Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?
Hedwig: No, but I… I love his work.
John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
I don’t want to make this about religion because it isn’t about religion. It’s about the same thing everything else here is about. Me. It’s what it was like, what happened (and what’s happening), and what it’s like now. For me. It is my experience, my strength and my hope. It is also a place where I can sit down, slow down, cool down and give the loving Creator of my own understanding room to go to work. It is part inventory, part meditation, all reaching out.
My story is not unique by any stretch. Young men from my home town have gone down similar, almost identical paths. I don’t know all the specifics of Troy’s story but I know he grew up in a similar environment, one fought with pressure to conform to the dominant culture. I can only hope that there was more tollerance in 2006 than in the 70’s and 80’s, when I was his age. In my own case, by the time I was 14 years old I had developed a concrete intellectual bias against every system of thinking which claimed to be the only truth. I carried that bias into every part of my life, judging things which I had never examined.
In my own experience, gaining hope in the second step that a “Power greater than myself” could restore me to sanity, and then gaining enough faith to turn my will and life over to the care of that power, as I understood it, was only possible because the message was delivered to me in a way that I could hear. The men who guided me left the specifics of their own conception of a Higher Power at the door, and instead shared what happened that made them willing to seek that relationship and what that relationship had done for them. At no point did they ever tell me that they had the one truth. They carried the message by strictly adhering to the instructions on page 93 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous which says, among other things, that I could choose any conception of a Higher Power I liked, as long as it made sense to me, and that there was no use arousing any prejudice I may have against theological terms. I was willing to believe in something, so long as you didn’t tell me what to believe.
The meetings I attend most regularly have now been completely invaded by a group of not very Christlike Jesus people who call on themselves to share at meeting level to watch out in the rooms of AA. “There are forces of darkness in these rooms that are marking Christians and taking them out of here.” If you point out to them that there is a way we do things in AA and a reason that we do it they just say, “Then we’ll disagree.” If you call attention to the fact that when they share the way they share, that newcomers and young people get up and leave the meeting, visibly upset; that the way they are sharing does not help to carry the message, they say that they are merely sharing the truth as they understand it.
The program, however, has nothing to do with looking at them, with judging them, and everything to do with looking at me. What part of me is so prideful that I need to be ‘right’ on this point? What within me makes me refuse to accept these people as they are? What is the origin of the blind spot in my faith that makes me think that as a group, the 2nd Tradition won’t see us through this or that the people being driven from the rooms won’t find their way back when the time is right? What am I so afraid of that I cannot seem to find it within myself to treat these people with the same pity, patience and tolerance with which I treat people who can’t stay sober or people to only identify as addicts or people who talk about taking steps they have never taken. Why do I only see that they are not helping the program rather than seeing that the program could help them?
In my 5th step my sponsor pointed out that he though I had a lot more work to do in the area of God and religion. I actually blew him off. “No. Really. I’m so completely OK with all that,” I told him.
No. Really I’m not.
Tags: 12th step, 2nd step, 2nd Tradition, 3rd Step, AA, carry the message, Faith, Hope, inventory, Religion, Service, Unity, Working With Others
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Pingback from I don’t want to make this about religion . . . on May 5, 2008 at 3:20 pm
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Resolving Religious Conflict
by Venerable Ajahn Munindohttp://www.dhammatalks.org.uk/munin.php
this is very good on the subject of religious intolerance
back to revision!! books till june im afraid…
Have fun! -
I find it very difficult to give patience and compassion to a person on issues to which “the offender” refuses to give patience and compassion. Tit for tat. Monkey in the mirror.
Does that make sense? -
i got lost at “completelly okay”. that’s one of those red flag phrases. i don’t know that i’ve ever heard it used when it is really meant. just irony, i guess. or the english language. i’m not sure which.
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i don’t know if it’s specific to OA, but we use the phrase “attraction, not promotion” – and i think that is one of the biggest things we need to learn about our own spiritual programs too – if someone can see something working and growing in my life they will ask me if they are interested. if i don’t have the light to share others will avoid me – why did i used to feel it was so necessary to bash other people over the head with my big battery operated flashlight?
as a recovering fundie i don’t know if it helps, but i am so sorry that you have to put up with that.
i know we can all learn from things we don’t like as well as things we like – but dang tell them i said to shut up – that they are bad advertising. if it was really working they wouldn’t have to say a word…
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it is against the aa traditions ‘rules’ to have promotion on non aa related material or commercial plugs of ‘outside enterprises’ occurring at an aa meeting. one should consult old timers and the aa guidelines for guidance on how to regulate this non-aa activity in meetings.
personally i would point out to the group that this is in direct opposition to aa guidelines and ask local old timers how to deal with it. perhaps a group conscience.
eg. (the secretary opening at the beginning of the meeting) “it has been the decision of this group that in keeping with the aa traditions, and the aa principle of attraction not promotion, that if meeting attendees attempt to use the meeting for commercial gain or for the purposes of promoting outside enterprises, that they will be asked to refrain, or asked to leave the meeting. As you know, all aa meetings are autonomous, and this is a decision of the group.”?
or something like that.
all it needs is a business meeting with the ’steering committee’ as aa calls it, of the people in the meeting holding the main service positions.
see the aa guidelines for info on steering committee etc, and group consciences.by all means practice tolerance, but adhere to aa guidelines also.
‘Be as gentle as doves, but as wise as serpents’ as jesus used to say.. -
I am surprised to learn of the chutzpah of fundies that bring their peculiar brand of religion into the rooms when the tenor and tone of AA literature clearly discourages such narrowmindedness.
In a little more than a year of regular attendance at two groups here in Seattle, I have not heard a single reference to Jesus Christ. HP, yes — JC, no. Seriously!
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Trackback from prideful on May 11, 2008 at 12:04 pm
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As usual, Irish Friend of Bill offers up some very sane advice. I do think it’s worth bringing up on a group level.
I would feel just as frustrated and challenged as you on this issue. I imagine I would address it in my own shares, sticking to my own experience but understandable by anyone who’s listening, that it was extremely important for me, in getting sober, to have a safe space in which spirituality was recognized as an essential component to the program, without any one particular path to it being cited. And this had always been my understanding of the traditions and the intent of the founders, who, in fact, make not one reference to any particular spritual teacher in the Big Book. (I hope I’m right about that! Can we google the Big Book?)
Then I might suggest outside of the rooms that there’s no rule against starting a Christ-centered 12-step group if they so choose, just like there are gay meetings, women’s meetings, etc, and SOS is completely secular 12-step group.
You also might suggest borrowing “AA is spoke here” from Alanon, which enjoins any reference to outside philosophies.
If that didn’t work, I’d have to slap them.
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