Christian churches would call the Twelve Steps heretical, if they would bother to read them carefully. Theologically, there are all kinds of things wrong with them.

Possibly the greatest heresy in the A.A. dogma is this bit of idolatry: In the Alcoholics Anonymous program, you can use anything for your "God" or "Higher Power": a bedpan, a teacup, a doorknob, a stone, a teddy bear, a mountain, a motorcycle, or "Good Orderly Direction". You can pray to any Golden Calf, stone idol, or Higher-Powered item of Household Hardware that you like. You can even use your local A.A. group itself as your 'God' if you wish. One of the more ridiculous word redefinitions that A.A. offers us is, you can make the word "G.O.D." mean "Group Of Drunks".

Another 12-Step organization, Cocaine Anonymous, even twists this into "G.O.D. = a Group Of Drug addicts".⁶

"I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith.   ...   You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your 'higher power.' Here's a very large group 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."
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 27.

Most Christians are more accustomed to the idea of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. Not very many of them will enjoy praying to a group of drunks, and Seeking and Doing the Will of Drunkards. And I can't imagine Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, or Native Americans being too happy with such a "Higher Power", either.

In addition, the Twelve Steps talk about "God as we understood Him". Members are allegedly free to define God however they imagine or understand "Him" to be. Bill Wilson told A.A. recruiters to

Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a Power greater than himself and that he live by spiritual principles.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, Chapter 7, Working With Others, page 93.

What is that deceptive double-talk?

• Atheists, who do not believe in the existence of a God, don't have to agree with the recruiter's conception of God, but they must believe in a spiritual "Higher Power", which, by definition, atheists don't.
• How could an atheist possibly have a "conception" of a God who will deliver miracles on demand when by definition he does not believe in the existence of any such thing?
• And the atheists certainly won't be willing to believe in what they don't believe, so Bill's "main thing" isn't going to work for them.

And what about,
"He can choose any conception [of God or 'Higher Power' that] he likes, provided it makes sense to him."
Oh really?

• What if the prospective recruit is insane -- a wet-brained nutcase who thinks that worshipping Satan as his Higher Power will solve all of his problems? Will the A.A. 12-Step program still work for him?
• What if the newcomer is a pagan who wants to worship Wotan, Thor, and Loki?
• What if the prospect is a Neo-Nazi who wants to use Adolf Hitler as his Higher Power?

Such examples are of course absurd, but so is the statement that you can use any kind of a "God" or "Higher Power" you want, and that He will nevertheless perform a miracle for you -- save you from death by alcoholism.

Bill Wilson emphatically repeated that doctrine in the Big Book:

      Despite the living example of my friend [a sober Ebby Thacher] there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn't like the idea.   ...
      My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"
      That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.
      It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!
      Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.
Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 1, "Bill's Story", Page 12.

"It's only necessary that I believe whatever I want to believe, to get what I want."

(By the way, there was no "icy intellectual mountain" in Bill Wilson's life. That was just an act he put on to make his religious conversion seem more miraculous.)

The A.A. auxiliary for the other family members, Al-Anon, also teaches that we can choose any "God" we want. Al-Anon propaganda even goes so far as to say that we can hire and fire "Gods" as the mood strikes us:

      The concept of "God as we understood Him" was hard to grasp. My family believed there is only one way to view God. My parents used religion to keep me in line.   ...
      I realized the God of my parents had come in a very small box, not expansive enough for me. I fired that God and hired a new one. My new Higher Power is much bigger than the old one. He doesn't live in a box. He lives in me and around me. He loves me, cares for me, and accepts me just as I am -- a work of art in progress.
Hope for Today, published by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., page 297.

But I an curious. When you "hire" a "God", what do you pay Him with?
What wages do "gods" find acceptable?
Gold? Silver? Souls? First-born sons?

Who says that everybody is qualified to "hire" the God of their choice?
Who says that everybody's understanding of God is correct?
Who says that just anybody's crazy beliefs are okay?
Considering how different various people's opinions of God and religion are, they cannot all be correct. The Golden Calf, the stone idol, the bedpan, Doorknob Almighty, the Higher-Powered motorcycle as God, or "G.O.D. = Group Of Drunks" or "G.O.D. = Group Of Drug addicts" -- those "conceptions" of God cannot all be correct.

That is the heresy that the Catholic Church calls "indifferentism" -- the declaration that all religions and Gods are just as good, and it doesn't matter which one you choose.⁷
(Yes, Doorknob Almighty, Baal Bedpan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, or Jesus; it doesn't matter which "Higher Power" you choose, just as long as you believe in one, right?)

But who decides which versions of God are acceptable to an A.A. 12-Step program?
The sponsors? Where did they get their theological training?

Bill Wilson's goal was ostensibly to be ecumenical, universal and all-embracing, to avoid religious conflict, but his solution to the problem was hardly sound theology. Something that tries to be everything to everybody ends up being nothing to anybody.

And that is the error that the Catholic Church calls "syncretism" -- uniting conflicting religious beliefs so as to reduce them to a common denominator that is acceptable to all.⁸

In addition, Bill soon contradicted himself. Just any old conception of "God" or "Higher Power" will not do at all. The A.A. God cannot be just any spiritual "Power greater than yourself". The Alcoholics Anonymous "God" must be a meddling, micro-managing, order-dictating, prayer-answering, message-sending, wish-granting, miracle-delivering authoritarian power, or else the Twelve Steps will not work.

If your personal version of "God" or "Higher Power" doesn't meddle and deliver miracles on demand, then

• You won't get any power over alcohol, and your unmanageable life won't get managed in Step One, and
• you won't get restored to sanity in Step Two, and
• God won't take care of your will and your life for you in Step Three, and
• your many "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings" won't get removed in Step Seven, and
• "God" or "Higher Power" won't talk to you in Step Eleven, and give you secret messages and work orders and the "sure power" to carry them out...

The A.A. story about your relationship with God is also rather curious. The way that Bill Wilson tells the story, you must surrender yourself utterly to your Higher Power (Who is supposed to be God, but who might be a doorknob, a bedpan, a mountain, a motorcycle, a Group Of Drunks, or something else), and be His slave, and do His bidding every day forever after. In return, He will do some magic tricks and take away your desire to drink alcohol, and will also grant a few other wishes, starting with restoring you to "sanity" and taking care of your will and your life for you, and then removing all of your "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings".

We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our Maker, as we understood Him: "God, I offer myself to Thee -- to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!" We thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready; that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 63.

Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances!
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 100.

I can't help but notice that the last time I heard about that particular bargain, the Higher Power's name was not spelled "G-O-D", it was spelled "S-A-T-A-N" or "D-E-V-I-L". You were supposed to sell your soul to the Big Horned Creature with the cloven feet in a Faustian trade for getting your list of wishes granted, and then you ended up being a sycophant slave of that Scaly Creature, doing His Will forever after, and living in His "new and wonderful world" that features faulty air conditioning...

"Yes, Satan, I will surrender myself to you utterly. I will worship you and love you and give you my soul, and be your grovelling servant for all of eternity, in trade for you granting me this list of wishes right now -- starting with the wish that you making me quit drinking. ...And then you have to take care of my mind, my will, and my life for me, and restore me to sanity, and remove all of my 'defects of character'..."

One thing that the preachers told me about that Evil One is that he is very clever and lies a lot. They say that Old Beelzebub, the Lord of the Netherworld, isn't above claiming to be, and appearing to be, God or the Angel of Light or some other Higher Power, while he bargains with you...

