Step Two
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a
dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, "Look
what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics
and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute
helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our
obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who
do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle.
Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?"
Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the
belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as
savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened.
It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now,
still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really
impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically
from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and
therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to
save himself?
At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks,
is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is:
the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence
into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to
jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a
friend of mine who was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist
Society, but he got through with room to spare."
"Well," says the newcomer, "I know you're telling me the truth. It's no doubt
a fact that A.A, is full of people who once believed as I do. But just how, in
these circumstances, does a fellow `take it easy'? That's what I want to
know."
"That," agrees the sponsor, "is a very good question indeed. I think I can
tell you exactly how to relax. You won't have to work at it very hard, either.
Listen, if you will, to these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous
does not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are but
suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay sober, you don't have to swallow
all of Step Two right now. Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal
myself. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the
debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as
whether it was the hen or the egg that came first. Again I say, all you need is
the open mind."
The sponsor continues, "Take, for example, my own case. I had a scientific
schooling. Naturally I respected, venerated, even worshipped science. As a
matter of fact, I still do--all except the worship part. Time after time, my
instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific progress:
search and research, again and again, always with the open mind. When I first
looked at A.A, my reaction was just like yours. This A.A, business, I thought,
is totally unscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't consider such
nonsense.
"Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A, showed results, prodigious results.
I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific. It
wasn't A.A, that had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing,
I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually
began to infiltrate my life. I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I
came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that
belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of
A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could.
"This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience, of course. I must
quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for
faith. If you don't care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover
one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like you has begun to
solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make
A.A., itself your `higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have
solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power
greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can
have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find
many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will
tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened. Relieved of the
alcohol obsession, their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to believe
in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk of God."
Consider next the plight of those who once had faith, but have lost it. There
will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with
self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who have become prejudiced
against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to
fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tell all these they may still find a
faith that works?
Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to
those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and
found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.
Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there
is no place whatever for them to go. The roadblocks of indifference, fancied
self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and formidable
for these people than any erected by the unconvinced agnostic or even the
militant atheist. Religion says the existence of God can be proved; the
agnostic says it can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the
nonexistence of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that
of profound confusion. He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction
at all. He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer,
the agnostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.
Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, "Yes, we were diverted from our
childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us. Of
course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain
values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest, tolerant, and
just, that we ought to be ambitious and hardworking. We became convinced that
such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough.
"As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began
to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was
exhilarating, and it made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological
abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our souls here or
hereafter? The here and now was good enough for us. The will to win would carry
us through. But then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when all
our score cards read `zero,' and we saw that one more strike would put us out
of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we
rediscovered it. And so can you."
Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man
or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart
for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our
education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful
to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of
the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was
nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer
nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of
victory would be ours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God
of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so
handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to
reconsider or die. We found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They
helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that
humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.
This faith is for you, too."
Another crowd of A.A.'s says: "We were plumb disgusted with religion and all
its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter
and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the `begats.' In spots its
morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was
the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated
over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so
many `believers' even in their Sunday best. How we loved to shout the damaging
fact that millions of the `good men of religion' were still killing one another
off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted
negative for positive thinking. After we came to A.A,, we had to recognize that
this trait had been an ego feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some
religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, we could
avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very
thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting
evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was
concerned. But finally, driven to A.A,, we learned better.
"As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding
characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not strange that lots of us have
had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not
delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child
makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often, though, we had met up
with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God
deserted us. The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that
she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for healthy children, and were
presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business,
and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us
by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that.
But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. `Damn this faith
business!' we said.
"When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no
time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him
what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too.
Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A, we saw the fruits of this belief:
men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and
transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible
situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith;
it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever
price in humility we must pay, we would pay." Now let's take the guy full of
faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious
observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that
God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each,
he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries
to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then,
can be the matter?
To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and
tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too
many of us who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's answer.
This answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This
has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We
supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest
appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other
extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious
feeling. In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was
we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and
expel the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of
ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other
human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We
had always said, "Grant me my wishes" instead of "Thy will be done." The love
of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained self-deceived,
and so incapable of receiving enough grace to restore us to sanity.
Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they
are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing
to term themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot endure the suggestion that
they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness by a world
which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism.
"Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind." Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing
his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining-room
furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim "soundness of mind" for himself.
Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic,
atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. True humility
and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance
that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him.
