“We found, too, that we had been worshippers…Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things money, and ourselves?…How much these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason?…Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another, we had been living by faith and little else.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous p. 54
I have spent the latter part of my summer re-reading the Big Book one page at a time. I am currently studying Ch. 4: We Agnostics. When I was new, We Agnostics was one of my favorite chapters. I knew I liked it because it was about God, and for all of my misgivings and shortcomings, I have always loved the God of my misunderstanding. But I think there is another reason that I have always loved this chapter: in We Agnostics I get a clear picture of myself and my self-sufficiency. That while I believed in God I had no working faith. That while I believed in God I really only relied on myself. I began to understand my agnosticism. God was real but not to be trusted—I had to take care of things for my life to go well.
I was a worshipper indeed. And I would have told you that I did worship God, but I clearly worshipped myself, other people, things, circumstances. I did have an incredible capacity for faith in the people and things that always let me down. Then I would be lost and drinking at life once again.
The placement of Ch. 4 in our book was purposefully and perfectly inspired by Bill Wilson. For in The Doctor’s Opinion, Bill’s Story, There is a Solution, and More about Alcoholism, he has to convince us, to smash the idea into our heads, that we have been completely defeated by alcohol. Example by example, story by story, Bill’s writing is incredibly convincing that we have tried again and again to solve the drink problem on our own—to control it through self-knowledge. All of this with the same result that we will indeed drink again. Every single time the real alcoholic will sacrifice everything for the relief of that first drink.
Once this idea is smashed into to the drinker’s head, he or she becomes more convinced of a need for a solution—and that solution is a spiritual solution. It does not and never has come of ourselves or the material world around us. The answer only comes from God. We Agnostics convinced me that I had been living by an abject faith in the God of Reason. I learned in a few short hours of studying this chapter and thereby completing Step 2 what I had not been able to learn in decades of Bible study and church participation. Jamey, you have to get out your own way. Your way of doing things just isn’t working. You have belief in God but are trying to run the entire show on your own. Logic is great stuff except when it comes to your alcoholism—and it will always fail you then.
What a relief! I was grateful to finally figure out that doing it on my own was not only a lonely prospect—it just didn’t work. And all of this opened the door to the important decision I made in Step 3—a decision to continue with the rest of the program and to real freedom.