Friday, May 18, 2012
12 simple steps: THERE IS ONE THAT HAS ALL POWER
12 simple steps: THERE IS ONE THAT HAS ALL POWER: At the end of my first marriage my wife and I decided to try religion to save our relationship. We joined an extremely heavy Bible study a...
THERE IS ONE THAT HAS ALL POWER
At the end of my first marriage
my wife and I decided to try religion to save our relationship. We joined an
extremely heavy Bible study accepted Jesus as our savor and made vows to stop
smoking, drinking and cheating on each other. All went well for a few months till
one by one we began to break our vows. This all ended in a divorce and I was
separated from my children for over five years.
I interrupted this out come to be due to the
fact that I could not live up to standards of the cross and I feared that if I
called on the Lord for help again and failed that my name would be stricken
from the book of life and I would burn in hell for all eternity as I was
taught.
When I came to AA some eight
years later and seen the third step hanging on the wall I was scared shitless!
I was sick & tired and I had an honest desire to stay sober but there was
no way I could make a decision to turn my will and life over to “God as
I understood Him”. My first sponsor told me to use the group as a
higher power (Group Of
Drunks=GOD) and my second sponsor suggested
a coffee cup. Neither one of these concepts gave me the needed power that I
lacked to move on to the fourth step. I couldn’t clean house and I couldn’t
stay sober. This went on for nearly eight years.
The last time I went through
detox I had the good fortune to meat a man that gave we way to get past this
stumbling block. When he asked me if I believed there was a power greater then
myself in this universe that could help me I told him of my religious beliefs.
I told him I understood there was only one way to reach God and that was
through Jesus. I told him I could never do this because I could not live up to
the standards of my belief and if I failed again I was doomed.
He pointed out the fact that I
was doomed anyway and made a suggestion that changed my life. He pointed out
that religion was about getting into heaven after I die and the 12 steps are
about living the rest of my life without destroying myself and others. He
suggested that if I wanted to Live I skip the middle man and just go straight
to God. I had never even considered this course of action before. I attempted
to debate him on this point and he simply used We Agnostics to shoot down my
arguments.
He told me to let go of my old beliefs
about religion and just accept God For God. Stop debating it in my within my
own mind and just surrender. He gave me a copy of the third step prayer and
told me to go home and think about it and if I could do this to memorize the
prayer and come back to see him and if I couldn’t then there was nothing he
could do for me.
I went Home and thought about it.
I wanted to live and I knew if I keep drinking I would die. I came to a point
where I just gave up and surrendered my old beliefs and excepted God as I
didn’t understand Him and from that day on I haven’t given any thought to who
or what god is. I no longer try to define God. I am most certain that there is
a power in this universe that sets life in motion. I simply see this power as a
concept of Good Orderly Direction and I do my best to follow it’s dictates.
When I do things work out for the best.
And when I don’t things go bad. This is how I know God is real…
Friday, May 4, 2012
Can A Atheist find God?
I was at a meeting out of town when I was a couple of years Sober. It had a solid core group with quite a bit of sober time. This night a new comer was leading the meeting and he shared that he a atheist and was having trouble grasping the 2nd& 3rd steps and wanted to hear how others had dealt with this step. As the group started to share it became obvious that these guys all had same religious beliefs and they all agreed on who and what God was and how He worked in the steps. They all stated that unless he accepted God as they understood him he would never be able to stay sober and he better try something other than AA. This seemed to make the new guy vary uneasy.
About half way through the meeting one of the core group members got up and Shared that he was a Atheist when he first came to AA 20 something years before and he still was. The whole group actually gasped in unison! He said that he had the same beliefs as the young man leading the meeting that night and whenever he tried to talk about it he got the same reaction. You can’t stay sober if you don’t believe in God. He talked about his fear of drinking again and felt that AA was his only hope. He was afraid they would run him off so he just stared to say that he believed in God when he actually did not. And further more he still didn’t. He said they should all be ashamed of themselves for speaking to a newcomer to AA this way.
The group was shocked at this and the rest of the meeting was spent sharing how they never knew this member felt this way. They all said that they believed him to be the most spiritual man in the group and how he always talked about God and they just couldn’t see him as an atheist.
After the meeting I talked asked him about this and this is what he told me. He said he never in his life could see any concept of god in the conventional sense. Then one day he heard someone say that God had brought Good Orderly Direction into his life. He told me as he spent months contemplating this thought he had came to see how there was good orderly direction in nature. He could see it in the way our solar system worked. How the earth was just in the right distance from the sun for life to survive here. Any closer and we burn, any further and we freeze. He could see how it worked in engineering. Build a bridge right and maintain it stays up. Take short cuts in building it or don’t maintain it and it’ll come down. And he finally could see it in his life as he started to follow a path of Good Orderly Direction his life straightened out and his troubles went away.
He said his understanding of the word God was something worthy of devotion and he felt that this concept of Good Orderly Direction was definitely worthy of devotion. He told me when this concept became clear to him that he came to believe. Not in a deity or an entity but a concept of Good Orderly Direction. And to him this concept is GOD. From that he was able to make a decision to surrender his will to and turn his life over to God as he now understood him. He became a Atheist that believed in GOD.
About half way through the meeting one of the core group members got up and Shared that he was a Atheist when he first came to AA 20 something years before and he still was. The whole group actually gasped in unison! He said that he had the same beliefs as the young man leading the meeting that night and whenever he tried to talk about it he got the same reaction. You can’t stay sober if you don’t believe in God. He talked about his fear of drinking again and felt that AA was his only hope. He was afraid they would run him off so he just stared to say that he believed in God when he actually did not. And further more he still didn’t. He said they should all be ashamed of themselves for speaking to a newcomer to AA this way.
The group was shocked at this and the rest of the meeting was spent sharing how they never knew this member felt this way. They all said that they believed him to be the most spiritual man in the group and how he always talked about God and they just couldn’t see him as an atheist.
After the meeting I talked asked him about this and this is what he told me. He said he never in his life could see any concept of god in the conventional sense. Then one day he heard someone say that God had brought Good Orderly Direction into his life. He told me as he spent months contemplating this thought he had came to see how there was good orderly direction in nature. He could see it in the way our solar system worked. How the earth was just in the right distance from the sun for life to survive here. Any closer and we burn, any further and we freeze. He could see how it worked in engineering. Build a bridge right and maintain it stays up. Take short cuts in building it or don’t maintain it and it’ll come down. And he finally could see it in his life as he started to follow a path of Good Orderly Direction his life straightened out and his troubles went away.
He said his understanding of the word God was something worthy of devotion and he felt that this concept of Good Orderly Direction was definitely worthy of devotion. He told me when this concept became clear to him that he came to believe. Not in a deity or an entity but a concept of Good Orderly Direction. And to him this concept is GOD. From that he was able to make a decision to surrender his will to and turn his life over to God as he now understood him. He became a Atheist that believed in GOD.
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