxley would write The Doors of Perception (1954), which enthusiastically described his experience. He wrote: “The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a led self-centered and more creative life.” Gerald Heard tried mescaline in 1954 and then tried LSD in 1955. Heard felt that properly used, these psychedelics had the potential to enlarge a man’s mind, by allowing him to see beyond his ego.

Huxley and Heard would have naturally thought of what LSD could mean for Bill W., but Bill was initially opposed to giving drugs to alcoholics. In Pass It On, Osmond said: “I went down and was introduced to Bill and told him about it, and he was extremely unthrilled. He was very much against giving alcoholics drugs.” Huxley was apparently able to convince Bill of the mystical potential of LSD. Osmond reported that when alcoholics were given LSD, they reported having a new clarity of vision, a new vividness of experience. From his observations of the LSD work with alcoholics, Bill concluded LSD temporarily reduced the forces of the ego, which allowed the influx of God’s grace.

If therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going—well, that might be of some help. So I consider LSD to be of some value to some people, and practically no damage to anyone. It will never take the place of any of the existing means by which we can reduce the ego, and keep it reduced.

While Bill was debating the wisdom of trying it for himself, there were two other individuals taking the LSD plunge—a man and a woman who would have an important role in Bill’s exploration of LSD.

Dr. Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, first took LSD on October 12, 1955, reporting that the “problems and strivings, the worries and frustrations of everyday life vanished; in their place was a majestic, sunlit, heavenly inner quietude.” He immediately began doing his own research with Huxley. And on August 29, 1956 at Trabuco College, he supervised Bill Wilson’s first experience with LSD. Gerald Heard took notes; Aldous Huxley and Tom Powers, an A.A. friend of Bill’s from New York, stood by. According to Susan Cheever in My Name is Bill and the A.A. approved book Pass It On, Bill loved LSD and felt it helped him eliminate many of the barriers erected by the ego that stood in the way of his direct experience of God and the universe. It reminded him of his initial “hot flash” experience in Towns Hospital.

Betty Eisner, a psychology grad student, was Cohen’s initial research subject in 1955. As a result of her intense interest in his LSD work, Betty began meeting periodically with Sidney Cohen. A case report of her LSD experience was included in an article published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in July of 1958, “Subjective Reports of Lysergic Acid Experiences in a Context of Psychological Test Performance.” Eisner completed her Ph.D. by the end of July 1956 and was a coauthor of this paper along with Cohen and Lionel Fichman.

Eisner and Cohen began to think LSD could be helpful in facilitating psychotherapy, as well as curing alcoholism and enhancing creativity. They coauthored, “Psychotherapy with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders in 1958. For a time, Bill W. was an integral part of their exploration of the psychotherapeutic benefits of LSD. Eisner maintained an active interest in hallucinogens throughout her career. Cohen would eventually become a director for the National Institute of Mental Health, but was always opposed to the counterculture movement’s use of LSD. He thought it was only safe when used under medical supervision.

In Part 2, we’ll look at the time period between the fall of 1956 and early 1957, what Eisner described as a boiling pot of activity surrounding LSD and mescaline. And Bill W. was in the middle of the pot.

05/5/20

Varieties of A.A. Experience

Philip Wylie was an American author, known mostly for science fiction novels, like When Worlds Collide, which was made into a 1951 movie, and Gladiator, which partially inspired Superman. He wrote on a variety of subjects ranging from science fiction, mysteries and satire, to the threat of nuclear holocaust and even penned some book reviews. His 1945 novel, The Paradise Crater, led to his house arrest because he described a post-WW II Nazi conspiracy to develop and use an atomic bomb several months before the first atomic test at Alamogordo. But before his house arrest, he wrote a little-known article in the 1944 September issue of the AA Grapevine.

An editor of the Grapevine had been in contact with him after he wrote a book review of The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson for the NYT. He said the value of the book was the gifted insight of its author, “his shattering candor and his vivid intuitions.” What likely caught the eye of the editor of the Grapevine was his comment that the book could become a textbook for Alcoholics Anonymous. Wylie said in his Grapevine article his review showed he had an interest in alcoholics because he was one. But he quit on his own—without the help of a group like A.A. to assist or advise him. The help paralleled what he then knew about A.A.

The things I did are, maybe, the things many others are doing. I was psychoanalyzed twice. I studied psychology after that–Jungian, Freudian, Adlerian, behavioristic. Then I read all the basic religious books. Then I read the philosophies. Then I went to insane asylums, and looked at them.

