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by Dale S. Ryan

I attended my first Twelve Step meeting as part of an assignment for a class in seminary. I was a graduate student. I already had a Ph.D. but I was now back in graduate school to study theology. I knew a lot. I was not a beginner. I had received awards for my work in theology. A paper I wrote for one of my classes was published in a theological journal. I definitely did not think of myself as needing any kind of spiritual kindergarten. I was way past the basics and into the really advanced stuff. But, it was a class assignment. And I was a very responsible (compulsive!) student. So I went. It was a pretty hard core A.A. meeting. Mostly late stage street drunks. I remember looking around the room before the meeting and thinking to myself: "I don't get it. Why do they make graduate students come here? I don't see how I'm going to learn anything about God from these people. They don't seem to be very educated. They certainly don't know as much about theology as I do."

I have never been more wrong about anything in my life.

For some reason I remember one particular guy. He got, if I'm remembering this correctly, a 30 day pin that night. He had been sober for 30 days. He gave a short talk. Nothing fancy. Just two minutes at the most. He had chosen a doorknob as his Higher Power. A doorknob. Sometimes people do that in A.A. to get started. You don't need to make a very good choice of a Higher Power at first. You just need to choose someone other than you. This guy gave a short talk about how his higher Power was helping him stay sober and he had this smile on his face that said a million words. He had experienced grace for the first time in his life and it was starting to change things. And he was on the trail of something. He knew it probably wasn't really the doorknob that was doing what needed to be done. He didn't know what or who it was but he was on the trail. And he was experiencing his Higher Power as helpful on the journey. I will never forget my reaction to his short testimony. At that time in my life I was educated, well-informed theologically, and a promising pastor-to-be. But I was absolutely miserable spiritually. I never experienced my Higher Power as helpful. I could not seem to get anything out of my Higher Power other than shame. No matter what I did - no matter how well I performed for God - all I seemed to get in return was shame. All I heard was "How come you can't do better?" In spite of all my education and my pretensions to be past the basics, I didn't have a clue about how to have a healthy relationship with a Higher Power. I knew a lot of theology. But I lived in spiritual shame.

As I look back at that time in my life, things are now much clearer to me. The guy who chose a doorknob as his Higher Power? He was certainly a step ahead of me spiritually. I have no doubt about that. The truth is that I had chosen as my Higher Power an abusive, shaming, mean spirited little god. I was idolatrously attached to an internal image of God which I had crafted for myself out of many experiences with mortal men. I may have been intellectually committed to the God of the Bible, but the Higher Power I served every day, the God of my guts, was a petty, intolerant, impossible to please, little god. Worse than a doorknob. Much worse. A doorknob will not shame you. A doorknob will not threaten to hurt you if you make a mistake. And a doorknob is at least outside of you. And that is the first and most basic of spiritual truths: there is a God and it is not me. That is what I had not yet learned when I went to spiritual kindergarten for the first time.

Back to the Basics

I have come to believe that there really is no spiritual graduate school for Christians. The spiritual life, at least for Christians, is all about getting back to basics. And that is one of the things which the Twelve Steps do really well. Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, frequently referred to the Twelve Steps as a spiritual kindergarten. They are a starting point, a place to learn the fundamentals.

The Twelve Steps are a collection of spiritual disciplines that have been shown to be helpful to people recovering from addictive behaviors. If you struggle with the addictive process, you can expect that the Twelve Steps will be helpful to you. But what if you are not an addict? Well. . . there is certainly a sense in which all sin has an addictive quality to it. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in Romans when he anguishes over his own struggle saying, "I do not understand what I do. What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." [Romans 7:15] He is expressing what all addicts experience - that we cannot by willpower alone control our behavior. So, even if you are not struggling with a full-grown addiction, you may find the wisdom of the Twelve Steps to be helpful to you as you seek to deal with the addictive features of the sins to which you seem to be most attracted. Learning to tell the truth, taking personal inventory, confessing and making amends are good for all of us - addicts, addicts-in-training and just people who experience the addictive quality of all sinful behavior.

