|
Two Tracks By Calvin H Chambers
Preface Two Tracks - One Goal
How Alcoholic Anonymous relates to Christian Spirituality. by Dr. Cal Chambers The fellowship of Alcoholics anonymous is
obliquely based upon the Christian understanding and the concept of God. This
understanding integrated into a recovery program for millions of afflicted
alcoholics, has resulted in their miraculous transformation. The founders of
Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Bob (Robert Holbrook Smith) and Bill (William
Griffith Wilson) were introduced to Christianity through the teachings and
philosophy of the Oxford Movement. This interdenominational fellowship, now
called Moral Rearmament, was founded by Frank Buchman and sought to bring
about conversion through the Christian insights of confession, surrender,
guidance and sharing. This led to the formulation of the four absolutes -
absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, absolute honesty and absolute love.
None of these absolutes were achievable through humanistic self-effort - only
by the acknowledgment of one's complete dependency upon God Who has revealed
Himself fully in Jesus Christ. Bereft of power to combat their personal
alcoholism, both Bill and Dr. Bob, under God, brought into existence an
unparalleled movement of healing for thousands shipwrecked by alcohol abuse.
Beginning in 1935, Bob and Bill, together with Sister Ignatia, guided some
five thousand alcoholics to physical and spiritual recovery within fifteen
years. Since then, this movement has spread to much of the Western world. Some Christian people believe that
Alcoholics Anonymous is not "Christian" enough, primarily because
the name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned specifically. Similarly, some A.A.
members believe there is no place for a specific Christian emphasis in this
organization, espousing that A.A. is not interested in religion as such, but
only in how spirituality can encourage sobriety. This book will illustrate how Christianity
undergirds the Twelve Steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous Program and that the
God referred to seven times in these Twelve Steps is the same God Who has
revealed Himself uniquely in the Man Jesus Christ. The book is also designed
to help alcoholics become as open as possible to spiritual truth wherever it
leads them. Step Eleven in the program encourages people, through prayer and
meditation, to improve their conscious contact with God. Sincere attempts to
move in this direction will undoubtedly succeed. "If you seek for me with
all your heart you will surely find me, for I am always ready to be found of
those who seek me earnestly" (Jeremiah 29:13). Although I am not an alcoholic, I have
enjoyed an intimate association with Alcoholics Anonymous in New Westminster,
British Columbia, where I lived and ministered for twenty-four years. In 1960
I met a man in my congregation who found faith in Jesus Christ as well as
sobriety through the program of A.A. He took me to my first A.A. meeting where
I heard the Twelve Steps read and the testimonies of recovering alcoholics.
Since then, I have initiated discussion groups for A.A. members interested in
exploring the Christian Faith. In 1981, assisted by two A.A. members, I began
a chapter of A.A. called "Good Samaritan". It was a special-interest
group emphasizing the Third Step in A.A. - "Willing to turn my will and
life over to the care of God, as I understand Him." Here Christian A.A.
members named Christ as their Higher Power, the One through Whom God became
real to them. Many A.A. members also wanted my assistance with the Fifth Step
- "Admitted to God, myself, and some other person the exact nature of my
wrongs." In this role, I directed many alcoholics to consider the reality
of Christ, whose forgiveness, love and grace could bring deeper dimension to
spiritual life. Many of these people were eventually baptized and became
practising Christians within the fellowship of the Church. I also minsitered
in the Maple Cottage Detoxification Center, sponsored by the government of
British Columbia. Here I serve as a volunteer counselor and chaplain, seeking
to implement the A.A. program for those recognizing that their lives had
become unmanageable because of alcohol. I am completely committed to two facts:
1. God has revealed Himself personally and powerfully in Jesus Christ, whose
life is chronicled in the New Testament. 2. God has raised up Alcoholics
Anonymous as a ministry of love to help free anyone afflicted by the
inordinate misuse of alcohol or any other artificial dependency that robs men
and women of inner freedom. The Bible describes Christ's ministry in
people's lives as "salvation". This word literally means, "to
make spacious, to liberate, to emancipate, to set free". Certainly
millions of alcoholics have testified that life was "hell" and their
deliverance form alcoholic addiction was miraculous. God is ever seeking to
free us. As Christ Himself said about his ministry, "If the Son makes you
free, you will really be free"(John 8:36). I ask alcoholics to read this book with an open mind toward the foundational beliefs of Christianity. I would like Christian people to become cognizant of God's saving power evidenced through Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics need not regard the Christian Faith as suspect and Christians need not deny the powerful influence of A.A. Jesus once said, "He that is not for me is against me." I have personally found many alcoholics receptive to the Christian message if presented with a non-judgmental, loving attitude. Many alcoholics have been "turned off" by negative experiences within the church of their childhood. May this book build bridges between both alcoholics and Christians as together we explore the riches of Jesus Christ, Who came into the world not to condemn sinners, but to set them free. DEDICATION To Alice my dear wife who