Carl Jung himself suggested Wylie look at a few insane asylums, where he learned he was not going insane, as he had been unconsciously afraid of “precisely that.” Drawing on the Jungian idea of “transcendent symbol,” instead of the notion of the spiritual or religious, he said it may be of interest to alcoholics that there are abstract, non-religious routes “to this same, universal, human contact with inner integrity, truth and the ‘nature of nature itself.’” In getting sober, Wylie said he read everything on alcoholism he could find. He became interested in the care and condition of alcoholic friends. Clairvoyantly, he said the values of chemistry should not be overlooked. He was especially interested in A.A. because it represented “the first really effective effort to deal in kind and in scale and in the right category, with alcoholism.”

Bill W. commented on Wylie’s article in the same issue of the Grapevine, saying it should endear him to every A.A., because he was so very alcoholic! Bill invited Philip Wylie to become a member of A.A. whenever he wanted. No A.A. should be disturbed if he could not fully agree with all of what Wylie said. “Rather shall we reflect that the roads to recovery are many; that any story or theory of recovery from one who has trod the highway is bound to contain much truth.” Bill was intrigued by Wylie’s reference to spiritual experience “a la Jung” as “transcendent symbol,” but he thought that design for living was pretty inadequate. Humility and faith in the power of the Living God was a much stronger medicine.

A.A. draws frankly upon emotion and faith while the scientific intellectual would avoid these resources as much as he can. Yet the more intellectual techniques do work sometimes, reaching those who might never be able to take the stronger dose. Besides, they remind us, when over proud of our own accomplishment, that A.A. has no monopoly on reviving alcoholics.

From the earliest times of A.A.’s existence, its members recognized it wasn’t the only method, the only way to sober up alcoholics. There is an A.A. pamphlet, “Many Paths to Spirituality,” that addresses the misconception that A.A. is a religious organization. Buddhists, Catholics, Native Americans and even agnostics or atheists peacefully co-exist in A.A. One person said: “I’m still an agnostic. But I have discovered that the program will work for anyone who will let it. I didn’t have to find a way to make it work. It will work perfectly well on its own, provided I’m willing to do some work myself.”

I am a Sioux/Blackfoot woman. I have been sober in A.A. for many years. Many of us believe in the Great Spirit, and it was a great relief to find out I could believe in a higher power of my choice. I didn’t have to give up any part of my beliefs when I joined A.A. I could live in the white man’s world, but also retain all of my people’s Native traditions, customs and ceremonies. In fact, A.A. made my beliefs stronger. My joining A.A. didn’t restrict me, it gave me more freedom.I’m a devout, lifelong Catholic. That is an integral part of my experience, strength and hope. I call my higher power God and do not feel I should have to qualify that every time I speak at a meeting. I’m perfectly okay with others referring to Buddha, Mohammed, Yahweh, or whatever name they call their higher power.By incorporating basic Buddhist practices with my A.A. practices — regular meetings, doing service, working with newcomers, living the Steps and reading A.A. literature — I have discovered an awesome way to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding and live life on life’s terms in relative serenity.

In “The Buddha and Bill W.,” Regina Walker drew out the parallels between A.A. and Buddhism. She asked a Buddhist teacher, Noah Levine, if he believed the practice of Buddhism was complementary to the 12-step model of recovery, and he replied:

Most will find Buddhism to fit well with their 12-step process. It will depend on one’s concept of a Higher Power. If one believes that there is an all-powerful God that is the creator and controller of the universe, they may have difficulty understanding things like karma. But I think that most 12 steppers will find the universal principles like generosity, forgiveness, compassion and the meditative path of mindfulness as complementary to the steps. More importantly, those who have difficulty with the 12-step views on powerlessness and God, will find in Buddhism a recovery process that does not ask for belief, only encourages direct knowing.

Whether an individual is Buddhist, Catholic, agnostic or some other form of spiritual belief, they can fit within the structure of A.A.’s 12-Step recovery. The receptiveness of A.A. to alternate views of spirituality was part of its earliest thinking and expression. Bill W. read The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James soon after his last drinking episode and embedded James’s thought into the A.A. 12-Step program. Its enduring influence is seen by The Varieties of Religious Experience being the only book named in Alcoholics Anonymous, the A.A. Big Book itself.

See “What Does Religious Mean?”, “Spiritual, not Religious Experience” and “The God of the Preachers” for more on the spiritual-religious distinction made by William James and its influence within A.A. and 12-Step recovery. Bill’s article responding to that of Philip Wylie was reprinted in The Language of the Heart, a collection of his Grapevine writings. Several of Philip Wylie’s books are still in print and available on Amazon in both print and kindle editions.