And a church that starts off by instructing you to lie and deceive -- "Fake it 'till you make it" -- "Act as if" -- "Don't tell the newcomers..." -- "...lure the reader in..." -- "Don't raise such issues, no matter what your own convictions are." -- "Dole out the Buchmanism 'by teaspoons, not buckets'..." -- is highly suspect. Did Jesus tell you to lie to the newcomers, and tell them that the program never fails, to get them to join the church? Was it Jesus or Satan who was called "The Great Deceiver"?

"Yes Higher Power, I will lie for you, and practice deceptive recruiting for you, and tell the newcomers that God is 'a Group Of Drunks'...

So I can't help but wonder, if you sell your soul to -- "turn your will and your life over to" -- Bill Wilson's vague Higher Power, or his "God as we understood Him", who can be anything from a doorknob to a bedpan to a "Group Of Drunks" to a "god", well, just who or what are you really dealing with and giving your soul to?

"Come on, hurry up. Sign the contract. Abandon yourself to me utterly. And would you quit looking at my feet?"

Just a thought...

Speaking of dealing, some of the early A.A. members seem to have thought that the "spiritual" program was a business deal, too. A.A. number three, Bill Dotson, is quoted in the Big Book chapter A Vision For You as saying this to Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob:

"The way you fellows put this spiritual stuff makes sense. I'm ready to do business. I guess the old folks were right after all."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 159.

Yes, I'll do business with you, Higher Power. I'll sell you my soul, and surrender to you utterly, and be your grovelling servant for all of Eternity, in trade for you making me quit drinking right now. It makes sense to me...

Bill Wilson repeated the "deal" description of the A.A. program again while reminiscing about how he wrote the Big Book and the Twelve Steps:

Well, we finally got to the point where we really had to say what this book was all about and how this deal works. As I told you this had been a six-step program then.
...
The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement of concrete principles that these drunks can't wiggle out of. There can't be any wiggling out of this deal at all and this six-step program had two big gaps which people wiggled out of.
-- Bill Wilson, Transcribed from tape, Fort Worth, 1954.
Was on http://www.a1aa.com/more%2012steps.htm

"Yeh, don't you just hate it when they manage to wiggle out of the contract after you've made a deal for their souls? I mean, there you are, you've got a signed contract, you bought the guy's soul fair and square, it's a done deal, and then the damned fool manages to wiggle out of the contract at the last minute, just because of some darned nitpicking little legal technicality. It's really enough to frost your ass, even in Hell. Damn that Daniel Webster anyhow... And damn those Yankees, too, especially that floozy Lola..."

Faust, 1926	Faust, 1960	Faust, 1994
Faust, 2001

One of the biggest heresies in the Twelve Steps is the demand for a Miracle in Step Seven:

No matter how humbly we ask for it, and no matter whether we do it on our knees, like the original version of Step Seven said, it is still a demand for a miracle, not just a polite request. We have made absolutely no preparations for taking care of ourselves and solving our own problems ourselves should God decide not to grant us that miracle.

Bill Wilson became even more demanding in his so-called "Seventh Step Prayer" -- Bill wanted every defect removed, and he wanted strength too, and Bill didn't even say please or thank you:

      When ready, we say something like this, "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." We have then completed Step Seven.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 76.

Well, Bill might have been done with Step 7, but was God done?

Is God going to grant Bill's demands and make Bill into a strong, defect-free slave?

God has to do it, or He will blow the whole 12-Step program. Step Seven is the heart of the entire A.A. self-improvement routine: You just wait for God to fix you. Literally. The rest of the steps involve making lists of all of your faults, wrongs, sins, defects of character, and moral shortcomings, and making more lists of all of the people you have harmed, and making amends, and wallowing in guilt, confessing your sins, and admitting that you are powerless and insane, but no other step actually deals with fixing yourself.

What if God says, "No. You made your bed, now you lie in it..."?
"Besides, what have you done for Me lately? Go fix yourself."

If God doesn't fix you, then you are screwed.

If God won't fulfill Bill Wilson's demands, and work Bill's Steps like Bill Wilson says, then your goose is cooked and you are in trouble.

'But let's not think about that. Let's all just "come to believe" that God will fix us and make us quit drinking just because we humbly "pray" that He do it.'

And He will, Bill Wilson says:

We will seldom be interested in liquor.
...
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.
...
We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, pages 84-85.

According to Bill Wilson, recovery from alcoholism is effortless. "It just comes." We don't have to do a thing. Our problems are magically solved "without any thought or effort on our part."

That is obviously completely delusional nonsense.

(No effort? Don't we have to go to a life-long series of A.A. meetings, and "Work The Steps" constantly, and "Seek And Do God's Will" every day? That's a lot of effort.)

Remember,

• we declared in Step One that we were powerless over alcohol,
• and in Step Two, we declared that we were insane,
• and in Step Three we gave away our wills,
• so in Step Seven we demand a miracle -- we demand that God actually change us, and take away the desire to drink, or else we will drink ourselves to death.

That is very much like this temptation of Christ in Matthew 4.5:

Then the Devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, the Holy City, set him on the highest point of the Temple, and said to him, "If you are God's Son, throw yourself down, for the scripture says,
        'God will give orders to his angels about you;
        they will hold you up with their hands,
        so that not even your feet will be hurt on the stones.'"
Jesus answered, "But the scripture also says, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
(Also see Luke 4.9.)

You do not throw yourself off of a precipice, demanding that God save you before you hit bottom and go "splat!", and you don't demand that God keep you from drinking, or else you will kill yourself on booze.

But the pro-A.A. literature still insists that we should do that. We find something very similar passed off as a wonderful "leap of faith" in the book Power Recovery, The Twelve Steps for a New Generation, by James Wiley:

A Leap of Faith
"I heard a noise in the kitchen, and turned to see my two-year-old son on top of the kitchen counter, teetering at the edge," said Mike G. "My heart almost stopped. 'Daddy!' he called, and stretched out his arms and leaped into space. I lunged forward and caught him in my arms. Later I thought: 'He had no fear of falling. He never doubted for an instant that I would catch him. How wonderful!' I thought, 'A true leap of faith. If only I could make such a leap of faith to my God.'"
      You, like Mike's little boy, may have the courage to go ahead and make that leap of faith. But even if you still have doubts, go ahead and risk it. "If you don't believe it, do it anyway," said Bill T.
Power Recovery, The Twelve Steps for a New Generation, by James Wiley, page 46.

What insidious nonsense. The Bible just specifically told us not to play games like that.

Worse yet, according to the standard A.A. dogma, we can have any God or home-made "god" we wish. Our "Higher Power" can be any "Power greater than ourselves", or any "God as we understood Him". Our new God can even be a bedpan or a Golden Calf or our new "Group Of Drunks".

Then, according to Mr. Wiley, we are supposed to believe that our personal made-up version of God is totally real and correct and all-powerful, and we are supposed to believe it so fervently that we will make a "Leap of Faith" and jump off of a spiritual cliff, betting our lives and our souls that our home-made god will catch us before we hit bottom and die.

And then they pass off that suicidally moronic behavior as wonderful "faith". Faith in what?

• Faith in our own imagination?
• Faith in our own delusions of grandeur?
• Faith in our superstitions?
• Faith in a Golden Calf?

How is any of that compatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ? (Or compatible with the teachings of Mohammed, or Buddha, or Seneca, or Confucius, or Soloman or Moses?)

