12 Steps to Another Gospel?
stevenm
Part One
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Tyndale House Publishers advertises their Life Recovery Bible with
these words: "Imagine having Abraham, King David, and the Apostle Paul
in your 12-step group." The ad continues: "Like you, they found
recovery by trusting in a power greater than themselves." Besides
presenting a psychological, 12-step biased "character profile" of
Abraham, David, and Paul, this adulterated version of the Bible
includes "fascinating 12-step notes on almost every page," "recovery
themes at the beginning of each book," "12-step devotions, serenity
prayer devotions, and much, much more." The ad assures the reader that
"every study help has been written by a biblical scholar who has
personally experienced the 12 steps."
When Christians seek to combine the ways of the world with Christianity
they end up with a distorted gospel at least, but more often it ends up
being another gospel and another form of sanctification. Twelve-Step
programs originated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Now they are embraced
and followed religiously by numerous other groups, including Al-Anon,
Adult Children of Alcoholics, and Co-dependents Anonymous. Churches
have housed AA meetings for years and now many leading Christians are
promoting various Twelve-Step programs. We wonder if they have explored
the history of AA's Twelve Steps and the implications of programs
centered around any unspecified higher power. The following excerpt
from our book 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependency/Recovery Heresies
gives a brief background of AA in terms of its religious roots and
goals.
Alcoholics Anonymous Religion.
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, originally written by Bill
Wilson, came from his own personal experience and world view. Step One,
"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become
unmanageable," expresses the relief he experienced when his doctor
convinced him that his heavy drinking was caused by an "allergy" over
which he was powerless.
Thus, when Wilson completed his drying out treatment, he thought his
problem was solved. He had been relieved of guilt for moral failure and
had been diagnosed as having a disease. The cure was simple. Just
don't take another drink. Nevertheless, his confidence in his newly
found sobriety did not last long. In spite of his belief that his
excessive drinking was not his fault, but rather due to an "allergy,"
Wilson felt doomed.
During this bleak time Wilson received a phone call from an "old
drinking buddy," Ebby Thatcher. They hadn't seen each other for five
years and Thatcher seemed like a new man. When Wilson asked him why he
wasn't drinking and why he seemed so different, Thatcher replied,
"I've got religion." He told Wilson that when he had prayed God had
released him from the desire to drink and filled him with "peace of
mind and happiness of a kind he had not known for years."1
Wilson was uncomfortable with Thatcher's testimony. Yet he desired
Thatcher's freedom from alcohol. Wilson drank for several more days
until he reached a point of great agony and hopelessness (the full
intensity of Step One). He then returned to the hospital for
detoxification treatment.
Wilson's Conversion.
Wilson's religious experience occurred at the hospital. He deeply
desired the sobriety his friend had, but Wilson still "gagged badly on
the notion of a Power greater than myself." Up to the last moment
Wilson resisted the idea of God. Nevertheless, at this extreme point of
agony, alone in his room, he cried out, "If there is a God, let Him
show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!"2
Because Wilson believed he was helplessly afflicted by a dread disease,
he cried out to God as a helpless victim, not as a sinner. He had
already been absolved from guilt through the doctor's allergy theory.
Thus he approached God from the helpless stance of a victim, suffering
the agony of his affliction, and commanded God to show Himself. Here is
Wilson's description of his experience:
Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was
seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was
pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy-I was conscious of nothing
else for a time.3
He saw an internal vision of a mountain with a clean wind blowing
through him. He sensed a great peace and was "acutely conscious of a
Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit." He
thought, "This must be the great reality. The God of the preachers." He
said:
For the first time, I felt that I really belonged. I knew that I was
loved and could love in return. I thanked my God, who had given me a
glimpse of His absolute self. Even though a pilgrim upon an uncertain
highway, I need be concerned no more, for I had glimpsed the great
beyond.4
The experience had a profound effect on Wilson. From that point on he
believed in the existence of God and he stopped drinking alcohol. Thus,
Steps Two and Three read: "Came to believe that a Power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity," and "Made a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."5
(Emphasis in original.)