shared the ministry of A.A. with me and to all my friends in A.A. from whom I learned so much. FORWARD God has to change us before He uses us. As I look back over the past thirty years of my involvement with Alcoholics Anonymous, I stand in awe at how God works his transformation of our mind-sets and then opens a door for ministry. Brought up in a strict teetotaling family, I was taught to recite poems against the evils of alcohol, through the Women's Christian Temperance Union Recitation Contests. I proudly boasted winning bronze, silver and gold medals before I was fourteen. With my self-righteous attitude toward alcoholics, I thought nothing, as a child, of throwing stones at a poor drunk weaving his way home from a bar on a Saturday night. You can imagine my chagrin when I was asked by Rev. Robert Barr, Minister of Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, to spend the summer of 1950 in Evangel Hall, a Presbyterian ministry on Queen Street, the worst juvenile-delinquency area at that time. I will always remember my anger as I walked along Queen Street toward the Mission, muttering to myself, "Who does Robert Barr think he is, asking a nice boy like me to go and live in a joint like this?" I did not in the least welcome the experience. But as I began to live in this four-story Mission, taking part in the various activities, preaching at the evening services, and meeting the men and women who came to the Mission for help, I began to soften. In reflection I realized that the year before I went to Knox College, I had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit, releasing my evangelistic gifts. My last year in university involved me in a student witness I had never had before. But I needed to be involved in social action also, an aspect of my Christian life yet undeveloped. During those three years that I lived and served in Evangel Hall, God worked his miracle in me. The Holy Spirit began to release God's love in me, and I could identify with the alcoholic sufferer in a totally new way. Somehow God gave me the ability to "get under the skin" of the alcoholic, and deeply feel what they grappled with in their affliction. In the Fall of 1960, I accepted a call to First Presbyterian Church, New Westminster, B.C. Within the first week, I met a man, Glen C. who had been introduced to faith in Christ through a friend, but had also begun to experience recovery from alcoholism through A.A. He invited me to my first meeting. I saw immediately the potential for sharing God's love in Jesus Christ. And so I began to attend meetings in New Westminster regularly. When it was discovered that I was a minister, I was asked to speak and share my life. I would usually take one of the Twelve Steps of Recovery and speak briefly about it. I would make some low-key statements about Christ, without going into any theological explanation. But I always prayed that God would put me in touch with someone at the meeting who sought something more than sobriety. Invariably, He did. Over the next twenty-five years, I led a number of Discussion Group meetings, centering around the Third Step: "I was willing to turn my will and my life over to God, as I understand Him." Through these group meetings, many alcoholic men and women came into a living faith. Not all of them became part of the Church, because in so many instances, their experience of the Church had been negative in their youth, and they found it hard to believe they would be accepted. But a good number did, and before I left New Westminster in 1984 to minister in Ottawa, I could look out over the congregation on a given Sunday morning and count one third of the people as recovering alcoholics. I formed an A.A. Group called Good Samaritan, in which Christian members were encouraged to identify Christ as their Higher Power. The door to ministry among alcoholics was opened once the Lord changed my attitudes and gave me a love and concern for them only He could have generated. The book I have written, Two Tracks, One Goal, shares my own insights on how the Christian Faith has inspired the Twelve Steps of Recovery in A.A., and how we as Christians can use the Twelve-Step Program to help them discover the God Who has always loved them, and can change them by his great power. Many members of A.A. do not understand the dynamics of the Christian Faith, and many Christians do not understand the power at work in an A.A. meeting. Today we need people willing to identify with the alcoholic - where he or she lives and there, in a low-key way, share how the principles of A.A. flow out of the Christian Faith, and its understanding of God's heart of redeeming, transforming love. The two concepts, or tracks, may seem only parallel, but if you stand at the back of a train as it moves out of a station, you will observe how the two tracks seem to converge on the horizon and become one. My conviction is that the Christian Faith flows out of God, and A.A. flows out of Christian Faith. Both need to be held together - and can be - if we engage the potential of both imagination and creativity. Contents Preface Acknowledgments Dedication Foreword the Twelve Steps with the Christian Interpretation Click Here Chapter 1 Step
One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become
unmanageable. (Alcoholics
Anonymous) Track
One: No one is ever made better by having someone else tell him how rotten he
is, but many are made better by avowing the guilt themselves. (Bishop
Fulton Sheen) The
Necessity of Confession As
Chaplain of the Maple Cottage Detox in New Westminster, British Columbia, I
met a young man in his thirties one evening who seemed desperate to see me. As
he entered my office his face reflected complete despair. Without
introduction, he simply blurted out a hopeless, "Help me." After he
calmed down, he told me the long story of his alcoholic life. His drinking
problem had been accelerating for ten years. He lost his home through
