Lots of people are put off attending Alcoholics Anonymous or other recovery support groups which follow the Twelve Step Programme. This is because they think it is a religious programme. The steps about coming to believe that a ‘power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity’. This and ‘making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him’. However, the programme is not religious at all. People from all religions follow it, as well as those who are agnostic and atheist. It is actually a spiritual programme rather than a religious one.
Not believing in GOD doesn’t mean the 12 steps aren’t for you
If you don’t believe in God, don’t think that this means that the twelve step programme cannot work for you. Maybe you think the concept of a God is ridiculous in this day and age when science can explain so much. It is scientifically proven that the world was not created by God in seven days with Adam and Eve. Maybe you think that if there was a God, why is there so much human misery with wars and disaster?Surely an ever loving God would not allow such disasters and for so many innocent people to suffer?
The 12 steps and a higher power
In the Twelve Steps – steps 2 and 3 in particular – we are not asked to understand God; we are asked to find a God of our understanding a higher power, which is completely different. In this interpretation, God has only to be bigger and more powerful than us as an individual.
People who have a religious God are a step ahead here because they do not have to do the same amount of work as those people who do not have a faith to find a God. Most people, though, can conceptualise something if they really want to. Some of these ‘Gods of our understanding’ have rather more resonance and seem more likely to help than others.
So when people say they will choose their children as their Higher Power, I am a little unsure with this. However if they say they can envisage some form of spiritual positivity in the universe and they are going to imagine that this spiritual force looks like some ‘God like’ actor, then that seems a good start. In reality, anything – even your children as your Higher Power – is better than nothing. Once you get used to having some form of Higher Power it is possible that your concept will develop and grow. This is until it is something that you are really comfortable with and that works for you.
Being open minded
The important point with regards to having a Higher Power is to be open minded as to the possibility of having one. Only by being intolerant to and denying the possibility will you be defeated. If you are open and work the programme, one day you will recognise that you have changed in the way you react to situations and in the way you think and your attitudes. Then you will realise that this is not something that you achieved alone – but that something outside yourself helped get you there.