Higher Power or God, Who’s Program is this Anyway?

Higher Power or God, Who’s Program is this Anyway?

(Well it is not atypical of me that when I lead meetings I get very philosophical. Some people would say I get irritatingly argumentative and start to line up my arguments on the head of a pin. And what should be a zesty discussion of sharing on our feelings about how we came to believe in a higher power or not, or the power of the program, or some other permutation of unbridled enthusiasm about the greatness of AA and how it has helped and cured all, it just ain’t my style. I tend more toward Spinoza, Maimonides and St. Augustine and when I can’t do that I do a version of me, Dr. Bob. And I throw my monkey wrench into the discussion just to see if I can wake everyone up at our 7:30AM meeting.


Well talking about the existence of God at this hour of the morning at least for me is just the thing to get my juices going, so having read Step 11 in detail and deciding that it was time to challenge the orthodoxy of Bill W. I pretty much introduced the following arguments.


The result was less Sodom and Gomorrah than I would have thought and I happily got out with my skin and my life more or less intact.)


One of the reasons many people, particularly newcomers, accuse AA of being just another religious cult, is the fault of Bill Wilson’s proclivity of stressing an awareness of a God consciousness as the only way to success for the alcoholic. And in reading Step 11 any self respecting atheist or agnostic would conclude that he could not succeed in this program unless he succumbed to what he might consider the “hocus pocus” of “cultish” ideas. And Wilson does not make it easy for those folk to feel accepted in the program because by the time they get through step 11 and “divine” his true intentions, they feel entrapped by his having inveigled them into the program under the original false pretenses that AA requires no belief in God. They find out the awful truth that what Bill W. doesn’t reveal at the outset is that in order to succeed in AA , a belief in God is an absolute necessity.

Now he is not talking about organized religion for that is as anathema to him as to the atheist and agnostic. But once you read through all of the symbology that he uses to propound the steps, you get a pretty clear idea that the use of phrases like the Kingdom of God, God the Savior and God as Creator are concepts and terms straight out of the King James Bible and they scaffold his interpretation of the 12 step program.

What are we to make of these references? We feel duped having come all this way and now we feel betrayed by the prophet of AA. He becomes the apostate, the phony in our eyes? How are we to ever trust what he has said again?

Well it isn’t all that bad and even the greatest saints have had feet of clay and Bill W. while no saint had his feet stuck in a lot of mud. And although Bill W. truly believed the terminology of the King James Bible, if not conceptually, I think we can safely navigate another course that permits an easy incorporation of techniques of prayer and meditation in a concept of a higher power without succumbing to the morphia of the St James Symbology.

Step 11 exemplifies the concept that in order to maintain the equanimity that we have worked so hard to obtain by stripping away pride and adopting humility, honesty and love, we need to practice prayer and meditation as a daily exercise to maintain a conscious contact with these principles; these are principles which we accept as the principles that we think of as representative of a “higher power” ( Bill W.’s conscious contact with God).

Whether one anthropomorphizes this concept, etherealizes, philosophizes or spiritualizes it, it all boils down to practicing principles of a moral and ethical life on a daily basis, using techniques to remind us in good times, but especially in rough times, what those principles are. I like to think that this concept constitutes a “belief in belief” without the necessity of getting any more specific than that. This allows for people with all different kinds of perceptions of the universe to apply principles that we pick up to serve our needs in sobriety. As a concept I call this Possiblianism. It refers to the universe as being so complex and varied as to hold the possibility that any and all things can happen, either causally or indirectly, perhaps through prayer or thought, or good works but always with the notion that there are possibilities that things can happen if you want and need them enough to happen – such as becoming and staying sober.

So when we speak of prayer and meditation, their utility in maintaining sobriety and moral and ethical direction, in no way requires a belief in God, even though prayer and meditation may ease belief in a higher power without believing that that higher power is what might be referred to as God (of the Bible). Because one can receive the benefits of prayer and meditation, (self examination, spiritual relief, emotional release, humility) without the belief in God. Just as confession can relieve guilt and mental anguish without confessing to God or to a representative of God (psychiatrist, sponsor or friend, for instance).

One of the fundamental uses of prayer is its utility for its, anytime any place value. So an AA meeting may be good to help unburden one’ s soul and conscience on a particular day at a particular time. But what if the meeting is not convenient? Or missed? Or on Tuesday? Or what if you cannot get your sponsor on the phone, or anyone else?

These are lifeline aids to keep us sober but at the base of it AA helps us develop personal principles to live our lives day by day, month by month, year in year out so that we can bridge sobriety from one year to the next. The basic techniques here are prayer and meditation; and through them lies the success of the 12 Steps. Just so, as in the adage: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a net, feed him for a lifetime. And…

Teach an alcoholic to stop drinking, he stops drinking as long as he can hold out. But teach him the principles of a life worth living without the need for a drink and you have a design for living a life alcohol free. The two tools of prayer and meditation help with the concepts of forgiveness, love, anger, retribution, fear and generosity. Meditation, quiets the anxieties, quells anger and fear. Prayer has utility in that it prepares the mind to resolve problems of emotional turmoil and confusion. This is the concept that sponsors use when telling us to pray for people we dislike or whom we do not want to talk with.

And we may be baffled by this request but we comply and after a day we come back and scratching our head, we feel no differently about that person we hate and the sponsor says “pray for him for two more weeks”. At which you balk and say “I’d rather die”. And he says “Aha!” And you rather sheepishly begin to see the prideful stubbornness of your position and comply. And after a few weeks of praying you find you no long hate him, but perhaps feel sorry for him, empathize with him. Of course you don’t love him and that’s just fine. Miracles take a bit longer than that! But you don’t hate him. And actions that you might have taken in unreasoned haste two weeks before, seem neither wise nor warranted and you are glad that calmer heads prevailed.

Bill Wilson would say that God provided the answer for you and I would submit that time provided the necessary interval for appropriate reflection and emotional deflation. In either case, prayer and meditation led to appeals to a higher power. And in calling forth the application of either remedy, neither required walking into a temple of God. And if by praying for the person who you are angry at keeps you sober, when all is said and done that is the point of this exercise.

If you have done the Steps well, you have built a solid basis for a moral ethical plan for living. That plan incorporates the twelve AA principles: honesty, hope, faith, courage, integrity, humility, brotherly love, justice, perseverance, spirituality and service.

Whether you then take that next step to transmogrifying your higher power into a deity, is of course, your choice.

© res 5/2/2011