Speaking of demanding miracles, if we get nit-picking about it, six of the twelve steps actually demand miracles from God:

• Step One says that we are powerless over alcohol, so God must control our drinking for us, or else we will die. And Step One also says that our lives are unmanageable (meaning: we cannot manage our own lives), so by implication, God must manage our lives for us.
• Step Two says that we are insane, and that only God can restore us to sanity, so we are demanding that God do so.
• Step Three says that we are turning our wills and our lives over to the care of God, so God has to work for us and take care of us from then on, or it blows the whole 12-Step game.
• Step Seven demands that God remove all of our "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings". And Bill Wilson also wrote in the Big Book that God will also remove our desire for drink -- "That is the miracle of it.   ... We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us."
• Then, in Step Eleven, we pray for God to make us understand Him better, and to give us our orders for the day, and then to give us the power to carry out those orders. One of the fundamental beliefs of both Buchmanism and A.A. is that God will reveal himself to us if we truly seek Him, so He had better do it.
• And finally, in Step Twelve God is supposed to give us a "spiritual experience" or a "spiritual awakening" as our reward for having done the preceding eleven steps.

And should God refuse to do any of those tasks for us, then it sort of ruins the whole Twelve-Step program. If God won't play along, and Work The Steps, and do what we wish, then how can the Twelve-Step program possibly work?

The simple undeniable answer is, "It can't."

The whole Alcoholics Anonymous program depends on God micro-managing both our lives and the world around us, and granting our wishes and making everything turn out okay just the way that Frank Buchman and Bill Wilson said that He would if we followed their instructions.

And we are supposed to believe that we are incapable of doing any of that stuff for ourselves, and God must do all of it for us. We are supposed to believe that we are completely powerless, helpless, insane, and unable to run our own lives, and that only by having God make good little robots or puppets out of us can we live good lives.

The A.A. slogan is: "I pray to God every day that I never get the idea that I can run my own life."
And the other slogan is, "Let Go and Let God."

The very idea that you can give up on your life and become a puppet who is controlled by God and taken care of by God is heretical. There is nothing in standard Christianity or in the Bible that says that you can do that. Nor is there any such doctrine in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, or any of the world's other great religions.

It is also heretical to declare that the ideal Christian life consists of being a mindless slave of God. It is also very insulting to God to declare that God is a heartless dictator who will let you relapse and die drunk in a gutter unless you grovel before Him and obey His orders every day.

In fact, A.A. has it exactly backwards: Many Christian believers will do something like give up drinking alcohol for Lent. They do not say, "God: you must take away my desire to drink or else I will drink myself into a stupor every night of Lent." No, they say, "I can control my actions. I will voluntarily give up the pleasure of drinking alcohol for Lent, to show my devotion to God."

And to say that ordinary people can control their drinking, and give it up for Lent, but alcoholics cannot, is baloney, and a cop-out. It is just spiritual laziness, demanding that God fix what the alcoholic could fix by himself.

The Bible has more to say about miracles on demand: Matthew 12.38:

Then some teachers of the law and some Pharisees spoke up. "Teacher," they said, "we want to see you perform a miracle."
      "How evil and godless are the people of this day!" Jesus exclaimed. "You ask me for a miracle? No!"

And Matthew 16:1 says:

      The Pharisees and Sadducees came and, to test him, asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He said to them in reply, "In the evening you say, 'Tomorrow will be fair, for the sky is red'; and, in the morning, 'Today will be stormy, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to judge the appearance of the sky, but you cannot judge the signs of the times. An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." Then he left them and went away.

Jesus just didn't like people demanding miracles and signs, did he?

Another problem with Bill Wilson's understanding of miracles is his declarations that God's miracles wear off after 24 hours, and that alcoholics must beg God for another miracle every day:

We are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our daily activities.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, page 85.

When Jesus Christ healed people and made the blind see and the cripples walk, Jesus didn't say that the healing would only last for one day and then it would wear off, so all of those people had to "Keep Coming Back!" for another treatment every day...

Jesus also never said that the healings would be revoked if people didn't "Seek and Do the Will of God" every day.

Jesus also never said that the healings would be revoked if people didn't go to a meeting at the Temple at least once a week.

Jesus never told Lazarus that he would go back to being dead if he didn't please God all of the time.

While we are talking about people praying for miracles, we shouldn't overlook Christ's admonition of those who pray in public (like at A.A. meetings and A.A. conventions):

      And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
      But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to the Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:5 to 6:6

And those of us who try to be sane and reasonable in our religious beliefs get really tired of the moronic, superstitious, childish Santa Claus spirituality of the the A.A. true believers who think that they can get whatever they want just by praying for it -- "Just incant the name of your favorite Higher Power three times, loudly, and then read your Christmas wish list out loud, and Santa Claus will soon bring you all of the goodies."

And lest you have any doubts, Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book:

Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it.
The Big Book, pages 85-86.

It works -- it really does.
The Big Book, page 88.

Bill Wilson wrote on page 87, "We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends", but the giddy believers who are getting the goodies ignore that, and happily brag at meetings about all of the wonderful stuff that God has given them lately, like this...

I have no other explanation for the many good things that have happened to me since I have been in A.A. -- they came to me from a Greater Power.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Rum, Radio, and Rebellion, page 367.

(Those good things couldn't have been caused by quitting drinking? They couldn't have been caused by no longer constantly shooting yourself in the foot by always being drunk at the wrong times? They couldn't possibly have been caused by being clear-headed, healthy, and able to work and get stuff done -- just for a change?)

And then the enthusiastic believers pray for even more goodies, as if God is their Divine Butler, on call day and night, always eager to solve all of their problems for them.

Unbelievable as it may seem, some 12-Step pundits see no problem with the Santa-Claus praying. The following religious advice comes from the sages of Al-Anon, in their official publication:

      Many times at our own, as well as at AA meetings, I have heard people talk of "gimme prayers" as if they were worthless. Speaking only for myself, I believe they could not be more wrong because I cannot think God considers any prayer worthless.
      Just as most children creep before they walk, and walk before they run, so we progress spiritually from "gimme" prayers to selfless ones where we ask only to know God's Will and to follow it. No one says the child is wasting his time creeping -- he's just learning, just as we have to learn to pray.
      Furthermore, I cannot see that it is wrong to ask for material help, when the Lord's Prayer itself contains our plea for daily bread. I believe we get beyond the point of asking for purely material things just as some of our members are able to thank God for their having married an alcoholic and thus learning about our program.
Al-Anon's favorite forum editorials, pages 63-64.

• Al-Anon actually says that Al-Anon is so wonderful that it was worth it to marry an alcoholic and go through Hell just so that you would be forced to join Bill Wilson's version of Frank Buchman's fascist cult religion. You should be grateful to alcohol for having messed up your family's lives.
  

• And greedily praying for all of the things on your wish list is just good practice in praying, they say. You are allegedly just getting used to praying, and learning to be a passive dependent and learning to expect some "Higher Power" to give you everything you want...
  That is some grossly heretical superstitious nonsense, of course.

  It is totally narcissistic for someone to expect Big Daddy, Big God, or "Higher Power" to take care of her and grant all of her wishes, as if she were a little child and God was the stern but loving parent who will bring gifts to His child when she is good.

  • As Dr. Charlotte Kasl pointed out in her book, Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps, that is a descent into infantile narcissism, where people regress to being helpless ("powerless") babies who lay in their beds and wait for their all-powerful ("Higher Power") Mommies and Daddies to grant all of their wishes and satisfy their every demand just because they cry.
    
  • It is an attempt to return to infancy, where the baby lays helplessly on his backside and waits for Big Mommy and Big Daddy to satisfy all of his desires (and screams if they are slow about it).

    "Let Go and Let God."