Many people have found the wisdom of the Twelve Steps to be helpful in recovering from problems other than addictions. Networks of Twelve Step support groups have developed in recent years for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, people struggling with ADD, people struggling with emotional illnesses and people working on many other issues. Anyone who is at a stage in their recovery where it is helpful to have a disciplined focus on our own behaviors - taking responsibility for our part of the problem - can be helped by the Twelve Steps. Isn't that everybody? Well, no. Almost everybody. But, not everybody. The Twelve Steps are designed to help us focus on our part, on our sins against ourselves and others. If you are at a place in your journey where the main focus of your recovery is necessarily on the sins that have been committed against you, then you may not find the Steps to be particularly helpful right now. A time will probably come in your recovery when it is appropriate to focus on the part of the problem that you own (e.g. your resentments). When that time comes, the spiritual disciplines of the Twelve Steps may be helpful to you.

About Magical Thinking

There is nothing magical about the Twelve Steps. They do not lead to a quick mystical transformation that makes everything better. It is critically important to remember that the Twelve Steps are not even a cure for alcoholism. The Big Book of A.A. makes a much more modest claim for the Twelve Steps: "We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really 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 activities." The Steps are simple tools for maintaining a healthy spiritual condition. Collectively they represent a path, a style of life, that can make it possible for us to receive from God the healing we seek.

Another important thing to remember is that the Twelve Steps are not the Twelve Concepts. It's not the twelve ideas, or the twelve truths. They are twelve steps to take, twelve disciplines to exercise, twelve activities to do. The focus is on action, not ideas. You do the Steps. If you merely believe the ideas which are embodied in the Twelve Steps you cannot expect the desired results. As people often say in Twelve Step programs: "If You Work the Steps, the Steps will Work for You"

It is the action orientation of the Steps that makes group participation so important. The first Step starts with the word "we." You can learn about the Steps by yourself. But you really can't work the Steps by yourself. I encourage you to do whatever you have to do to find a community that understands your journey, a sponsor to guide you or friends with whom you can share your recovery.

Are the Steps Too Christian?

One of the most common criticisms of the Twelve Steps is that they are a thinly disguised version of the Christian faith. One recent critique of the Twelve Steps, for example, suggested that "Although the literature about recovery from addiction and codependency borrows heavily from family systems theory and seems, at first, an offshoot of pop psychology, it is rooted most deeply in religion. . . .More than they resemble group therapy, twelve-step groups are like revival meetings, carrying on the pietistic tradition" [W. Kaminer, I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, Addison Wesley, 1992]. The biblical foundations of the Twelve Steps were clearly acknowledged by Dr. Bob, often referred to as one of the founders of AA, when he said "They [the early AA members] were convinced that the answer to their problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James"[Anonymous, DR BOB and the Good Oltimers, AA World Services, 1980]. So, the Twelve Steps do have historical and conceptual roots in the Christian tradition. You do not, however, need to make any commitments to Jesus or to any Church in order to work the Steps successfully. The Steps are the beginning of a lifelong spiritual journey. No one can tell you ahead of time exactly what that journey will look like. Those of us who now name Jesus as our Higher Power can look back at times when our spiritual convictions were very different than they are today. I urge you not to dismiss the Twelve Steps as a resource for your recovery simply because the language is unfamiliar or because the spirituality seems too Christian. Literally millions of people have found this particular spiritual kindergarten to be a helpful place to start.

Are the Steps Christian Enough?

Although the most common complaint about the Twelve Steps is that they are too Christian, the most common complaint in the Christian community is that they are not Christian enough. If this is how it seems to you, I encourage you to remember that the Twelve Steps really are a spiritual starting point. The Steps were never intended to be "everything you ever needed to know about God." They are not designed to be a complete introduction to the Christian faith. Those of us struggling with addictions need a starting point. If you are struggling with an addiction, it might be a good time for you to go back to square one spiritually. Maybe it is a time for some spiritual humility. I realize that working the Steps might seem just too basic to some Christians. But many of us have found in the process of working the Steps that our spirituality underwent major revisions and led us to a much more deeply Christian faith in the process. Please don't dismiss the Twelve Steps just because they don't contain some theological affirmation that has been historically important in your faith community. As this issue of STEPS hopes to demonstrate, you do not need to abandon your faith in order to work the Twelve Steps, but you may need to get back to its foundations.

For most of us, working the Twelve Steps probably means doing things we haven't done before. There will be things outside of our 'comfort zone.' It will be a challenging adventure. I hope that the resources at the IACTSM site will deepen your appreciation for the Twelve Step process as a deeply Christian spiritual journey. Wherever you are in the journey of recovery, I encourage you to implement some of these basic Christian spiritual disciplines in your life.

May God grant you the serenity, courage and wisdom you need this day.

And may your roots sink deeply in the soil of God's love.