04/14/20

Thoroughly Following the AA Path

Chapter five of the AA Big Book, “How It Works,” begins with a bold statement: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” The following two and a half pages are typically read at the beginning of every AA meeting and contain the essence of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. According to William Schaberg in Writing the Big Book, there is a persistent AA myth that Bill W. once said if he could change one word in the Big book, he would change “Rarely” to “Never.” But Bill categorically denied this, saying he never considered the change.

There are ongoing disputes over whether the claim made is true, namely that rarely does an individual fail who has thoroughly followed the AA path. There are many who agree with Lance Dodes, who said in his book, The Sober Truth, that the major studies of the effectiveness of 12-Step programs were “deeply scientifically flawed.” Dodes alleged the overall success rate for AA is between 5 and 10% and that his book was an expose on AA, Twelve Step programs and the rehab industry—how “a failed addiction treatment model” came to dominate America. But what does he mean by success rate? Dodes said he understood success rate to mean the number of people who enter these programs and are able to become and stay sober. We will look closer at this sense of “success rate” later.

Laurel Sindewald supposedly did a scientific, objective assessment of AA and found that “AA Is not Evidence-Based Treatment.” She referenced a 2006 Cochrane Review, whose authors concluded: “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF [Twelve Step Facilitation] approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.” I don’t think Sindewald’s review was either scientific or objective and previously described my reasons in “More Equal Therapies Than Others,” Part 1 and Part 2. You will find a description of TSF, which was developed by Joseph Nowinski, in those articles. By the way, the National Institute on Drug Abuse lists TSF as an evidence- or research-based behavioral therapy approach in drug abuse treatment.

Dodes also cited the 2006 Cochrane Review, noting how it was one of the most prestigious scientific research organizations in the world. But he selectively quoted the Review as saying: “‘No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA” in treating alcoholism. This group reached the same conclusion about professional (12-step facilitation therapy, or TSF), which is the core of virtually every alcoholism-rehabilitation program in the country.”

I respectfully disagree that studies showing the effectiveness of 12-Step programs are “deeply flawed” and I am concerned with how Dodes conflated AA and the 12-Steps with the rehab industry/addiction treatment in his critique of the rehab industry, calling AA “a failed treatment model.” I do not think he had solid, scientific grounding in his critique of AA and the 12-Steps. In order to demonstrate this belief, let’s examine a recent Cochrane Review that did find evidence of AA’s effectiveness and then look at If You Work It, It Works! The Science Behind 12 Step Recovery, a 2015 book by Joseph Nowinski. Remember that research done by Cochrane “is internationally recognized as the benchmark for high-quality information about the effectiveness of health care.”

The 2020 Cochrane Review, “Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder” found that manualized AA/TSF interventions usually produced higher rates of continuous abstinence than other established treatments. Non-manualized AA/TSF performed as well as other established treatments. “Clinically-delivered TSF interventions designed to increase AA participation usually lead to better outcomes over the subsequent months to years in terms of producing higher rates of continuous abstinence.” This effect was achieved largely by fostering engagement in AA beyond the end of the TSF clinical intervention.

Speaking to The New York Times, the lead author John Kelly said: “We now have good evidence that AA and 12-step-facilitation treatments produce high rates of remission and reduced healthcare costs.” He added that AA created a socially engaged fellowship. The social network attracted and engaged people longer term, which reduces the risk of relapse.

The analysis found that AA and AA-connected 12-step programs had 20% improved abstinence rates over a period of 12 months compared to other therapies. That effect remained constant at both 24 and 36 months. When the researchers looked at the data in terms of number of days of abstinence, they found AA and other 12-step programs worked as well as other interventions. The data also showed that AA and 12-step programs worked as well as others when it came to getting drinkers to cut back on the amount of alcohol they were consuming.

In an author interview with Cochrane, Kelly said the quality of evidence for the abstinence outcome was moderate to high, indicating a high degree of confidence can be placed in these new findings. He said the 2006 Cochrane Review was not strong, as it was only based on 8 studies and included just a few thousand participants. “The updated review is based on 27 rigorous comparative investigations and included around 11,000 participants.” The last 25 years has seen a rapid expansion in the growth of studies on AA and TSF clinical interventions designed to link patients with AA. Research can prove it is effective at helping people achieve sobriety and lasting remission.