  Time to grow up and learn to stand on your own two feet, and not expect Santa Clause to bring the goodies.

  Incidentally, Jesus Christ never taught people to live passive lives of "Let Go and Let God." Jesus never told people to sit on their duffs and wait for God to do things for them. Jesus always talked about people doing things for themselves, and actively doing good. "Let Go and Let God" is just another bit of A.A. heresy. We are God's eyes in this world; it is our duty to see what needs to be done. We are God's hands in this world; it is our duty to do what needs to be done. "Let Go and Let God" will guarantee that God's work doesn't get done in this world. One of the most extreme examples of that goofy philosophy is taught by Al-Anon, the wives' and families' auxiliary: "I will realize that, even in doing nothing about my problems, I am actively practicing the Al-Anon idea." One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, page 143.

• And Al-Anon says: "God never considers any prayer to be worthless."

  Oh really? Not even if it is Adolf Hitler, praying for all of the Jews to die?¹

  "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
  Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, page 65.

I find it amusing that the Hazelden Foundation 12-Step religious propaganda says that Al-Anon is all wrong and is practicing black magic:

The wrong kinds of prayer can be a form of black magic, for when we seek to use a supernatural force to help us achieve our goals, it ceases to be supernatural and becomes superhuman. To make God into a servant is to place him under our superhuman power. Yet is this not exactly what we have long been taught to do? To get down on our knees and pray for God to go to work for us?
The 12 Steps to Happiness, Joe Klaas, The Hazelden Foundation, Center City, MN, 1982, page 140.

And, as usual, I am left with the question:
"What does any of this theological argument have to do with quitting drinking?"

Bill Wilson wrote:

"God ought to be able to do anything."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Wilson G. Wilson, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 158.

I have to comment:
Yes, God can do anything.
But where, true believers, does it say that God will do anything for you?
When did God become your slave?
When did God become like Aladdin's Genie who has to grant you three wishes if you rub his lamp?

Countless millions of other people on this planet are suffering and dying from all kinds of things, particularly starvation and diseases, and God won't do just any old special favor for them. God lets them die. Sixty thousand people die of starvation every day on this planet, and most of them are children. That's just how it is. Millions of people are dying of AIDS in Africa. It's beyond being an epidemic -- entire regions of Africa are being depopulated. Those people are far too poor to be able to afford drugs like AZT; their entire countries are too poor; it's totally out of the question; so they die without medicines. And God just lets them die, in spite of their prayers.

But somehow, you 12-Steppers think that you are so special that you rate God's favors when they don't? What makes you think you are so special?

• Drinking and drugging too much?
• Brain damage?
• Having white skin?
• Imagining that only you and your group are doing the Will of God, and everyone else in the world isn't?

And mind you, that is not a criticism of God. It is a criticism of the stupidity of people. In the rather hokey movie Oh God! where George Burns played God, he had at least one great line, in which God said simply, "I don't do cheap magic tricks."

That one simple line answers so much. Isn't it enough that the Lord created the entire physical Universe in a blindingly brilliant flash of light? Must the Lord also hang around this backwater planet and do cheap magic tricks to amuse the local yokels?

If you can accept the idea that the Lord simply does not do cheap magic tricks, then you can accept the idea that God doesn't play Santa Claus, and God doesn't deliver miracles on demand. You can understand how the Lord did not rescue Job in the Old Testament of the Bible, and God did not save the Jews in Auschwitz, and and God did not save the starving children in Bengladesh or Biafra or Ethiopia, and God did not save the World Trade Center, and God will not save the Africans with AIDS. That's a tough one to accept, but that's just the way it is.

But if you do come to terms with that idea, the idea that God is not Santa Claus and does not grant wishes like a Genie who just popped out of a bottle, then it really blows a big hole in the theology of Alcoholics Anonymous. All of the people in meetings yammering about how their Higher Power is giving them a wonderful bunch of goodies becomes ludicrous. All of the talk about

• "Expect A Miracle"
• "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"
• "We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings"
• "Let Go And Let God."

I have no other explanation for the many good things that have happened to me since I have been in A.A. -- they came to me from a Greater Power.
The Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, page 367.

And so is:

We will seldom be interested in liquor.   ...
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.   ...
We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 84-85.

Given to us "without any thought or effort on our part"? Not even going to A.A. meetings and doing Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps?

And so is:

Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can -- and will, under certain conditions -- remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member. To him, this proposition will be no theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in his life. He will usually offer his proof in a statement like this:
      "Sure, I was beaten, absolutely licked. My own willpower just wouldn't work on alcohol. Change of scene, the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymen got no place with my alcoholism. I simply couldn't stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me. But when I became willing to clean house and then asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted right out of me..."
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 63.

Imagine someone going to confession, and saying to the priest, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been six months since my last confession. I've done all kinds of things since then, but none of them is my fault. I am powerless over everything, and I have no control over my actions. I turned my will and my life over to the care of God quite some time ago, and now God controls everything, and anything I do wrong is God's fault. If I do something good, it is because God makes me do it, so I can't accept any praise. If I do something bad, it is because God makes me do it, so I can't accept any blame."

The priest isn't going to accept that cop-out for a minute.

And what if that person continues with his confession, "I have been defeated by sin, and have no power over it. That is why I gave my will and my life to God, so that He can do something about it. God is the only hope I have of not being destroyed by sin. So all I can do is Let Go and Let God."

The priest isn't going to accept that one either. The priest will tell that person to get off of his lazy ass, and quit feeling sorry for himself, and get to work at fixing himself and battling sin. And the last thing the priest will say is, "Nobody is powerless. You can resist temptation, so do it."

The priest is right, and he clearly sees what could come of this nonsense: Imagine a horny teenager who says, "I am powerless over my sexual urges. I am driven to have sex all of the time. I can't keep my hands off of the girls. So I joined Sexaholics Anonymous, and turned my will and my life over to the care of God, and humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings. [Long-comings?] Well, He hasn't gotten around to doing it yet, so I just can't help but gleefully jump on all of the pretty girls, day and night, night and day, until God gets around to fixing me. It isn't my fault. It's all God's fault, because He isn't doing His job."

Logically, the kid has a point, if we believe in the Twelve-Step bull droppings:

• Step one says, "We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol." (Or, "powerless over our sexual urges.")
• Step two says, "We came to believe that only a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
• Step three says we "turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God".
• Step seven says, "We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings."

All Christian religions emphasize the idea that you are responsible for your own actions. And so do Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism (more properly called Vedantic religions). And so do Native American religions. I just can't think of another religion, anywhere in this world, besides Alcoholics Anonymous (and its parent, Buchmanism, a.k.a. The Oxford Group Movement, a.k.a. Moral Re-Armament), that pushes the idea of you not controlling yourself, of you not controlling your drinking, of you not being responsible for your own actions, of you being powerless over any temptation or vice, and of you not ever being able to change that.

In truth, even A.A. is confused on this issue:

• Step one clearly, unequivocally, declares that we are powerless over alcohol.
• Step two clearly, unequivocally, says that we believe that only "a Power greater than ourselves" (God) can restore us to sanity.
• Step three clearly, unequivocally, says that we are turning our wills and our lives over to the care of God.

As an insurance against "big-shot-ism", we can often check ourselves by remembering that we are today sober only by the grace of God and that any success we may be having is far more His success than ours.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, Page 92.

When someone stays sober for a year or more, all of the members celebrate and thank and praise God for performing that Miracle. But when an A.A. member does something bad, like relapse, the member gets the blame. Suddenly everybody forgets about God, and whether He was running the show.

