Tuesday, November 08, 2011:
AS BILL SEES IT
174
Constructive Forces*
Mine was exactly the kind of deep-seated block we so often see today in new people who say they are atheistic or agnostic. Their will to disbelieve is so powerful that apparently they prefer a date with the undertaker to an open-minded and experimental quest for God.
Happily for me, and for most of my kind who have since come to A.A., the constructive forces brought to bear in our Fellowship have nearly always overcome this colossal obstinacy. Beaten into complete defeat by alcohol, confronted by the living proof of release, and surrounded by those who can speak to us from the heart, we have finally surrendered.
And there, paradoxically, we have found ourselves in a new dimension, the real world of spirit and faith. Enough willingness, enough open-mindedness --- and there it is!
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I have mixed feeling when I read such testimonials of faith from my ex-atheist Fellows. I don’t wish to denigrate their faith at all but I simply don’t buy into it. I had as profound, as it was powerful, spiritual experience that lifted the obsession to drink and has relieved me of it the past thirteen years. However, I don’t believe in God as one would conventionally believe. I am not… I repeat… not an atheist; but, like certain Buddhists, I am not a deist. That does not eliminate the notion that I have been touched by the Spirit of compassion. Most compatible with the Twelve Steps of A.A., my faith has a definite process towards the progression of the spirit which does not deny or make excuses to science. I can, with this faith, hold hands with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and scientists in a faith that is not condescending and embraces them all.
geo
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