These superior benefits make sense when alcohol use disorder is viewed as a chronic illness, which for many is susceptible to relapse over months and years; one of the reasons why AA helps more people over the long-term is through its ability to keep people actively involved in its recovery-focused peer support social network over these long periods so that their brains and bodies can adjust to the absence of alcohol and the demands of recovery and help them adopt a new lifestyle that is more conducive and supportive to long-term stable remission and enhanced quality of life.

In the Prologue of If You Work It, It Works! The Science Behind 12 Step Recovery, Joseph Nowinski said that most of the evidence on AA was published in academic journals and as a result was largely inaccessible to the general public. His intent was to write about research done on AA in nontechnical, jargon-free language and make it available to the general public. “It is my hope that members of AA will find the evidence I present here relevant and insightful with respect to their own recovery.”

From the Alcoholics Anonymous 2011 Membership Survey, Nowinski reported that among individuals who were active in AA, 72% were sober more than a year, and a third (36%) more than ten years. The average number of meetings attended per week was 2.6; 81% have a sponsor and 86% have a home group. Nowinski said if you wanted to quit drinking, and stay quit, you should attend 2 or 3 meetings a week, get a sponsor and choose a home group. The 2014 Membership Survey is available online and reported similar figures. This consistency in membership surveys goes back to the first survey done by AA in 1977. But what about academic researchers who have studied AA and how involvement in AA relates to staying sober?

After examining studies that focused on the relationship between Twelve Step group affiliation and abstinence, Nowinski said there was a significant correlation between AA or NA meeting attendance and recovery. He added there was a noted distinction between attending self-help meetings and involvement. Individuals who merely attend meetings, but do not identify as program members were said to be on the outside, looking in; and their recovery may be less robust as a result. “Paths of entry into alcoholics anonymous” found that individuals who participated in both treatment and AA were more likely to achieve remission than individuals who only participated in professional treatment. “Alcoholics Anonymous Involvement and Positive Alcohol-Related Outcomes” said the study’s findings supported the hypothesis that AA involvement causes subsequent decreases in alcohol consumption and related problems. Analysis of longitudinal studies in “Alcohol and drug treatment involvement, 12-step attendance and abstinence” showed that greater 12-step attendance led to increases in 5-year abstinence and 7-year abstinence.

In the Epilogue of If You Work It, It Works! Nowinski said his book had looked at what objective science had to say about the effectiveness of the AA Twelve Step program, acknowledging that the bulk of research he reviewed was fairly new. He mentioned a group of “prominent researchers” who examined this emerging evidence on the effectiveness of AA and other abstinence-based mutual self-help fellowships. Their review, “Self-help organizations for alcohol and drug problems,” said: “Because longitudinal studies associate self-help group involvement with reduced substance use, improved psychosocial functioning, and lessened health care costs, there are humane and practical reasons to develop self-help group supportive policies.” In conclusion, Nowinski said: “So it would appear from research that the most appropriate answer to our initial question comes from the creators of the Twelve Step model: ‘Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.’”

02/11/20

Founded On the Rock

© Vasilis Ververidis | 123rf.com; The Holy Monastery of Rousanou/St. Barbara, in Greece.

Jesus reached the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount. He had systematically dismantled the common religious understanding of God’s Word— “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you …” —throughout the Sermon. And in Matthew 7:21-23, he just told his hearers that not everyone who acknowledged his Lordship and performed deeds in his name will enter the kingdom of heaven! Surely Jesus did not mean that there were even some people who cast out demons, performed miracles and even prophesied in his name, but were ultimately opponents to the Law and the Prophets? Surely what he said in 7:21-23 was a rhetorical figure aimed to get our attention and not to be taken literally? All eyes were on Jesus as he told a final parable that communicated to his audience that he meant what he had just said.

I don’t imagine there were any side conversations either. They all wanted to hear what Jesus was going to say next. So, he told another little parable, that began with: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). When the rain, flood and winds come, it will withstand the storm and not fall. “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand” (Matthew 7:25). When the rain, flood and winds come, it will fall.

The contrasts are between wisdom and foolishness, the rock and sand, and ultimately between hearing and doing his words, versus hearing and not doing. In effect, Jesus is saying: “Yes, you heard me right. I am saying you have to live out what you hear me saying here today. And if you don’t, when trials come, whatever you have built up will collapse.” In his book, The Sermon on the Mount, Sinclair Ferguson said Jesus is telling us there are two ways we can respond. We can either put his sermon into practice through obedience, or we can ignore it. The wise man puts into practice what he hears. As a result, he’ll withstand the trials when they come. Leon Morris said:

The little parable … emphasizes the importance of acting in accordance with Jesus’ teaching^. It is one thing to hear what he said and even approve of it; it is quite another to obey. But it is only obedience that results in solid achievement.