That is not logically consistent, to put it mildly. I can just see Mr. Spock of Star Trek saying, "That is not logical. Whatever the causal agent is, it is responsible for both its meritorious actions and its reprehensible actions. And the most likely causal agent is the member himself."

The A.A. theologians try to dodge the inconsistency by declaring that some people have really turned their lives over to God, and some people haven't. Some are holding back a little, and keeping a little of their ego still "inflated". And when those people do their own will, rather than the Will of God, then that is when they get into trouble.

That is a rather depressing view of the human race. People's wishes are always bad? Anyone who does what he wishes to do will always do evil? Is it evil to wish that your child gets to eat? Is it evil to willfully insist that your family and friends not suffer harm?

(That is what is called a Gnostic heresy -- and it is also Manichaean -- the doctrine that all goodness is in Heaven, and this material world and all of the people in it are all evil -- matter and flesh are in the realm of darkness -- this world, the Earth, is the realm of Satan. Buchmanism is loaded with that particular heresy.)

Common sense tells us that the vast majority of Americans are not members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither have the vast majority of Americans surrendered their wills and their lives to God, in the style of A.A.. Most people still have their own egos, their own wills, and their own desires. Nevertheless, most people do good things every day. Most people do almost nothing but good, every day. Thus, the inherent true nature of people must be mostly good. Certainly not all good, not angelic, but more good than bad. No matter how bad the world looks some days, people are still far more good than bad. Our world would self-destruct if that were not so.

Undoubtedly, there have to be some A.A. members who have not turned their wills or their lives over to God; lots of them, actually. They may have thought about it, but not quite gotten around to doing it. Or they may have discovered the truth: that it is extremely difficult to do, almost impossible to really do. That the only people who have really shed their egos and their desires and totally surrendered to God are saints, real genuine saints, and those things are as rare as hen's teeth. So rare, in fact, that we are fortunate if there is just one present on this planet at any given time.

What strikes me as one of the most tragic parts of this whole twelve-step routine is the millions of people around the world who are wasting their time pretending that they have turned over their wills and their lives to the care of God, or wasting their time, and going through all kinds of frustration, trying to hand over their wills, and finding out that the darned things won't go away, that they are tied to the owner as if with a rubber band, and just snap back. And that the harder you try to get rid of your will or your desires, the more strongly they just come back to you.

This stuff is really old hat. Us Hippies were talking about it back in the sixties, and it was thousands of years old then. One of the popular Zen stories tells of a student who had been working for ten years to gradually rid himself of all desires. He went to his Zen master and asked,
"But Master, how do I get rid of my last desire -- the desire to be rid of all desires?"

And the old Zen master smiled and answered, "Now you really do have a problem, don't you?"

Alas, neither Frank Buchman nor Bill Wilson knew much about Buddhism or Hinduism, or ego loss, or human psychology, or Zen, or the whole process of really surrendering to God, or infinity, or eternity, or your Higher Power, or whatever you want to call it. And neither Buchman nor Wilson had a clue about the reality that even if you succeed in that surrendering process, that it is just temporary, and you will return to normal reality again all too soon, like in just a few minutes; that only a few rare souls can stay out there for any length of time at all. (Bill Wilson should have known, because his own drug-induced religious experience only lasted for a few minutes, and then Bill returned to normal insanity.)

The rest of us mere mortals are still stuck with our wills, our lives, our egos, and our desires. Now we might have a moment of inspiration, and do something good while divinely inspired, or we might just have a good moment and do something good without God forcing us to do it... Thus it becomes basically impossible to tell whether the good things an A.A. member does are due to his or her own inner goodness, and good wishes, or due to God's goodness.

It is just goofy logic then to insist that all of the good actions of A.A. members are done by God, and all of the bad actions are done by the members themselves. But if we dump that brain-damaged logic, then we blow a huge hole in the A.A. theological edifice. The whole game is based on surrendering control of your life to God, and becoming a good little robot, or a good little puppet on a string. And being good, and staying sober, is considered to be evidence that you have surrendered to God, and God is keeping you out of trouble. And the more years of sobriety you have, the closer you are to God. Obviously.

But alas, that logic breaks down again when old-timers relapse. I have just recently listened to the stories of a guy who had 9 years of sobriety and then relapsed, and a woman who had 18 years off of drugs and then relapsed. Tragic. Sad. But even more tragic was their inability to even understand what happened in their lives.

The guy only said, "I just got stupid for a while."

The woman said, "It's so wonderful. Now that I have gone out and used and come back, I know that I don't ever have to relapse again." And everybody cheered and clapped.

I couldn't help but wonder, "Did you know that you had to relapse before the last time? Were you saying to yourself, 'Even though I have 18 years of success, I know that I will have to relapse at least once more, just for the Hell of it.' Huh? I don't think so."

They just didn't have a clue about what had really happened, or wouldn't admit to having a clue. If that is true, then they are sitting ducks for another relapse, because they won't know how to prevent the next one any more than they did the last one.

A.A. and N.A. dogma says that you just cannot stay clean and sober for that long without working the Twelve Steps and getting God's help. (If you could, then who needs the Twelve Steps or N.A. or A.A.?) Anyone with 9 or 18 years of sobriety has obviously long since "worked the Steps", many, many times over, and has turned his or her will and life over to the care of God. Obviously, long ago, according to standard dogma. So where did the will to relapse suddenly come from? How can someone without a will of his own suddenly get the will to relapse? Inquiring minds want to know.

Our friend Spock would say, "That is not logical. Something without any will cannot wish to get a will. If we assume that a rock is an inanimate object without a will of its own, then we can see that a rock cannot suddenly wish to learn calculus, or wish to take a drink, or wish to get a free will of its own. On the other hand, when a human suddenly wishes to take a drink, and does so, after 9 years of not drinking, then we must assume that the human has a will of his own, and had one even before the desire to drink came along."

Apparently, some of the A.A. faithful are capable of thinking along these same lines, but they seem to burn out a few critical brain cells at just the moment when they almost hit on the truth. This text is from a pro-A.A. web site that wishes to teach us to do the 12 steps:

STEP 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. To turn my will and our life over?? This sounded like some kind of brainwashing to me. Was A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) some kind of cult? It turned out that A.A. is not a cult. I have the right to take my will back any time I want.
http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Addictions/rawpsych/recovery/chapter_8.htm

This guy just doesn't seem to be able to understand what "will" means. You can't willfully take your will back if you have no will. And you can't "want" to take your will back if you have no will. In this context, "want" and "will" are the same thing. And to say that you have the "right" to take your will back is some kind of a joke. It is like saying that you have the "right" to defy gravity. If you don't have the physical ability to levitate, then the right to do it is useless.
(And yes, of course it's a cult, and they do brainwashing. Your first impression was correct.)

[One can only wonder whether the oldtimers were playing mind games with the newcomer. The new guy worries about whether he has joined a cult, so the oldtimers tell him, "Don't worry. You have the right to take back your will and your mind any time you want."]

In truth, your will is a part of your mind, and you cannot just give your will away as if it was a coin or a token. And you really can't be giving it away, and then taking it back, repeatedly, in some kind of a neurotic dance.

Perhaps you saw the beautiful movie Awakenings, starring Robin Williams. There, Robin Williams played the role of a doctor who worked in a mental hospital with chronic post-encephalitic patients who looked and acted like total zombies who had no will of their own. They were basically catatonic, and sat motionless all day long, unless the doctor stimulated them and got them to do something. They would do whatever the doctor made them do, or urged them to do, but they had little or no will of their own. That part of their mind was almost a total blank. I have never seen anyone at an A.A. meeting who looked like that, and I doubt if anyone else has, either. The people at A.A. meetings all have a will of their own. There isn't a mindless zombie in the bunch.
(I know, I know, it's a perfect setup for a horrible joke, but I'm going to resist the temptation.
See? I'm not powerless over jokes.)

