God, as I don’t understand him

God, as I don’t understand him

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

Only after years of formal study did I realize that “understanding” God has little to do with faith. And that faith is what I would need to stay sober. “Let go, let God,” and “Turn it over”; None of this made sense to me. Because my “Understanding” was not there.

I can’t deny that the steps saved me from a downward spiral of self-destruction. In my mid-twenties, I was sober for five years but slipped and was deep in the second life-threatening relapse. Despair, fear, and obsession were my moment-to-moment companions.

I was raised in a dogmatic religion that emphasized the study and knowledge of God. Religious leaders professed a knowledge that gave them a position of leadership. Despite my many questions to fulfill my understanding, I was still waiting for adequate answers. In college, I studied the nature of God formally, reading and digesting the works from the masters of philosophy and theology; it didn’t click.

But by college, I was on my return trip to AA. I even traveled to Taizé France, to spend a month in the monastery praying and discussing God with young people worldwide. This was the first time I went more than a week without going to a meeting. I managed seven days on a silent retreat, just me and my monkey brain chattering away. I don’t recommend it.

Eventually, after staying away from alcohol long enough, it became clear that turning my will and life over meant I trusted this God to help me find a way forward. Trust requires extending beyond one’s comfort zone. I had never done that. No close personal relationships involving faith were a part of my life up to this point.

Learning Trust

Bill was my sponsor, no, not that Bill; My sponsor was an older man who professed to be an agnostic atheist who doesn’t believe but also doesn’t think we can ever know whether a god exists. Still, Bill was among the most gentile-loving men I had ever met—someone who walked the walk and didn’t care a wit about the talk.

I met my wife in unusual circumstances but immediately understood I wanted to have a future and children with this woman. Having been married and even discussing the possibility of children with other women, I never felt this would be good. After a few dates, it became clear again that a relationship that would realize a future with children would require that stranger; trust.

Trust is not something that you can learn from books. I became a pragmatist, an approach that assesses the truth of the meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application. While I didn’t understand everything about my wife, I started to trust her in little ways. My sponsor encouraged me to spend time with my new family. Now with two small children, I realized that trust that so often eluded me. Still, the nagging question of “God as I understand him” was ever-present. How do you trust in someone or something that …..? Well, you know.

Reading “Not God,” it became apparent that the phrase. “God as we understand him” was a conscious choice by the founders of AA not to piss off religious leaders of the day. An Endorsement from the dominant religious organizations was necessary for the founders, and positioning AA as a competing religion would be the death knell. This didn’t then imply that I needed to “Understand” in the way one understands particle physics or auto mechanics. It could probably be rewritten, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

What is required is that I believe there is a God and it is not me.

The important thing was getting to the twelfth step. “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” Yeah, I wanted that awakening. I carried the message and worked with other recovering alcoholics, but the message was incomplete without the peace and serenity of spiritual awakening.

I found faith in working with others.

I got a job that was a considerable commute from home; the time I would typically use to go to meetings in the morning or evening was consumed by the 4-hour commute. I met the person I would be required to work armpit-to-elbow with, and he seemed shaky. We were going to lunch for the first time, and he announced that he did not want to go anywhere that they served alcohol because he had quit drinking twenty years ago and did not want to be tempted.

Twenty years! Indeed he was a member of the club! I inquired gently, Are you a member of AA?” No, he said; I tried it, but it didn’t work for me. I explained that I had ten years without drinking with the help of AA but did not need to convert him; he was doing well, or so I thought. In fact, he was an emotional wreck. We worked together for a few years, my serenity rubbed off, and his anxiety diminished. We never talked about AA, but he was able to see me react to the same stressors we were both subjected to differently. Like my sponsor, I was walking the walk; it’s a powerful way to carry the message but requires spiritual awakening as a foundation that enables trust.

The pragmatist in me admires the 11th step prayer, called initially the Peace Prayer and the Prayer of Saint Francis. It emphasizes that we don’t live life alone. That desperate state haunted my early years into drinking and recovery. I like to think nobody gets into heaven alone either we all go, or nobody goes. The same is true for life. My happiness is based on being able to give far more than it is based on getting. While I don’t go to meetings, I do practice these principles in all my affairs.