Week 7
Step Two Questionnaire, “We Agnostics”
Week 7. I will now read the Step 2 Questionnaire, followed by "We Agnostics" (pages 44 to 57) and Appendix 2, "Spiritual Experience" (pages 567 and 568).
Step 2: How to Take It
Suggestions:
A. Take the step with a member of the group.
B. Read each question out loud, mark yes or no to each one.
C. If you are convinced of each question, you will be feeling comfortable with step two and should move to the next step.
What should I do if I'm not convinced?
A. Let a member of the group know of your problem. Review the step with him/her. Pinpoint the part of the step you are having problems with. Be honest.
B. Go back to the previous step. Perhaps the problem is there. Am I sincerely convinced of step one?
C. Read and reread the chapter which carries the main thrust on step 2: Chapter 4, "We Agnostics," pages 44 to 57. Read it 100 times if necessary.
D. Go to as many meetings as possible, hearing and listening for the words that will help convince you.
The 15 Convictions of Step 2
What I am convinced of when I say, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity":
I am convinced that I have to find a power, other than human power, to replace the power of alcoholism.
I am convinced that my own code of morals or philosophy of living is insufficient. I cannot stay comfortable on a continuing basis my way because of alcoholism.
I am convinced that my human intelligence is not enough to keep me comfortably sober on my own because of alcoholism.
I am convinced my idea that self-sufficiency would solve my problems did not work. Self-sufficiency means staying comfortable without help.
I am convinced I never gave the spiritual life a fair hearing on a constant and continuing basis. "Spiritual" means believing in some power other than human power.
I am convinced that lack of power was my dilemma. My own willpower, so far as alcoholism is concerned, is nil. I cannot stop using addictions and feel comfortable on willpower alone because of alcoholism.
I am convinced that believing in a power greater than ourselves is a strength, not a weakness.
I am convinced that constantly believing in a power greater than ourselves will give me purpose and direction in life without addictions. "Constant" means each and every day and sometimes many times during the day.
I am convinced that in the final analysis only I can tap the power that's available to us all. I believe that deep down in me is the fundamental idea of God. I have to find the great reality deep down within myself.
I am convinced that a constant belief in a power greater than ourselves will eventually take away or remove my obsession to use addictions. "Obsession" means the thought or idea that somehow, someday, I will control and return safely to my addictions.
I am convinced that when the obsession that I can go back to my addiction has been taken away or removed, I have been restored to sanity. It's the thoughts and ideas before using that is the insanity of my thinking.
I am convinced that probably no human power could have relieved my alcoholism.
I am convinced that God could and would if He were sought. I have to make the effort.
I am convinced when thousands of AAs throughout the world say that the presence of this power is today the most important fact of their lives, I believe.
I am convinced that I have to ask for help every day and sometimes many times during the day if I am to recreate my life.
Chapter 4: We Agnostics (Pages 44–57)
In the preceding chapters, you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if, when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic, such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. But it isn't so difficult. About half our original fellowship were of exactly that type. At first, some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while, we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life—or else.
Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up. Something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted. If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral. We could wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact, we could will these things with all our might. But the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly.
Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how were we to find this power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main objective is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course, that we're going to talk about God.
The Difficulty for Agnostics
Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship. But his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God. For we have reopened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored. We know how he feels. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti-religious.
To others, the word God brought up a particular idea of Him which someone had tried to impress upon them during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagined we had abandoned the God-idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a Power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly.
Yet in other moments, we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, "Who then made all this?" There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost. Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.
Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God. Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to effect a contact with Him. 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.
We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you.
The Simple Question
At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth. But if we wished to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was.
We needed to ask ourselves but one short question: "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. (Footnote: Please be sure to read Appendix 2 on spiritual experience.)
Logic and Science
The practical individual of today is a stickler for facts and results. Nevertheless, the 20th century readily accepts theories of all kinds, provided they are firmly grounded in fact. We have numerous theories, for example, about electricity. Everyone believes them without a murmur of doubt. Why this ready acceptance? Simply because it is impossible to explain what we see, feel, direct, and use without a reasonable assumption as a starting point.
It is being constantly revealed as mankind studies the material world that outward appearances are not inward reality at all. To illustrate: The prosaic steel girder is a mass of electrons whirling around each other at incredible speed. These tiny bodies are governed by precise laws, and these laws hold true throughout the material world. Science tells us so. We have no reason to doubt it.
When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life, as we see it, there is an all-powerful, guiding, creative intelligence—right there, our perverse streak comes to the surface, and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so. We agnostic and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us.
The Record of Experience
We who have traveled this dubious path beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. We talked of intolerance while we were intolerant ourselves. We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees.
On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to, and believes in, a Power greater than himself. This Power, in each case, accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American statesman put it, "Let's look at the record."
Here are thousands of men and women who flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.
Modern Scientific Inquiry
This world of ours has made more material progress in the last century than in all the millenniums which went before. In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas. Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of the material?
Even in the present century, American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Had not all efforts at flight failed before? Only thirty years later, the conquest of the air was almost an old story. We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view.
The Bedevilments
We were having trouble with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We were a prey to misery and depression. We couldn't make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. Was not a basic solution to these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was.
Our ideas did not work, but the God-idea did. Logic is great stuff. We liked it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason. But when we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?
The Bridge of Reason
Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn't duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the bridge of reason toward the desired shore of faith. We had been faithful, objectively faithful, to the God of Reason. So in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time.
It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another, we had been living by faith and little else. Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life.
Actually, we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other, it is there. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there that He may be found.
The Story of the Minister's Son
In this book, you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. His story is so interesting that some of it should be told now. Our friend was a minister's son. He attended church school, where he became rebellious at what he thought an overdose of religious education. For years thereafter, he was dogged by trouble and frustration.
One night, when confined in the hospital, he asked himself this question, "Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong?" Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came: "Who are you to say there is no God?"
This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds, he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the presence of God. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the presence of infinite power and love. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared. God had restored his sanity.
Appendix 2: Spiritual Experience (Pages 567–568)
The terms "spiritual experience" and "spiritual awakening" are used many times in this book, which, upon careful reading, shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms.
Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes, or religious experiences, must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals. Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the "educational variety" because they develop slowly over a period of time.
Quite often, friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. With few exceptions, our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource, which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.
Most emphatically, we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual principles. He can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. Willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation." — Herbert Spencer
Homework
Reread: Pages 44 to 57.
Read: "How It Works," pages 58 to the first paragraph on page 64.
Action: Pass out and complete the Step 3 questionnaire with a member of the group before next week.
Daily Practice: Read pages 86 to 88 morning and night. Try to do what it says.
Daily Readings