The God Stuff

In my recovery program, I have heard a few people say that maybe we should go a little more lightly on the God stuff in our discussions. The legitimate fear is that people, especially newcomers, might be offended by such talk, may consider the program a “religious” organization and may just walk out the door. I can appreciate that concern. However, I disagree with it and I’m going to tell you why.

People that are in dire straits as a result of alcoholism and drug addiction are in great need of solutions. Temporary fixes don’t work anymore. They need something solid that will work under all conditions. They need real answers. That is why we can ill-afford to glaze over the God stuff. The first three steps in our program of recovery can be succinctly paraphrased as the following:

1. I can’t.
2. He can.
3. I think I will let Him.

If that is the foundation of everything we’re going to build on, we cannot go lightly on the God stuff. The whole program is God stuff. Taking God out of the equation is like taking water away from the fish. If people come to us beyond human help, we must have a Higher Power that can save them or we have nothing of any real value to offer them. We will never offend anybody as long as we just share our experience, strength and hope and never tell them what they should do or think. If they like it, they will use it. If they think it’s garbage, they won’t touch it. Whatever they do is not up to us. We are simply to model how it worked and works for us and hopefully, someone will see it, replicate it in their own special way and another soul will be freed.

I think we’re all a little too old and a little too experienced to need to have our bad news sugarcoated all the time. Either we learn to live a spiritual existence with our higher power as an Active Participant and Director in our lives or we simply perish. If that sounds too harsh for some people to swallow, maybe they need to do some more “research” to remember what life is like when you are a slave to alcohol and drugs. Anyone that comes to the program undefeated, believing will power alone can defeat alcoholism and addiction, cannot benefit much from it. Until they become convinced that no human power could relieve their alcoholism or addiction, it isn’t going to work anyway.

I know how cold and hard this sounds. But there is no easy way to deal with the hard stuff. That’s why we need the God stuff. We simply can’t do it without our higher power. End of story.

Thank you
Jim

James A. Francetich is a freelance writer and author. The opinions expressed are solely of the author and do not represent any community based recovery programs, private or public entities or any governmental agencies.