“We came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.”
Six men who admit they are “powerless over alcohol” recited these words from Step 2 of a Canadian-created, secular Twelve Step program at the beginning of a recent meeting in West Vancouver.
Alcohol has devastated their lives; the impact extending to their partners and children. Yet over many years these men of various ages have got back on their feet ”” with the help of fellow members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Not, they believe, with the help of God.
A number of years ago, I had a Baptist pastor colleague and friend who was very sad about his mother. As I remember, she was an alcoholic, who had been in recovery for about five years. She was firmly atheistic, and after five years of sobriety dove back into the bottle and showed no signs of ever being sober again. My friend attributed the problem to her never connecting the higher power with God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
As I heard it, AA adaped the steps to read “God as we understood God”, precisely from the experience of an atheist who came into the fellowship and got sober, against all predictions from the older folks. The key was the concept of a “higher power”, which is to say an authority outside of one’s self. AA regards alcoholism as “self-will run rampant”, so that rooting out self-will is precisely the antidote needed. It’s true that a fair number of agnostic alcoholics do return to Christianity, or at least some sort of theism, but they often don’t start their sobriety that way.
A friend of mine who has been in recovery for many years says his first sponsor told him that “There will come a time when the only thing between you and your next drink will be your spiritual fitness.” He takes it very much to heart.