Step Two

THE moment they read Step Two, most AA newcomers face a serious dilemma. How often AA members have heard them cry out, "Look what you people have done to us! You've convinced us that we're alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to complete helplessness, you now declare that only a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe God exists have no faith that God will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got us cornered—but where do we go from here?"

Let's look first at the person who says they won't believe—the angry one. They're in a state of mind that can only be described as furious. Their entire life philosophy, which they took such pride in, is under attack. It's bad enough, they think, to admit alcohol has them beaten for good. But now, still stinging from that admission, they face something that seems truly impossible. How they cherish the idea that humanity, having evolved so magnificently from simple origins, represents the pinnacle of evolution and therefore the only divine force their universe knows! Must they give up all this to save themselves?

The Sponsor's Response

At this point, their AA sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is the final insult. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of their old life, and the start of their emergence into a new one. Their sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The door you have to walk through is much wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who was once 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 obvious that AA is full of people who once believed as I do. But exactly how, in these circumstances, does someone 'take it easy'? That's what I want to know."

"That," agrees the sponsor, "is an excellent question. I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't have to work at it very hard, either. Listen to these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are simply suggestions. Second, to get sober and stay sober, you don't have to accept all of Step Two right now. Looking back, I find that many have taken it piece by piece. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the debate team and stop obsessing over deep questions like which came first, the chicken or the egg. Again I say, all you need is an open mind."

The Scientific Approach

The sponsor continues, "Take, for example, my own case. I had a scientific education. Naturally I respected, even worshipped science. As a matter of fact, I still do—except for the worship part. Time after time, my instructors emphasized the basic principle of all scientific progress: research and investigation, again and again, always with an open mind. When I first looked at AA, my reaction was just like yours. This AA business, I thought, is completely unscientific. I can't accept this. I simply won't consider such nonsense.

"Then I woke up. I had to admit that AA showed results—amazing results. I saw that my attitude toward these results had been anything but scientific. It wasn't AA 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 gradually began to work its way into my life. I can't say exactly when or on what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To develop it, I only had to stop fighting and practice the rest of the AA program as enthusiastically as I could.

"This is only one person's opinion based on their own experience, of course. I must quickly assure you that AA members follow countless paths in their search for faith. If you don't like the one I've suggested, you'll surely discover one that fits if you just look and listen. Many people like you have begun to solve the problem through substitution. You can, if you wish, make AA 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 haven't even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You'll find many members who crossed the threshold exactly this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession and their lives remarkably transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to speak of God."

Those Who Have Lost Faith

Consider next the situation 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 AA experience tell all these that they may still find a faith that works?

Sometimes AA comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, because they think they have tried faith and found it lacking. 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 for them to go. The roadblocks of indifference, false self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and difficult for these people than any obstacles faced by the unconvinced agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says God's existence can be proved; the agnostic says it can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof that God doesn't exist. Obviously, the dilemma of the person who has wandered from faith is one of deep confusion. They think themselves lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. They cannot achieve even a small degree of the certainty of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist. They are completely bewildered.

Many AA members can say to the drifter, "Yes, many of us were turned away from our childhood faith, too. Youthful overconfidence 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 reasonably 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 based on nothing more than these ordinary qualities began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was exciting, 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 take control of us. Finally, when all our scorecards 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 AA that many rediscovered it. And so can you."

The Intellectually Self-Sufficient

Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient person. To these, many AA members can say, "Yes, many of us were like you—far too smart for our own good. We loved having people call us brilliant. We used our education to inflate ourselves like prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above everyone else on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing humans couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were smarter than most people (so we thought), the rewards of victory would be ours for the taking. The god of intellect replaced the God of our fathers. But alcohol had other plans. Those who had won so easily became total losers. They saw that they had to reconsider or die. They found many in AA who once thought as they did. These members helped them get down to their right size. By their example they showed that humility and intellect could work together, provided they put humility first. When they began to do that, they received the gift of faith, a faith that works. This faith is for you, too."

Those Disgusted with Religion

Another group of AA members says: "Many of us were completely 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 all the genealogies. In some places its morality seemed impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of religious people 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 point out the damaging fact that millions of 'good religious people' were still killing one another in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After they came to AA, these members had to recognize that this trait had been an ego-feeding proposition. In criticizing the sins of some religious people, they could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, they could avoid looking at some of their own shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very thing that they had contemptuously condemned in others, was their own worst fault. This fake form of respectability was their downfall, as far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to AA, they learned better.

The Defiant Ones

"As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many alcoholics. So it's not strange that lots of alcoholics have had their day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered them the good things of life which they specified, like a greedy child making an impossible Christmas list. More often, though, they had met up with some major catastrophe, and in their thinking lost out because God abandoned them. The person they wanted to marry had other plans; they prayed God would change their mind, but they didn't. They prayed for healthy children, and were given sick ones, or none at all. They prayed for promotions at work, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom they heavily depended, were taken from them by so-called acts of God. Then they became alcoholics, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened. This was the cruelest blow of all. 'Forget this faith business!' they said.

"When they encountered AA, the flaw in their defiance was revealed. At no time had they asked what God's will was for them; instead they had been telling God what it ought to be. No one, they saw, could believe in God and defy God, too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance. In AA they saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. They saw them meet and overcome their other pains and trials. They saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to blame. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. They soon concluded that whatever price in humility they must pay, they would pay."

The Religious Alcoholic

Now let's take the person full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. They believe they are devout. Their religious observance is careful. They're sure they still believe in God, but suspect that God doesn't believe in them. They make promises and more promises. After each one, they not only drink again, but behave worse than the last time. Valiantly they try to fight alcohol, begging God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then, can be the matter?

To clergy, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking puzzle. To most AA members, they are not. There are too many AA members who have been just like them, and have found the puzzle's answer. This answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been their blind spot. They supposed they had humility when really they hadn't. They supposed they had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest examination, they found they had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, they had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, they had been asking something for nothing. The fact was they really hadn't cleaned house so that God's grace could enter them and remove the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had they ever taken stock of themselves, made amends to those they had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. They had not even prayed rightly. They had always said, "Grant me my wishes" instead of "God's will be done." The love of God and humanity they understood not at all. Therefore they remained self-deceived, and so unable to receive enough grace to restore them to sanity.

The Question of Sanity

Few practicing alcoholics have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to call themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot tolerate the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. They are supported in this blindness by a world that doesn't understand the difference between normal drinking and alcoholism. "Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind." Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing their destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining room furniture or their own moral character, can claim "soundness of mind" for themselves.

Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all AA members. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, they can stand together on this Step. According to AA experience, true humility and an open mind can lead anyone to faith, and every AA meeting is proof that God will restore people to sanity if they properly relate themselves to God.