While this experience included God as Bill Wilson understood him, there
is no mention of faith in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ
and salvation from sin based upon Jesus' death and resurrection.
Rather than attempting to understand his experience in the light of the
Bible, Wilson turned to William James's book The Varieties of
Religious Experience.
Philosopher-psychologist William James (1842-1910) was intrigued with
mystical, existential experiences that people reported to him. He
contended that such experiences were superior to any religious
doctrine.6 He did not care about the religious persuasion of mystics as
long as they achieved a personal experience. James says:
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become
aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical
tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In
Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in
Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about
mystical utterances an eternal unanimity. . . .7
It is easy to see how such a description fit Bill Wilson's
experience. The mystical experiences reported by James also followed
calamity, admission of defeat, and an appeal to a higher power. The
official AA biography of Wilson says:
James gave Bill the material he needed to understand what had just
happened to him-and gave it to him in a way that was acceptable to
Bill. Bill Wilson, the alcoholic, now had his spiritual experience
ratified by a Harvard professor, called by some the father of American
psychology!8 (Emphasis in original.)
Most people assume that the founders of Alcoholics' Anonymous were
Christians. After all, Wilson talks about God, prayer, and morality. On
the other hand, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is absent from his
spiritual experience. There is no mention of Jesus Christ providing the
only way of salvation through paying the price for Bill Wilson's sin.
Wilson's faith system was not based on Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Nor is there any mention of Jesus Christ being Lord of his
life.
Not only is there clear evidence that Bill Wilson did not embrace Jesus
Christ as His Lord and Savior and as the only way to the Father, but
Wilson was also heavily involved in occult activities in his search for
spiritual experiences. These are the roots of Alcoholics Anonymous
rather than Christianity. Part Two of this article discusses Wilson's
spirituality and occult practices.
stevenm
Part Two
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The Higher Power and the Occult.
Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, the cofounders of AA, embraced and promoted
a variety of spiritual experiences. Both men practiced spiritualism and
believed in the validity and importance of contacting and conversing
with the dead (necromancy, which the Bible forbids).1 The AA biography
of Wilson says:
It is not clear when he first became interested in extrasensory
phenomena; the field was something that Dr. Bob and Anne Smith were
also deeply involved with. Whether or not Bill initially became
interested through them, there are references to séances and other
psychic events in the letters Bill wrote to Lois [Wilson’s wife] during
that first Akron summer with the Smiths, in 1935.2
Wilson and his wife were also conducting regular séances in their own
home as early as 1941. They were engaging in other psychic activities
as well, such as using an Ouija board.3
Wilson also acted as a medium or what is now referred to as a
"channeler." He would lie on a couch in a passive receptive manner and
"receive" messages (in a manner similar to that of the occultist Edgar
Cayce) while another person would write them down. His wife described
it this way:
Bill would lie down on the couch. He would "get" these things. He kept
doing it every week or so. Each time, certain people would "come in."
Sometimes, it would be new ones and they’d carry on some story. There
would be long sentences; word by word would come through.4
It is interesting to note that in 1938, between the séances at the
Smiths’ and Wilson receiving messages while in a prone position in the
40s, Wilson wrote the AA Twelve Steps. He was lying in bed thinking.
The official AA biography of Wilson describes it this way:
As he started to write, he asked for guidance. And he relaxed. The
words began tumbling out with astonishing speed. He completed the first
draft in about half an hour, then kept on writing until he felt he
should stop and review what he had written. Numbering the new steps, he
found that they added up to twelve—a symbolic number; he thought of the
Twelve apostles, and soon became convinced that the Society should have
twelve steps.5
Whether creating the Twelve Steps involved occultic activity, Wilson
and Smith’s commitment to spiritualism was intrinsically tied to their
creation of and leadership in AA.
A regular participant in what they referred to as their "spook
sessions" said:
I was a problem to these people, because I was an atheist, and an
atheist is, by definition, a materialist. . . and a materialist is, by
definition, someone who does not believe in other worlds. Now these
people, Bill and Dr. Bob, believed vigorously and aggressively. They
were working away at the spiritualism; it was not just a hobby. And it
related to A.A., because the big problem in A.A. is that for a
materialist it’s hard to buy the program.6
Many Ways to God?