Even if you decide that you have no will of your own, even if you decide that you have been defeated, and surrender to someone else, and swear that you have no will of your own left, and have no desire except to do the dictates of your master, then that is still your will. Your will is now to be a sycophant, or a slave, or a passive dependent, and to just get ordered around.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's continue with the crazy idea that you can give your will away.

Logically, to take it one step further, if the man with 9 years of sobriety had really turned his will over to God, then God must have given it back. And the same is true of the woman with 18 years off of drugs. So you give your will to God, and He turns around and gives it right back to you, and also sticks you with all of your usual problems again? That isn't how the A.A. true believers like to tell the story...

Then, to really flog this dead horse one more time, we can ask, "Why did God choose to give that guy his will back, after 9 years of taking care of him? Of course God knew what would happen. As soon as God decided to give that guy his will back, his fate was sealed. His relapse was as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. So that was a really mean thing to do, giving the guy his will back... Why would God do that? It couldn't be because God was unhappy with something he had done, because he had not done anything. God had his will, and ran his life for him, and made him do whatever he did. Until, suddenly, God didn't feel like controlling him any more. Why not?" Inquiring minds want to know.

The really bad thing about those old-timers who relapse is that they threaten to bring the whole logical structure down; they threaten to collapse the whole house of cards. They are living proof that the Twelve Steps don't really work. I mean, if the Twelve Steps won't even save people who have done them for 9 or 18 years, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

The A.A. Big Book gives us the following religious teaching:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict, page 449.

If nothing happens in this world by mistake, if everything is just "exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment", then we have no free will and no individual responsibility for our actions. We are just robots or puppets, being manipulated by God and being made to do His Will. We have to be, because everything that happens, including what we do, is just the Will of God. So we cannot possibly have any choice in the matter, or else something that we do could be a "mistake".

If we do something good, it was just what God wanted to happen.
If we do something that is low and vile and evil, it was just what God wanted to happen.
It's all just part of God's Great Plan.

You and I cannot possible do something wrong, because if we did, then that would invalidate the above statement -- it would be something that God did not want to happen, and there would be something in this world that was not "exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment."

But the logical conclusion of such a doctrine is absurd:
If someone chooses to go rape and murder a pretty girl, hey! -- that was not a mistake -- that was just the will of God. We might as well just accept it and be serene and grateful about it because "Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake."

Such a doctrine is obviously grossly heretical. Most all of the major religions of the world teach the concepts of free will and individual responsibility. They tell you to get a grip and manage your own life and do good works. They don't let you just bliss out and mindlessly proclaim that everything that happens is just what God wishes.

Incidentally, the statement that nothing happens by mistake -- it's all God's Will -- also invalidates A.A. Steps Four and Five. We cannot possibly be guilty of "moral shortcomings", "defects of character", and "sins" if everything was happening just as God wished it to. We haven't done anything wrong -- we were just doing whatever God wished us to do. It was all just part of God's Great Plan.

So there is no point in us listing all of our "sins" in Step Four, and confessing them to someone in Step Five, because we haven't committed any. It's a contradiction in terms. Likewise, we don't need God to remove our flaws and shortcomings in Steps Six and Seven, because we don't have any. We are exactly what God made us to be, and who are we to choose to change God's Great Plan?

The logical conclusion is that we should simply throw away A.A. Steps Four through Seven, and stop wallowing in guilt.

The statement that nothing happens by mistake -- it's all God's Will -- also makes God into a heartless monster:

• The Holocaust, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka, and all of World War Two -- that all happened because God wanted it to happen, and God wanted all of those people to suffer and die?
• The Church murdered millions of girls as witches throughout the Middle Ages because God wanted it to happen?
• The recent tsunami that killed more than 160,000 people from Malaysia to Sri Lanka was also not an accident -- it was God's will? God wanted all of those poor brown-skinned people to die?
• And Hurricane Katrina was just God punishing the South for improper religious beliefs and for voting for George W. Bush?
  No, "Repent America" director Michael Markovitch said (31 Aug 2005) that God destroyed New Orleans because of a gay festival that was scheduled to be held there a week later.
  Wow. That's just like Jerry Falwell's declaration that God allowed 9-11 to happen, and God allowed the World Trade Center to be destroyed, and God allowed thousands of innocent people to be killed, because of "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians".

With a God like that, who needs a Devil?

(Well fortunately for me, I don't believe that God is like that. It's just some heartless religious nut-cases who are like that.)

Another heretical part of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve-Step religion is the dogma that says, "Once an addict, always an addict. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Quitting isn't an option for addicts like us."

Christian religions believe that people can be saved, that they can be salvaged or redeemed, that they can always be made into something better. And one way or another, the other major religions of the world also say essentially the same thing. They all agree that you can work on yourself, and resist temptation, and make yourself into a better person. Only A.A. says that there is no hope for you, ever, that you are powerless over your sin -- alcoholism -- and cannot manage your own life, and that you cannot ever recover, and that the only thing you can do is essentially give up on yourself, and hope that God takes over and does something useful with you, and maybe makes you into something good. So, in total despair, you turn over -- surrender -- control of your will and your life to God in Step 3.

It is a standard Alcoholics Anonymous heresy to teach that no one can resist temptation by himself. A.A. says that you must always continue to attend meetings, and practice the Twelve Steps, for the rest of your life, because you are only "in recovery," and can't ever finish it, and actually get recovered, and learn to stand on your own two feet:
"Nobody ever graduates from this program, not ever",
the faithful brag.

In conclusion, I can only say that whatever growth or understanding has come to me, I have no wish to graduate. Very rarely do I miss the meetings of my neighborhood A.A. group, and my average has never been less than two meetings a week.
... our one desire is to stay in A.A. ...
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, Jim Burwell, The Vicious Cycle, pages 249-250.

A.A. doesn't seem able to distinguish between an unchangeable condition, like the genes someone inherits, and a changeable condition, like one's behavior. I will agree that, unless genetic engineering makes some fantastic advances real soon, I am pretty much stuck with all of the genes that I inherited. And at least one of them does seem to be a gene for alcoholism. But after that, all bets are off. The gene does not force me to drink. The gene changes how my brain and body react to alcohol, and changes how I feel when I drink it, but the gene doesn't force me to drink. I don't have to do it. I can quit, and I have quit. And I can recover from the effects of having drunk too much, and live a different life. As the Christians would say, "I can do good. I can choose good over evil. I have free will."

Those who believe that wallowing in powerlessness forever is a good thing to do might consider this Biblical passage, John 10.33:

They answered, "We do not want to stone you because of any good deeds, but because of your blasphemy! You are only a man, but you are trying to make yourself a God!"
      Jesus answered, "It is written in your own Law that God said, 'You are gods.' We know that what the scripture says is true forever; and God called these people gods, the people to whom the message was given."

Somehow, I get the impression that "knowing your place", and staying in your place, isn't quite what Jesus believed in. How do you read that? Jesus also used the phrase "children of God" more than once, as in, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the children of God." What do children of God grow up to be? I don't think that "Bigger children of God" is the entire answer.

Here, we might also consider this statement by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans:

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery, but you have received the spirit of sonship.
The Reader's Digest Bible, page 668.
Also see Romans 8:14-15.

