A Power Greater Than Ourselves

THE TWELVE STEPS

AND

TWELVE TRADITIONS

STEP TWO

“Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, “Look what you people have done so! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won’t believe in God, others can’t, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever that He will perform this miracle. Yes, you’ve got us over a barrel, all right --- but where do we go from here?”

~

This business about the role of God in AA is so important to the newcomer that it can drive some very good minds away from the potential of finding a spiritual remedy to the problem of alcoholism. Those of us who have had a conversion of sorts easily forget and become insensitive about the sometimes well thought-out convictions of, for instance, those trained in philosophy or the sciences (Not all of us were atheists out of avoidance or apathy). We find many who insist on using the masculine pronoun or centering discussion on faith in open meetings before convincing these poor souls of the nature of the disease. Untreated alcoholism is a terminal disease that there is no escape from and we have to be convinced of that before we can even think of humbling ourselves enough to "come to believe". And by the way, it says in this Step that "We come to believe a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity". It says nothing about God. These true believers would say that those like me are weak on faith and nothing I could say would convince them otherwise: but, I am adamant about this because, even though my personal and powerful spiritual experience is what drove me to AA, I still had to “come to believe” as stated in Step Two.

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