Wilson’s interest in spiritual matters was all-inclusive, all except
faith in Jesus as the only way. For a while Wilson seriously considered
becoming a Catholic. He described his relation to the church this way:
I’m more affected than ever by that sweet and powerful aura of the
church; that marvelous spiritual essence flowing down by the centuries
touches me as no other emanation does, but—when I look at the
authoritative layout, despite all the arguments in its favor, I still
can’t warm up. No affirmative conviction comes.7
Wilson did not want to attach AA to any one faith. The official AA
biography of Wilson declares:
Bill felt it would be unwise for A.A. as a fellowship to have an
allegiance to any one religious sect. He felt A.A.’s usefulness was
worldwide, and contained spiritual principles that members of any and
every religion could accept, including the Eastern religions.8
(Emphasis added.)
Wilson could not have believed in the "faith once delivered to the
saints" because he did not believe Jesus’ words when He said, "I am the
way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me"
(John 14:6). Wilson complained, "The thing that still irks me about all
organized religions is their claim how confoundedly right all of them
are. Each seems to think it has the right pipeline."9 (Emphasis added.)
Obviously, according to Wilson, Jesus is not the only "pipeline" to
God.
The Wide Gateway of AA.
When Wilson first formulated the Twelve-Steps, Step Two was: "Came to
believe that God could restore us to sanity."10 Wilson had had a
religious experience he thought was God. Therefore, such a statement
seemed natural. However, he met with opposition from those who were
close to him in the AA movement. Thus he changed the wording of Step
Two: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity." Wilson believed that those concessions regarding
references to God were:
. . . the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics. They had
widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through,
regardless of their belief or lack of belief.11 (Italics his, bold
added.)
And indeed the gate is wide. The "Power greater than ourselves" can be
anybody or anything that seems greater than the person who takes Step
Two. It can be a familiar spirit such as Carl Jung’s Philemon. It could
be any deity of Hinduism, Buddhism, Greek mythology, or New Age
channeled entities. It could be one’s own so-called higher self. It
could even be the devil himself.
The extreme naiveté of Christians comes through when they confidently
assert that their higher Power is Jesus Christ. Since when did Jesus
align Himself with false gods? Since when has He been willing to join
the Pantheon or the array of Hindu deities? Jesus is not an option of
one among many. He is the Only Son, the Only Savior, and the Only Way.
All Twelve Step programs violate the declarations of the Reformation:
Only Scripture; Only Christ; Only Grace; Only Faith; and Glory to God
Only. Instead they offer another power, another gospel, another savior,
another source, another fellowship, another tradition, another
evangelism, and another god. Jesus’ majesty and His very person are
violated by joining Him together with the gods of the wide gate and the
broad way. Jesus emphatically stated that His gate is strait and His
way is narrow. He is the only way to life, while all other ways lead to
destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).
stevenm
doesn't everyone?" Read answer
I suspect your friend knows that the word "believe" actually has
several meanings -- and it's important to understand which is the right
one.
Let me explain this by giving an example. The other day, I went out to
our local airport to get on an airplane -- something I've done
countless times in my life. If you had stopped me and asked, "Do you
believe this airplane can get you to your destination?", I would have
said, "Of course I do. I've been on many planes like this; I saw it fly
in; I saw people get out of it; I have confidence in the pilots. I
believe in this airplane!"
But then suppose the time came for me to actually get on that plane --
and I refused! I think you'd probably say to yourself, "He doesn't
believe in that airplane after all, because he won't trust it to take
him into the air. He doesn't really believe, because he won't commit
himself to it."
That's the way it is with Christ. Yes, many people believe Jesus
existed; they may even believe that He was the Son of God who died for
their sins. But they have never committed themselves to Him! They've
never trusted Him for their eternal salvation! In other words, they
don't really believe in Him.
I pray this won't be true of you. God loves you, and Christ died on the
cross to save you. God's promise is for you: "Believe in the Lord
Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31).