“Alcoholics Anonymous has been called ‘the spiritual movement of the twentieth century.’ Without theology, without clergy, without hierarchy, AA offered a way for ordinary people to experience the spiritual… It returned religion to its root meaning — a relationship — and made that relationship available to anyone who sought it.”— Ernest Kurtz, Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous
Phones already worked. But when smart phones came out we were amazed at how absolutely useful they could be to us. Same invention, with new ideas, which made our lives easier.
All developers had to do was drop old clunky ideas to get some new ones and we got something wildly more amazing.
Many of us found we had old, clunky ideas about God that felt the same way — rigid, punishing, impossible to please. Those ideas were minimally useful when our drinking took off.
In recovery, we discovered we had to let those ideas go if we wanted and develop new ideas. Not to throw away belief — but to grow that belief into a loving God of our understanding, one that restores us to sanity and helps us live. A Higher Power that isn’t there to scare us, but to guide us.
If we can reinvent phones to make daily living easier, can't we let our understanding of God grow into something that actually makes our whole life make sense?
What old ideas about God did you have to let go of before recovery started to feel possible?