Following the path Jesus described in the Sermon on the Mount is like building your house on a rock. You build on a firm foundation; you can trust his words to protect you in the worst storms. Ferguson said this meant more than simply hearing God’s word taught, becoming familiar with it or even agreeing with it. You have to put what you heard into practice. “The difference between the false and the true Christian is that the true Christian puts into practice what he has heard from the Master in this sermon.”

When he finished, the crowds were astonished at how authoritatively Jesus taught. This was not what they were used to from their scribes, who appealed to authority, but did not habitually teach with authority. “It was the scribal habit to appeal to authority, for it was an age in which originality was not highly prized. It was widely accepted that there had been a golden age early in the history of the race and since then history had been all downhill.” While it was customary for the scribes to cite an authority from the golden age, Jesus ignored this method of teaching. He simply said, “I say to you.” There was a context behind the imagery of the parables Jesus taught that gave them significance, as there is here. In his commentary on Matthew, Craig Blomberg said:

The wise person living in the Palestinian desert would erect a dwelling on a secure rock to protect the house from the flash floods that sudden storms created. The foolish person would build directly on the sand and would have no protection against the devastation of the elements. So too Judgment Day will come like a flood to disclose which spiritual structures will endure. Preliminary crises may also reveal authentic and inauthentic spirituality. In fact, often only in times of crisis can one’s faith be truly proven. This parable concludes Jesus’ “two ways” discussion and forms a fitting conclusion to the sermon as a whole by making plain that there is no valid reason for refusing Christ’s appeal. As R. T. France states succinctly, “The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be admired but to be obeyed.”

Within recovery, there is a similar appeal, and we could paraphrase this last quote as “The path to recovery in A.A. is not meant to be admired but followed.” Some individuals familiar with A.A. may want to nuance this paraphrase as suggestive rather than stating a “must.” Pointing to the Big Book itself, they can quote from the chapter “How It Works,” where it says: “Here are the Steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery.” And towards the end of the chapter “A Vision for You,” it says: “Our book is meant to be suggestive only.” But it would be a mistake to conclude it means you can take what you like from the Big Book, and leave the rest. A.A. does not present a Burger King mentality for it path to recovery, saying you can “have it your way.” There are also some “musts.”

A number of years ago Stewart C. wrote a concordance, A Reference Guide to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is currently out of print, but there are still some copies available through Amazon. In his exhaustive coverage of the first 162 pages of the Big Book, he cited 82 examples of the word “must.” The following are quotes from first, “The Doctor’s Opinion,” and second “We Agnostics.”

The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives. . . . But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life—or else.

So, the path of the Big Book and its Steps are suggestive, but if you choose to follow it, you must find a higher power, and you must walk the path thoroughly. In the “How It Works” chapter of the Big Book, it says: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” The text acknowledged there will be some who balk at remaining completely on the path described, but begged its readers “to be fearless and thorough” from the beginning. “Half measures availed us nothing.” This was said to be a turning point. The suggestion was to surrender to God—ask for “His protection and care with complete abandon.”

Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

So the rock upon which the individual builds their new life without alcohol must include a surrender to God. Their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves. They must find a spiritual basis to life and thoroughly follow that path. When the storms of life come, they will be able to withstand the gales, because their foundation was on this rock.

The association of the Sermon on the Mount and Twelve Step-based recovery was there from the beginning. It was an important meditative guide to Dr. Bob S., one of the cofounders of A.A. He said before there was a Big Book, the Bible was their Big Book; and the Sermon on the Mount was one of their key passages. In Writing the Big Book, William Schaberg said Dr. Bob claimed in 1945 that he tried to spend an hour each day reading on some religious subject. But he always returned “to the simple teachings in The Sermon on the Mount, the Book of James, and the 13^th Chapter of Corinthians.” In Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers Dr. Bob said he thought the Sermon on the Mount contained “the underlying spiritual philosophy of A.A.”

I hope these reflections on the association of the Sermon on the Mount and the program of recovery in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous will help you in your own journey along that path. If so, please pass it on to others.