Bill Wilson was inconsistent on the issue of "Once an addict, always an addict." The Alcoholics Anonymous theology is very confused and contradictory there, because Bill Wilson and his Big Book also teach us the doctrine of instant perfection, just like Frank Buchman's cult did. So you get both "you never recover" and "you are suddenly transformed" in Bill Wilson's religious teachings:

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.   ...   We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.   ...   Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.   ...   We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 6, Into Action, pages 83-84.

We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 6, Into Action, page 75.

Assume on the other hand that father has, at the outset, a stirring spiritual experience. Overnight, as it were, he is a different man. He becomes a religious enthusiast. He is unable to focus on anything else.   ...   There is talk about spiritual matters morning, noon and night.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 9, The Family Afterward, page 127.

As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 4, We Agnostics, Page 46.

We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 2, There Is A Solution, page 25.

Don't Leave Five Minutes Before The Miracle!
A.A. slogan

The idea of sudden, dramatic attainment of perfection is tempting, but heretical (as well as impossible). Christianity and all of the other major religions of the world teach us that love takes a lifetime -- that spiritual attainment is a slow, life-long process of "Progress, not instant perfection" -- and you don't just suddenly attain Heaven on Earth, or get instantly rocketed into the fourth dimension. Life just isn't that easy.

Like Tom Driberg wrote about Buchmanism (a.k.a. "the Oxford Groups", a.k.a. Moral Re-Armament, MRA), which Bill Wilson adopted as the theology of Alcoholics Anonymous:

For -- to sum up the main criticisms -- MRA is irrational in its mystique and authoritarian in its methods; it rejects free discussion; it practises with insufficient discrimination the dangerous, and often deadly, doctrine that the end justifies the means; and, by seeming to proclaim the possibility of instant perfection, it raises hopes that cannot be fulfilled. In short, it is essentially non-Christian and anti-democratic.
The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament; A Study of Frank Buchman and His Movement, Tom Driberg, 1965, pages 304-305.

And just to confuse the issue further, "Progress, Not Perfection" is also a common A.A. slogan. But that slogan of course contradicts all of Bill Wilson's writings that were quoted above that talked about instant transformation.

Speaking of "the end justifies the means", that is another of Bill Wilson's heresies.

Bill Wilson taught the A.A. recruiters to hide the true nature of Alcoholics Anonymous -- to be deceptive and downright dishonest about the details of the A.A. program when speaking to prospective new members -- it's okay because it will get more recruits into Alcoholics Anonymous.

To some people we need not, and probably should not emphasize the spiritual feature on our first approach. We might prejudice them.
The Big Book, 3rd and 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, Chapter 6, Into Action, pages 76-77.

It is seldom wise to approach an individual, who still smarts from our injustice to him, and announce that we have gone religious. In the prize ring, this would be called leading with the chin. Why lay ourselves open to being branded fanatics or religious bores? We may kill a future opportunity to carry a beneficial message.
The Big Book, 3rd and 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, Chapter 6, Into Action, page 77.

And Bill instructed the recruiters not to be very explicit about A.A. theology when talking to doubters:

When dealing with such a person [an agnostic or atheist], you had better use everyday language to describe spiritual principles. There is no use arousing any prejudice he may have against certain theological terms and conceptions about which he may already be confused. Don't raise such issues, no matter what your own convictions are.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 93.

In his history of Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, Bill Wilson described how he practiced deceptive recruiting for his cult religion, rationalizing that he had to do it because alcoholics are so bad:

When first contacted, most alcoholics just wanted to find sobriety, nothing else. They clung to their other defects, letting go only little by little. They simply did not want to get "too good too soon." The Oxford Groups' absolute concepts -- absolute purity, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love -- were frequently too much for the drunks. These ideas had to be fed with teaspoons rather than by buckets.
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, pages 74-75.

Real Christians do not dole out the truth about their churches and their beliefs by "teaspoons, rather than by buckets".
Real Christians do not hide the truth about just what is expected of new members.

Yet another heresy in the Alcoholics Anonymous dogma is the concept of inherited sin. That is an old idea, one that the ancient Jews believed in. Jesus Christ was asked whether a man who was born blind was blind due to his own sin, or the sin of his parents. Essentially, Jesus said, "Neither. We aren't playing that game any more. Paradigm shift time. He is blind for the greater glory of God." And then Jesus healed the blind guy. (John 9:1)

But A.A. still believes in inherited sin. An alcoholic is born with the gene for alcoholism, so he is born with the spiritual disease (read: "sin") of alcoholism. He is guilty and damned and condemned to Hell the instant the sperm hits the egg. And the only salvation available to him is to accept A.A. and the Twelve-Step program with its Higher Power as his savior.

This effectively makes Alcoholics Anonymous one of the strangest deviant sects of Calvinism around: They believe in predestination with a nasty genetic twist.

Occasionally, at some meeting, one of the faithful will entertain you with stories of how he was an alcoholic and dysfunctional, even as a child, even before he took his first drink. (I wish I were making this stuff up, but I'm not.) And he wasn't talking about codependency, or being an ACOA -- adult child of alcoholics. He wasn't talking about having been made maladjusted or neurotic by an out-of-control alcoholic parent (although he might well have been). He was talking about being a dysfunctional person, an alcoholic, because he was born one. He was talking about having been born with a hereditary "spiritual disease" and having acted wrong since birth.

One story in the Big Book begins:

My alcoholic problem began long before I drank. My personality, from the time I can remember anything, was the perfect set-up for an alcoholic career. I was always at odds with the entire world, not to say the universe. I was out of step with life, with my family, with people in general.
  ...
There was no material or external reason for this.
The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, Stars Don't Fall, page 400.

In the Big Book, Doctor Bob, the co-founder of A.A., described his alcoholism this way:

Young Dr. Robert Smith

Unfortunately for me I was the only child, which perhaps engendered the selfishness which played such an important part in bringing on my alcoholism.     ... After high school came four years in one of the best colleges in the country where drinking seemed to be a major extra-curricular activity. Almost everyone seemed to do it. I did it more and more, and had lots of fun without much grief, either physical or financial. I seemed to be able to snap back the next morning better than most of my fellow drinkers, who were cursed (or perhaps blessed) with a great deal of morning-after nausea. Never once in my life have I had a headache, which fact leads me to believe that I was an alcoholic almost from the start. My whole life seemed to be centered around doing what I wanted to do, without regard for the rights, wishes, or privileges of anyone else; a state of mind which became more and more predominant as the years passed. I was graduated "summa cum laude" in the eyes of the drinking fraternity, but not in the eyes of the Dean. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Dr. Robert Smith, page 172.

So, he was a born alcoholic, and his alcoholism was caused by in-born selfishness.

The idea of that some people are "born the wrong way" is repeated at the start of every Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The A.A. members begin every meeting by reading out loud Bill Wilson's declarations in the Big Book that the people for whom the A.A. program did not work were "constitutionally dishonest with themselves" and "born that way":

RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, page 58.

(Notice the double-talk: It isn't their fault, but it is their fault because they are defective. It sure isn't the fault of Bill's program, Bill says.)

Many other people report the same kind of nonsense:

Now, a person who has never had a drink, or never drank problematically, would never be called "alcohol dependent" -- but you frequently find such people in AA meetings, saying that they "identify as 'alcoholics'", because they "have the character defects of alcoholics" or some such. There have even been reports of people calling their PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN "alcoholics", because they display "self-centeredness"! This rubbish is only possible in a world where "alcoholism" has a mystical, "spiritual" meaning that has nothing to do with alcohol. And it also explains why many people are suggesting that EVERYONE should be in a 12-Step program, whether or not they have any substance abuse problem.