gambling, and to mask his subsequent self-hate, he consoled himself with
alcohol. Yet despite this obvious tragedy, he hadn't admitted that his life
was unmanageable, that he was licked. He would describe himself as a drunk, a
lush, a problem drinker, but not a helpless alcoholic - it seemed the words
wouldn't come. But now, bereft of family, unemployed and penniless, he
realized the desperation of his life. He was an alcoholic. Now at the bottom
of the rung, he blurted it out, "I need help." It was a tremendous
step for him, but he was taking it. We human beings characteristically refuse to
admit defeat because we are so proud. We doggedly resist admitting that we are
powerless to overcome particular habits or attitudes, or overcome our
alcoholic drinking by willpower alone. Alcoholism
as a Disease The disease of alcoholism compares easily to
bankruptcy, the creditor being alcohol. It robs the alcoholic of self-respect,
acceptance, work, money, the ability to function responsively and of the love
of his family. Working among alcoholics in a downtown Mission in the city of
Ottawa, I have personally known men brought to the very brink of physical,
moral and spiritual bankruptcy, experiencing complete ruin and sometimes
suicide. But
There is Hope When a person afflicted with alcoholism
confronts the possibility of regaining his self-respect, strong feelings of
humiliation often take over. Many people enter the A.A. Program reluctant to
admit the pernicious effects of this all-consuming lifestyle. But the moment a
person acknowledges the truth of the First Step, the door of hope opens, with
its promise of physical and spiritual freedom. Admitting that life has become
unmanageable because of drinking is essentially an act of repentance, a word
that indicates the need for change. This confession of need is foundational to
Christ's Sermon on the Mount. The famous passage begins with the words
"Blessed [or happy] are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven" (Matthew 5:2). In other words, happy are those who have come to
the end of their rope and admitted it. A new door of life can now be opened.
To retain self-sufficiency is to forfeit hope for the person who seeks
recovery from alcoholism. Facing
the Facts Every
recovering alcoholic will admit the hard cold fact that to confess weakness,
failure and impotence is, paradoxically, the beginning of strength, success
and power. This truth is basic to Christianity as well as to Alcoholics
Anonymous. The Apostle Paul confesses in his letter to the Corinthian
Christians, "When I am weak, then am I strong. I will therefore boast
about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2
Corinthians 12:9). Dr. Paul Tournier, a leading Swiss psychologist illuminates
this point in his book, The Weak and the Strong. He makes it clear that people
who try to project the illusion of strength are actually weak, too insecure to
risk exposure, and therefore threatened by criticism and correction. But those
who admit their weaknesses and their inability to maintain meaningful
lifestyles, strip off the facade of superiority and self-delusion. These, he
asserts, are the truly strong people. The many alcoholics I have talked to and
listened to in A.A. meetings have openly admitted that acknowledging Step One
was their highest hurdle. They had been willing to say they handled their
drinking problem poorly, and were unable to cope with life. They acknowledged
that they were "phonies, lushes, drunks" - anything but say openly
and candidly, "I am an alcoholic." These words seemed to stick in
their throats. Facing the reality of defeat went entirely against the grain.
Self-confidence had been their intellectual hallmark both at home and in
school. To face the fact of its deficiency proved the greatest obstacle to
gaining true confidence. Overcoming
Deception Our
Educational training has brainwashed many of us into believing we could
achieve what we wanted if we simply tried hard enough - the great
"American dream." We have been taught to admire the "self-made
man," who boasts of his aggressive success in reaching the top by sheer
self-effort. The philosophy of those gripped by this humanistic concept is
reflected in the poem by William E. Heney, "I am the captain of my fate
". I am the master of my soul" (Invictus, Stanza 2). This kind of self-deception militates
against our true happiness and our willingness to accept ourselves for who we
actually are. The sponsor's role in A.A. is to help the new person seeking
sobriety understand the futility of trying to beat alcoholic addiction by
willpower alone. The alcoholic must be encouraged to see the two-fold nature
of the problem and its solution: Firstly, that the physical symptoms of
alcoholism indicate the allergic nature of the addiction; secondly, the fact
that alcoholics continue drinking despite its physical consequences indicates
a moral and spiritual problem. It falls into the area of pure, self-centered
resistance to truth. They refuse to give up, determined to maintain control
over their own lives. Their self-will, rooted in pride, refuses to face
reality until driven to desperation. This willful splurge into dissipation
must be dealt with, relinquished not merely by human willpower that will
ultimately fail, but by spiritual power. Reaching
Bottom In
the early years of Alcoholics Anonymous, often only those whose lives had
collapsed into shambles listened to what A.A. members proposed. Their
desperation couldn't be denied. At the end of themselves, they discovered to
their complete amazement that the program worked. They began to get well.
Their story is told in Alcoholics Anonymous, affectionately called the Big
Book. It chronicles the histories of sick and confused alcoholics, many of
whom tried the program, and failed to achieve sobriety because they wouldn't
admit their total inability to handle their drinking not even one drink.
|