As a follow-up to the Clapton quote, here’s one from the “Big Book” itself, AA’s basic text:
“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 marshaled 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.” (pg. 44-45)
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5 responses to “Big Book Quote – Alcoholics Anonymous”
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The Big Book of AA is packed with great quotes such as this one. They really have the understanding of brokenness and powerlessness as experienced firt hand through alcoholism. However, while the first piece is in place, “The un-free will” as PZ would put it, they miss the next piece, “imputation”. Therefore, the answer to the dilemma of powerlessness ends up becoming that the power greater than yourself helps you stop drinking. However, this is really not what is needed. What is needed is the word that you are accepted even though you are a “drunk”. No moral change is needed to be accepted, just the imputation of Christ’s righteuosness.
This problem has crept into the Church in a bad way. For example, many people will admit that the teachings of Jesus are impossible to fulfill by ourselves. But they will say the good news is that Jesus came to die so that we can keep the law through the power of the spirit. For instance, the verse that says “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men when they sin against you, your father will not forgive you”. This is a shocking verse for many people to read, especially when they are angry at someone when they read it. Many pastors would interpret the text to mean that as a Christian, we will forgive because Jesus or the Holy Spirit will change us and help us to forgive. But this is to collapse justification back into infused righteousness and to blunt the despair and hopeless that the sermon on the mount is supposed to produce. We should realize that we can never, ever, ever, ever fully forgive the way the law demands, and this realization will keep us clinging to Christ’s active obedience where he said from the cross, “father forgive them”.
WOW, Dave. That was amazing. Right on target.
I think there is a fundamental question that religious people never ask, largely because they all share a vague unexamined consensus about the answer. And that is: what is my religion for? What is purpose of it? What is its primary end goal?
And I think if you got most people to really think about it, they’d all say: the purpose of religion is to make people fly right. The problem the religion addresses is bad behavior, and its purpose is to enable people to behave better.
This is so widespread that I’d say it is what almost all Christians believe. The problem they think is all the sinning; and Christianity (via proper faith, or disciplines, or receipt of sacraments) will gradually cause you to sin less and less. To be an increasingly moral person. The cross story is co-opted and folded into this scheme.
The interesting thing here is that the scheme has nothing to do with Father-Child love, or the brokenness of such love, as an ultimate concern in itself. The scheme is still essentially centered on self improvement. It’s the moral/religious equivalent of being into bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery and nutrition. The person (correctly) sees himself as a hideous weakling, and he wants something that will make his body (physical or spiritual) beautiful and powerful and pure. The telling point about the scheme, however, is that, if it were possible, God could be deleted from it altogether without disturbing its essential character. God is present only as a device for helping us achieve moral perfection (helping us be more honest, kind, courageous, chaste, prudent, etc.) – in Buber’s language God is an It rather than a Thou. He’s the Force from Star Wars – use the Force, Luke.
The alternative view, which is held by almost no one, and only a few Christians, is that the primary end of Christianity is not to help us be better people. That may happen, according to God’s own secret counsel and according to His own good pleasure, but it is not the primary goal of Christianity in this life. The primary problem is not sins but sin, a state in which our original primal state of innocent childlike trust and love of Daddy has been broken. Christianity sees that as the problem. The Gospel comes to announce a solution to THAT problem – to the problem of our deep certitude that no One loves us. There is no One who can embrace me in all my wrongness and foolishness and ugliness and love me 100%. The Gospel comes to announce that Night is over and One has come who can love you. The Gospel comes to reunite us with the Father, to heal a broken relationship.
The key parable to understanding this view is the Prodigal Son. The key problem is a broken relationship. There’s no suggestion at the end of moral improvement in the Son, just complete despair of himself. There’s no demand for moral improvement from the Father, just elation that the son has come home.
That parable can be translated (and is daily translated) into the real lives of bad boy sons and their fathers in modern life. The two schemes or stories above frame the situation completely differently. In the moral story, the primary interest of the father is to help the boy improve: get off dope, find a nice girl, go to school, get a good job. The father might even try “love” as a method of achieving those ends (kindness, supportiveness, even in an advanced school freedom from overt judgment) – but his primary and ultimate concern is that the boy get fixed of his badness. In such a story the father would regard the ending as a happy one if the boy became fully fixed and started a new life at the other end of the country and the father didn’t see him beyond the occasional postcard; but if the boy didn’t ultimately get fixed, it would have to be seen as a bad ending.
In the second story, the priorities are completely reversed. Like the father of Christ’s parable running to meet his son, the father can only think that his boy has come home. The emphasis is on loving him – the love is given knowing and expecting that his son may still be a drunk or a school failure. The second story has a happy ending because the son and father are restored and on those grounds alone. Interestingly, in such a place of demand-free love, the boy may begin to get fixed in some respects.
That last observation is a truth that is almost always misheard, however, since it is heard with the ears of people invested in the first story. I’ve seen this over and over again in watching people react to Paul Zahl’s latest book. Even the ones who seem to like it hear it as: “Freedom from judgment and one-way love is cool, because if you do that, you can get people to fly right!” “Grace” becomes a technique for effecting change in a person you have privately arraigned and condemned.
That’s why I have concluded that, while the claim that graceful loving can often effect moral improvement in the beloved, it’s a truth that can only be apprehended meaningfully by people who have been claimed by the second story, by people who have stopped needing people to improve morally as a condition for loving them. You are only ready to hear that grace can fix people when you don’t need anymore to fix people.
John,
You can see this problem when you ask someone the question, “What ‘IS’ a Christian? The majority answer will be: a person who loves God, reads the bible, goes to church, tries to please God, prays, believes in Jesus, Lives for Jesus etc… And I will reply, “Well, you just told me what a Christian ‘DOES’, but I asked you what a Christian ‘IS’. The correct answer is, “A Christian is a sinner who has been Justified”. Now this answer needs some unpacking, but it is essentially the case.
There was a study on youth ministry in America a couple years ago, and the authors concluded that American Religion is basically “Moralistic, therapeutic, Deism”.
What is the solution to all this?
A proper understanding and teaching of two key things:
1.) The completeness, totalness, maliciousness, hideousness, poisonousness and unversality of sin in every person and
2.) The role of God’s Law in exposing this depravity.
If these two doctrines are taught in full Biblical precision, then the rest will fall into place.
However, if they are messed up, the rest of your beliefs will fall like dominoes.
David and John,
So thorough, so profound, so good…
Thank you both for your comments!
Sean
Thank you John and Dave. I was particularly moved by John’s statement that it is those who have been claimed by the second story: “the people who have stopped needing people to improve morally as a condition for loving them”. It hits home when I inevitably think of myself. As Dave said, what is needed is that I am accepted when I am in the throws of my whatever– of my failure. So true. This is the death, my fight to “take control of my life” fading into the night. That is so scary. I am desperate to get out from under. The Gospel message of my powerlessness removes any ounce of hope in my wicked will–redeemed one that I am! It exposes that I never think of God’s power, only my own. It is radical, Holy Spirit Jesus risen-from-the dead love that the Gospel holds forth for such as me. Wouldn’t it be wild if the church and the counseling centers in particular adopted such an imputation-centered viewpoint?