To Improve Yourself with Twelve Step Christian Magic
Sexy Drunk Christians: Chapter 1 Polluted Thinking Part 7
Alcoholics Anonymous and Christianity are intrinsically linked by origin and beliefs, though both claim they are unrelated. Christianity is a religion, while AA purports to be a spiritual alcohol recovery program, but AA is a bizarre booze-based Christian sect masking many Christian ideas in its program. For example, AA's twelve steps, devoid of any science, supposedly form a recovery method, but these steps are religious rites meant to achieve a magical state known as “sobriety” or “serenity” (used synonymously).
Despite the word sobriety meaning “not drunk,” AA members use sobriety as a qualifier of the individual’s sanity, morality, spirituality, and alcohol abstinence. If someone is in a bad mood, they lack sobriety, which bizarrely pertains little to alcohol consumption, as this idea forms an accusation of poor quality or lack of spirituality. The way Christians internalize purity's shame, guilt, and fear, AAs become emotionally stunted in a culture where laughing too hard or showing too much emotion risks showing a lack of sobriety or spirituality.
AA aims to remedy uncontrolled drinking using the steps of the program to remove or “turn over to God” ego, selfishness, resentments, and other “character defects” that cause alcoholism and bar serenity.
You read correctly; no cognitive behavioral therapy, pharmaceuticals, or simple abstinence can thwart the disease of alcoholism. Only through God and confessing sins can you stop boozing, clearly denoted by the steps of the program:
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. ~Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions1
First, you must admit you are “powerless over alcohol,” a wise decision when dealing with a bad habit or neurosis. What could go wrong with thinking you are powerless over the behavior you wish to cease performing?
Having admitted you are powerless, you now come to believe or convince yourself that only a Power greater than yourself can restore sanity, thus affirming you have faith, life was unmanageable (true or not), and you are insane.
Having come to believe in that Power greater than yourself, you turn your will and life over to the care of God because your uncontrollable habit and insanity are far more effectively treated by an invisible, omnipotent deity who wants to heal you, despite allowing you to corrupt yourself with ego and character defects in the first place.
Wait! Step Three gets better.
Not only is this God going to heal you, despite having shown no interest in your life prior, but the God healing you is one you choose. AAs discuss turning their lives over to the care of God, forgiveness for sins, and even recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer. The God of Alcoholics Anonymous sounds like the Christian God, but when AA’s refer to their higher power, they might refer to any number of things, including the spirit of the universe, aliens, or even Satan. Typically, most AAs refer and assume fellow members refer to a generic form of the Christian God, but there is no way to know since God forms members’ imaginations not from scripture or prophets. AAs define God in many, hardly biblical ways,
God = Get Out Devil
God = Gift Of Desperation
God = Gifts Offered Daily
God = Give Others Dignity
God = Giver Of Desires
God = Go On Dreaming
God = Good Orderly Direction.
Though these acronyms seem innocuous, they contradict Christian theology, but AA members see no problem redefining God. Most Christians would take issue with conceptualizing God in this manner but despise even more preaching AA can serve as God,
I must quickly assure you that A.A.’s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. … You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your ‘higher power.’ Here’s a very large group who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 27.2
AA’s primary founder, Bill Wilson, just stated you could make Alcoholics Anonymous your God.
God=Group of Drunks.
If AA’s invention of God were not offensive enough for Christians, AA teaches adherents to dismiss religious values and morality when convenient. If you don’t like the God of your parents, if he was too strict or doesn’t perform the miracles desired, then just get a new god.
The concept of “God as we understood Him'' was hard to grasp. My family believed there is only one way to view God. My parents used religion to keep me in line…I realized the God of my parents had come in a very small box, not expansive enough for me. I fired that God and hired a new one. My new Higher Power is much bigger than the old one. He doesn’t live in a box.”3
Hey, if you don’t like your God, fire him!
If you are going to believe theology, this is the worst, reducing God to an arbitrary whim. Getting rid of one God and adopting another is also heretical in Christianity since neither God nor Jesus is open to interpretation. AA interpretations of God deny His reality, similar to interpreting the existence of President Biden. The President exists and cannot be interpreted.
Alcoholics Anonymous beliefs are absurd, seen clearly with members discussing God and prayer while becoming upset at the mere mention of Jesus Christ. AA shuns this talk because Christ indicates religion, unlike constant God and Higher Power references, reciting the Serenity and Lord’s Prayer, or turning their "will and our lives over to the care of God." No, those are perfectly acceptable spiritual practices, while any mention of a specific God by name violates AA traditions, which mandate it to be a non-religious group.
Makes perfect sense.
AA’s first four steps focus on admitting a problem, accepting God, and making an inventory or, as AAs explain, writing down all your sins or mistakes, which you will later try to correct by making amends to everyone you wronged. While performing these steps, AAs tell you to keep attending meetings and continue praying. No other disease treatment, mental or physical, requires religiosity or belief in God in this manner.
Meetings sound like generic Christian sermons with names and identifiers redacted or replaced with "higher power," then mixed with pseudo-science. The effect of AA is the same as church with adopting bizarre ideas formed in a culture of faith derived from implausible ideas. Christians strive for closeness, purpose, and acceptance in purity as AA members endeavor for the same in serenity, denoted over and over in the AA literature,
A.A. has given me serenity of purpose and the opportunity to be of service to God and to the people about me, and I am serene in the infallibility of these principles that provide the fulfillment of my purpose.4
The goal for serenity sets AAs on the same road as Christians, evidenced by many Christian churches providing inexpensive or free meeting space. What should be adversarial becomes an incongruous relationship masked in spirituality, similar religious rhetoric, recitation of the same prayers, and praying to God. Though seemingly at odds, Christians and AAs relate to each other in the implausible religion undergirding both, revealing AA and Christianity as the same nonsensical, deceptive…
Alcoholics Anonymous. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: The “Twelve and Twelve” — Essential Alcoholics Anonymous reading 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions…
Hope for Today, published by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., page 297.
Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book (p. 377). Kindle Edition.