01/7/20

On the Road of Happy Destiny

Continuing with his imagery of the Two Ways tradition (See, “Do They Walk Their Talk?”), Jesus contrasts the difference between real and merely nominal discipleship here in Matthew 7:21-23. Just as there are only two ways in life, the way to life and the way to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14), in the end there are only two destinations—eternal life or eternal punishment (Matthew 25: 31-46). In Matthew 7:21 Jesus says when the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God) is realized, it will not be a person’s acknowledgement of Christ’s Lordship that counts, but whether their profession is shown in the way they live. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Simply saying, “Lord, Lord,” is not enough.

²¹“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²²On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

The word Lord (kyrios) had various meanings. It could mean the owner of something, as in Matthew 20:8; or even a conventional form of polite address, much like how we use “Sir” (Matthew 21:30). The Romans used it in reference of their emperor (Acts 25:26), and even when speaking of the gods people worshiped (1 Corinthians 8:5). When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, Lord was used consistently as the translation for the divine name Yahweh. Here, given the reference of what will happen on Judgement Day, it likely has overtones of divinity. In his commentary on Matthew, Leon Morris said:

On Judgment Day Jesus will be seen for what he really is, and the greeting here implies that the people in question will be claiming to belong to him. But their claim will be of no avail, Jesus says, unless their lives back it up. It is doing the will of the Father that matters, not the words we profess.

Morris went on to say this was not salvation by works, but the contrast between profession and way of life. If someone really trusted Christ for salvation, their lives would no longer be self-centered. “Jesus is not saying that those saved will have earned their salvation, but that the reality of their faith will be made clear by their fruitful lives.” Many on Judgement Day will try to affirm Jesus is their Lord by referencing the things they did. “To be active in religious affairs is no substitute for obeying God.” You can be active in doing the things for God, without being in submission to him as Lord. “It is easy for anyone to profess loyalty, but to practice it is quite another thing.”

Another point to notice in 7:21 is the reference of the Father by Jesus as “my Father who is in heaven.” It was said for the first time in the gospel of Matthew. God had already been referred to several times in Matthew, but always as your Father or our Father (in the Lord’s Prayer). From this point forward, excluding two exceptions, Jesus will always say ‘my Father who is in heaven.’ In his commentary on Matthew, John Nolland said this phrase brought into focus Jesus’ capacity to mediate a link with the heavenly Father. In the Sermon on the Mount, it pointed to Jesus’ role in making clear the Father’s will. In 7:28 it is stated the crowds were astonished at his teaching, “for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” The phrase is also suggestive of his identification as son of God (Matthew 3:17; 4:3, 6).

But on that day (Judgment Day), there will be many who claimed to have done things as evidence that Christ was truly their Lord—they prophesied in the name of Jesus, they cast out demons, and did many other works (miracles). Yet Jesus said he never knew them. He had no connection to them and calls them “workers of lawlessness.” You may profess loudly with your lips your faith in God, and even invoke Jesus as Lord, yet deny him by thoughts, words and acts. Such a person is a nominal disciple.

Returning to the opening remark about how Matthew 7:21-23 contrasts the difference between real and nominal discipleship, let’s consider what significance this passage may have for A.A. and recovery. In the ancient world, a disciple actively imitated the life and the teaching of a great teacher or master. In the New Testament, the term disciple functioned as a technical term for followers of Jesus. The Lexham Bible Dictionary said Jesus’ disciples were not to choose another master or become a master themselves. Rather, they were to go and make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:19-20)— “to teach them what Jesus had taught them.” Similar to this this sense of a disciple, there isn’t a central master or teacher in A.A.; but there is a Fellowship.

Written in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous hoped that someday every alcoholic would find an A.A. Fellowship at his destination. The intent was to replicate these Fellowships. By 1983 there were almost 48,000 A.A. groups, in 110 countries. Today, there are more than 118,000 A.A. groups around the world, in about 180 countries, whose primary purpose is to carry the message of A.A. Tradition Five of A.A. says: “Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” You could say this primary purpose is to make ‘disciples’ of A.A. recovery.

You won’t find the words disciple or discipleship in the A.A. Big Book. But you will find chapters on “How It Works,” “Into Action,” and “Working with Others.” In other words, you will find a way to imitate and then replicate the way of life described in the Big Book—to learn and teach others what you have learned, bringing them into the Fellowship. And as you travel along this Road of Happy Destiny, it can lead you to a further abandonment to God the Father. The closing paragraph of the chapter, “A Vision for You” reads:

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then.

When you abandon yourself to God, you may find that you are also compelled to surrender to the will of the Father. When that happens, the Road of Happy Destiny will lead you to the kingdom of heaven. May God bless and keep you until then.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: alcoholics anonymous