"Alcoholism" = gambling = "sex addiction" = messiness = being married to someone who has any problem, etc. They are all the same "spiritual disease", all must be "arrested" by steppism.
-- Rita

And more:

Many of the people in the program who were parents would accuse their young children or teenagers of acting "alcoholically" when they were disobedient or acted selfishly. Some of the members' young kids actually believed that they were alkies or addicts even though they had never even nipped off of someone's beer or smoked a joint. It was sad to see children brainwashed by this nonsense. One boy would come up for chips and yearly medallions stating his "clean time" even though he had never used drugs. This mother's middle daughter did the same thing at the AA meeting and this kid never drank. The boy ended up being a problem in his young adult years and the NA/AA father banned the kid from the home. The youngster was once a good boy. Could it be that years of hearing this bull$hit of how he was an "addict" during his formative years led him to believe that he was worthless and would never amount to much unless he continued to go to these meetings with his dad?
-- A.H.

One problem that any Christian will have with Alcoholics Anonymous is the organization's abandoning of the Bible. The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is their new Bible. Some members claim to still use the Bible; I sometimes hear a bit of lip service to the Bible like, "Keep the Big Book next to the Good Book," but you won't see a Bible at a meeting, and you won't hear it quoted. Everybody is carrying the Big Book, and all readings come from it, or from a similar book of daily meditations, also written by Bill Wilson and other members of A.A..

In fact, reading aloud from the Bible at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is usually forbidden. The Bible is considered "outside literature". Reading aloud at meetings from anything but A.A. "Council Approved" (and A.A.-published) literature is forbidden.

In addition, A.A. has essentially abandoned Jesus Christ. The A.A. faithful believe that Bill Wilson is superior to Jesus Christ when it comes to dealing with alcoholism, and you will hear Bill Wilson quoted a hundred times more often than Jesus Christ. (As a matter of fact, I can't really remember the last time I heard Jesus Christ quoted in an A.A. or N.A. meeting...)

The third edition of the A.A. Big Book does not contain the word "Jesus" anywhere, not even once. Bill Wilson raved constantly about "God", but didn't talk about Jesus Christ at all. There is one and only one mention of "Christ" in the entire book, and it is Bill Wilson's statement that before his hallucinatory experience on belladonna, his so-called "spiritual experience," he didn't have much use for Christ:

With ministers, and the world's religions, I parted right there. When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory. To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching -- most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 1, Bill's Story, pages 10-11.

Apparently, Bill continued to disregard a lot of that stuff even after he "saw the light," or saw "the God of the preachers", because Bill never mentioned Jesus or Christ again, not anywhere in the Big Book, not ever.

The first edition of the Big Book contained one story, "My Wife and I," that contained a line mentioning Jesus Christ:

Here were these men who visited me and they, like myself, had tried everything else and although it was plain to be seen none of them were perfect, they were living proof that the sincere attempt to follow the cardinal teaching of Jesus Christ was keeping them sober.

That story was dropped from the second, third, and fourth editions.

• The word "God" appears in the first 164 pages of the Big Book (which William G. Wilson either wrote, co-authored, or edited) 106 times,
• the word "Power", as in "Higher Power" or "that Power, which is God" appears 22 times,
• the divine "Him" appears 26 times,
• and the divine "His" is used 15 times,
• but there is no mention of "Jesus Christ", not one single mention.

Basically, Alcoholics Anonymous believes in and practices the teachings of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, another man who had little use for Jesus Christ, because he preferred his own beliefs and teachings to those of Jesus. Bill Wilson did not invent the theology of A.A. -- he merely copied it from Frank Buchman.

In spite of that fact that Bill Wilson tried to hide the strong connections between Frank Buchman and A.A., Buchman's Oxford Group got three mentions in the third edition of the Big Book, while Christ got only one. (The first two mentions of the Oxford Group are in the Forward to the Second Edition, and the third is on page 218 of the third edition, in the story "He Thought He Could Drink Like A Gentleman".)

For that matter, when you consider the fact that Jesus' first miracle was changing water into wine at a wedding party, there might be a real problem with Jesus being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous... (John 2:1 to 2:11.)

I am reminded of a contemporary critic of Frank Buchman's Oxford Group, Pastor H. A. Ironside, who criticized Buchmanism by saying that it was not a Christian religion, in spite of Buchman's claims that it was, because everything in Buchmanism would still be possible even if Jesus Christ had never been born. The same thing is true of Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. would not have to change one word of the official church dogma even if Jesus Christ had never been born. The sacred Twelve Steps of Bill Wilson do not mention Jesus Christ, and do not require Jesus Christ in order to work, and the Twelve Steps don't even require Jesus Christ to have ever existed.

Neither are the Twelve Steps based on any of the teachings of Jesus Christ. (They are based on the teachings of Dr. Frank Buchman.)

Alcoholics Anonymous simply has no need for, and no use for, Jesus Christ. A.A. worships Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob, not Jesus Christ.

In fact, Christians have often found it necessary to even start their own recovery groups, separate from the A.A. mainstream, just to have an emphasis on Jesus Christ:

        Saddleback's 12-Step program began when [John] Baker, a recovering alcoholic and increasingly devoted Christian, grew frustrated with the taboo of mentioning his higher power -- Jesus Christ -- at traditional Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In the secular world, the concept of a higher power -- the cornerstone of 12-Step programs -- can be anything from God to a doorknob, depending on the spiritual comfort level of the person in recovery.
        "At an AA meeting, you can talk about anything else, but not Jesus Christ," Baker says. "I'd be mocked when I talked about my higher power."
12 Steps, Christian Style, Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1999.
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/an990430.html#47

William Playfair observed,

In fact, the most striking evidence of the non-Christian nature of AA is in the testimonials of its members. In Came to Believe, which we are told is a record of "the spiritual adventure of AA as experienced by individual members," not one single testimonial out of the several hundreds could clearly and unquestionably be considered Christian. Not one single reference to the God and Father of Jesus Christ or Jesus Christ, as the one and only Savior, can be found. This is especially interesting when one realizes that every other kind of testimony is recorded. Out of the millions of AA members, surely AA could have included one Christian testimony in a book filled with testimonies! If anything, this book shows an anti-Christian bias.
      Members acknowledge Allah, the Life Force, any power greater than a drunk, the AA group as a whole, etc., but never the Lord God of the Scriptures. Either the number of Christians in AA is so small as to be negligible, or AA editors have chosen to exclude Christian testimonies. I will leave it to the reader to decide for himself which explanation is the correct one.
The Useful Lie, William L. Playfair, M.D. with George Bryson, page 95.

And just recently (August 2003), the following exchanges occurred in the Internet newsgroup "alt.recovery.addiction.alcoholism" between some A.A. true believers and me:

Mias:
I thank God for A.A., and A.A. for God!

---

Orange:
Which God is it that A.A. gave you, Jesus Christ, or some other god?

---

Mias:
On your inquiry about my God I will only say that 'God, as I understand Him' will suffice. I will also say that that God instructs me not to judge so that I be not judged. I better take that advice.

---

Orange:
In other words, you refuse to answer the simple, honest question about which god Alcoholics Anonymous gave you. And it apparently is not Jesus Christ, or you would be happy to say so.

One of the criticisms that a theologian had of Frank Buchman's Oxford Group Movement was that it was not Christian at all, in spite of Buchman's claims that it was. The proof: that none of Buchmanism would have to be changed in the slightest even if Jesus Christ had