The Gospel of the 12 steps

A personal introduction

When I was a teenager, around 16 or 17 years of age, I used to go and visit a neighbour a couple of doors down the street.  To save time I would cut through the next door neighbour, and I would visit Michael.

I imagine at the time he would have been in his mid forties.  We would sit at his kitchen table have a coffee and talk late into the night.  He would talk to me about life, but mostly he would talk about AA, Alcoholics Anonymous.  

A couple of years later, I sat in the lounge of another man and I became a Christian.

These blog posts are intended to bring some synchronism between the two.  There is no doubt that the history of AA is indebted to Christianity, yet at the same time, I contend, much of the church needs to be learning from AA.

Every dry day for every member of AA is a new miracle, a new testimony to deliverance.  This is salvation.  We have proverbs such as "seeing is believing", "actions speak louder than words", "the proof of the pudding is in the eating".  Jesus himself asked those who witnessed his works to believe his words because of his works.  The man born blind certainly regarded Jesus as a prophet because of his deeds.  

I do remember as a young Christian hearing AA being criticised as not acknowledging Jesus.  I will deal with that in a later post, but apart from that there is little that a Christian could object to in the 12 steps.  Indeed these steps should be part of the life of every Christian.

It is my intention to unpack these steps over the next few weeks.  So much of our organized Christianity is in opposition to the gospel.  Remember Jesus teaching of the Pharaisee and the Tax Collector.  Which do we welcome in our churches, the drunks, the druggies, the smelly, or do we all have to appear to have it all together?  Are our churches safe places or places of hypocracy, judgement and moral superiority.  What would Jesus say about our churches today?  Are we really ready to admit our faults and be real?  Is it safe to do so?  How can we truly become the "Body of Christ"?

I truly believe that we can learn from AA the reality of the saving power of Jesus Christ.  AA has codified the gospel into baby steps for us to follow.

The 12 steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.