Follow the links here to the transcript and the video.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
Follow the links here to the transcript and the video.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
From W.P.:
I thought you might want to post the actual text of the Alcoholics Anonymous steps to which +Robinson refers. I do not think his paraphrase “God of our many understandings” has the same logical meaning or connotation as Bill Wilson’s text. I suppose that means that +Robinson is taking the same liberties with Alcoholics Anonymous as with Scripture, which is not surprising, but worth noting.
Step 3: [We] made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 11: [We] sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
As you can see, Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book” and the literature used in the vast majority of AA meetings) clearly implies a personal deity appropriately referred to with the masculine pronoun and with Whom a personal relationship is possible, not an impersonal force. Not all members of AA have such an understanding of God of course, but to claim to be using AA’s understanding of God as depicted in the Twelve Steps as the basis for his invocation is to misrepresent the literature and historical identity of AA.
Nor does his invocation accurately portray the on-the-ground, day-to-day obedience to God seen as essential to recovery. The whole relationship portrayed in His invocation matches nothing in AA literature, which is not particularly concerned with emotional reactivity or responsiveness to one’s surroundings so much as firmly dedicated to action, to the service of others, and especially to service to other alcoholics and their families. AA is not sentimental, while +Robinson’s prayer to me was hopelessly sentimental and lacking in any real call to actions. It mentioned several virtues in the latter half, but did not equate them in any way to action. Honestly, it sounded like he was mumbling with a mouthful of verbal pebbles.
Also from W.P.:
A couple more thoughts, from a compulsive analyzer of language. The phrase “God of our many understandings” seems like something concocted by a man who needed a good freshman composition teacher. Possibly, however, it is intentionally nefarious.
Literally, the phrase means one of two things, neither of which is remotely Christian or related to AA. “God of our many understandings” can first imply a sort of mosaic or patchwork God, who literally consists of “our man understandings” or conceptions. That is anathema to the Christian, but what is even more dangerous is the logical conclusion that cannot be escaped–God is a human construct, underneath the patchwork is nothing, because no being of substance can be written on in such a way.
The other literal meaning, related to the above, is that when many people are assembled with their assorted understandings, that is God.