The God of Cash and Prizes

I wrote a post over at the Second Road the other day about the hurdles we face in finding the Higher Power of 12 step programs. The idea for the post came from a conversation I had with a friend a few nights ago wherein he told me that the only ‘God’ he was willing to believe in, when he got to AA, was what he called “The God of Unintended Consequences”. The conversation was interesting enough to me that I immediately started researching the 2nd step observations of the early AAs and the neurobiology of belief.

I garnered some great knowledge in this, and I gained some really useful clarity about the roles of honesty, open mindedness, and willingness in having an effective spiritual experience. I understood, as I never had before, why it had been so important for me to cling to the alternate names of God we use; Higher Power, Creator, and Spirit of the Universe.

Over the course of the next three days, the topic of every single meeting I attended was the 2nd step. It has taken me that long to see that I am still worshiping 2 gods; the one that got me sober and the one I grew up with. If the old-timers are right, one of them must be abandoned if I am to remain sober.

The magical, Santa Clause, “God of Cash and Prizes,” the god of my childhood, has never really worked out for me.I’m so quick to see where he fails me. I have expectations of that god that don’t make sense, especially for a person in recovery. Nevertheless, I still exercise a kind of blind dependence on that god because turning everything over to the Higher Power that got me sober would require work. I would actually have to do something, to produce tangible evidence of faith, if I am to expect any desirable outcome, exactly the same way I had to take the steps in order to achieve physical and, occasionally, emotional sobriety.

My fear of failure and of rejection has left me paralyzed, inert, and harmed, particularly in the area of finances. My problems have been piling up and have become astonishingly difficult to solve. Yet I cling to the idea that the god of my childhood, my erroneous understanding of an insufficient deity, that is still attached to the mental labels ‘god’, ‘lord’, ‘heavenly father’, and ‘Jesus’; the God of Cash and Prizes that is going to shove a Twinkie through the keyhole and save me without any effort on my part.

The twelve-step program provides an automatic check-list for spiritual growth, a method for continually testing whether we are working the program well or poorly. We learn to start looking for the three internal warning signs: resentment, self-pity, and fear.

Am I dealing with my present situation with the appropriate sort of attitude? If I am feeling too much resentment, self-pity, or fear (including all the various kinds of worry, anxiety, panic, and so on), then my attitude must be wrong. Or I can ask other kinds of questions using this same method: Is one particular method of prayer or meditation right for me? If practicing it regularly helps reduce my resentment, self-pity, and fear, then I must be doing something right. And vice versa, if it’s not really helping at all, then it doesn’t matter who wrote that particular prayer, or which religious group devised that particular method of meditation, it’s not the right one for me. I can also ask questions about my actions using this same check-list. So for example, what about the way I’m acting right now? Is it good or bad, saintly or sinful, appropriate or inappropriate? If my resentment, self-pity, or fear just keep on mounting higher and higher, then I’m clearly not acting the way I should, in some way. Remember that guilt and shame are modes of fear. So maybe I need to change the way I’m acting (and I need to quit trying to defend it), or maybe I need to change my attitude, or learn how to pray about it differently, or something.

This is why the twelve-step program cannot be grasped instantly. Each person has to do his or her own experiments. Each person has to figure out where the problem really lies, for himself or herself. It could be what the person is actually doing, it could be the inner attitude which accompanies those actions, it could be a failure to work out the best way of praying and meditating. It could also be something else entirely — inappropriate toxic shame or guilt, a compulsive and self-destructive hyperperfectionism, poor impulse control, or a childish unwillingness to delay gratification.

It takes weeks, months, years to work these things out thoroughly. But even small steps forward significantly reduce the amount of resentment, self-pity, and fear which so overwhelmed the substance abuser’s mind when he first started the program. So those who throw themselves into the program with wholehearted commitment actually begin to experience the positive fruits of their efforts very quickly.

© Copyright 1999 by Glen F. Chesnut. From the Hindsfoot Foundation website at http://hindsfoot.org/ This material may be copied and reproduced by others subject to the restrictions given at http://hindsfoot.org/copyright.html

I’m doing something wrong. I’ve been doing it for awhile. I believe I’ve been taking steps to change it, but before today I don’t suppose I could see exactly where it was that I have gone off track; that my trust and reliance have been on a deity who’s power pales against the power of the Creator I came to know in the program. My personal failure in that area embarrasses me. I truly believe I should be better than this by now. My phone is shut off at this point. In all likelihood I’ll be at the mission in the next two weeks unless a twinkie comes through the key hole. I have placed myself in this position, and I beat myself up over the failure.

The Higher Power I met in the steps would surely tell me to lighten up and get off my ass.