“I believe God’s way does work every time.”
It is not enough to admit powerlessness and that addicted people have lost control of their lives. All this means is that it now makes sense to addicted people that they will suffer consequences for addictive behavior and inevitably die quicker. Addicted people need a resolution to their problem—ultimately a spiritual problem requiring a transformative spiritual solution. Addicted people need a Higher Power, a secular term for Savior, to transform disease into healing and recovery.
BELIEF is Central to Transformative Recovery Success
The second step of the twelve steps reads, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” “Came to believe” signifies an event when the recovering person transitions from disbelief (unknowing, unaware, indifference) to belief. “Power greater than ourselves” states the obvious in that Power is more powerful than we are as a community with the power to restore us. Restore us from what? Power is able to restore us from insanity into sanity. Also, the originators of the twelve steps capitalized the Power as a person of power, not an idea.
The third step of the twelve steps reads, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” The last four words of this statement are the most secularized of the twelve steps; often taken completely out of context.
Many treatment facilities and Alcoholics Anonymous groups have shaped “as we understood Him” to mean that belief is subjective to one’s perception of who, or what, God is. One person’s perception of God might be connected to physical manifestations of God (i.e., the sun, stars, the universe, nature, beauty). Others perceive that God is in creation such as a superior being or intelligent designer and is somehow involved in creation, evolution, fate, karma, etc. Then there is the perception that God is within each soul and is the ultimate good in a person—that God as a part of each individual is the untapped source that is within each person for strength, courage, knowledge, wisdom, resolve, and healing.
This secular or humanistic idea of spirituality as a menu of meanings and understandings of God, and that a recovering person can have relationship with a variety of God is fundamentally flawed. It suggests that every individual is entitled to shape God into what they deem God to be. In this context lies a problem: can there be miraculous power in a relationship with an idea of God, rather than a relationship with the person of God? Where do ideas of God originate? Where do ideas originate?
Ideas originate, develop, and gain momentum in the minds of people. The person come first, and then comes the idea. Ideas are a product of the human brain. The idea of a humanistic God is born and made alive in the thoughts and feelings of the human mind and experience. The idea that self-centered addictive behavior can settle discomfort and relieve pain comes from the same brain that secular and humanistic ideas of God come from. If this is the case than the power of God in recovery is borne out of the same thought process and belief system that the power of self-centered addiction is borne out of. The logical question to be asked is: how is this God of the mind a power greater than that of the same addictive mind?
It makes more sense, in working these steps, that authentic power in recovery is experienced in a relationship with the person of God, Jesus Christ. In this case, God is original since he was and is first. Then God created the universe, the earth, life, and mankind. God is therefore the originator and authority over everything that is and all that lives. The power, then, that comes from God is real and not imagined.
How powerful is imaginary power? If one’s perception of God as the “God within”, or some earthly manifestation of the “evolutionator”, and is without a relationship with the person of God, then his higher power is no more than a figment of his imagination. He essentially becomes his own higher power.
On the other hand, the empowering presence of God in the recovering person is not merely a thought or feeling in his mind, but rather it is a spiritual, yet tangible reality that is happening to him as he submits to the will and power of God working to change how he thinks and behaves. The person of God is involved, engaging, and able and willing with the transformative power to act, not only within in the recovering person by spiritual means, but within the conditions surrounding him.
As We Came to Believe
The third step is the commitment step, absolutely dependent on the second step. “Made a (conscious) decision to turn our will and life over to the care of God as we understood Him” is not relevant if there is not belief. “As we understood Him” is descriptive of an event that has already occurred. The event is that “we came to believe”.
When reframing the commitment step to say, “Made a decision to turn our will and life over to the care of God as we came to believe” takes on a much more definitive emphasis. The emphasis is on belief in the person of God rather than the idea of God.
Committing to recovery in the care of God—turning over our will and life—is generally said to be the hardest of the twelve steps. If our understanding of God is subjective to molding God into what we want or prefer him to be, then committing our intentions and behaviors into his care does not make much sense. But if our commitment to God in recovery is founded in our relationship with the person of God—God as described by Jesus in the Bible (the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)—then we can be fully confident in and throughout our recovery.
Belief in the Fireman
TRT clients are all asked often times through the course of extended therapy, “What do you believe about God, today?” If you were stuck in the middle of a room in the midst of a raging fire with flames and smoke so thick that you could not find your way out, and a fireman all of a sudden appeared in front of you, and said to you emphatically, “Follow me!”, what would you do? It depends on what you believe about the fireman. If you know that you will surely die from the fire, and believe that the fireman is the only means to be rescued, will you commit to follow him? Of course, you will, without a second thought.
For addicted people, their lives are the room, and their addictive behavior is the fire. The fire may not kill them immediately, but as it rages out of control it is certain to burn until it completely destroys the room. At some point addicted people become aware that they will die in their addiction, and are powerless to do anything about it. However, being aware of powerlessness and admitting it are two different things. Many will remain in the room as the burns and experience the horror of burning to death in their addiction. Others will admit that they are powerless but do not believe they can be saved. They do not hear the fireman calling. Those who hear the fireman and experience his touch, even though they cannot see him through the black smoke, and believe he can and will rescue them if they go with him, commit to go with him.
