A Dozen Steps

The God of Reason

by Mark on May 24th, 2008

Have you ever felt like “If this is all there is to sobriety, then why bother?”

Other than the disease talking to me, I discovered something about that state of mind a few years ago. It’s in the Big Book on pgs. 50-57.

I’ll refer to what still makes the most sense to me;

“When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?”

At those times in my life that were (and still can be) the most difficult, those that feel like everything is unfair and I don’t deserve this, I have this tendency to feel like God has gotten farther away. Fortunately, an oldtimer taught me something about times like that - if God feels farther away, I need to check who moved. It’s always me.

“Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn’t duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands stretched out in welcome. We were grateful Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn’t quite step onshore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.”

From here, the BB asks us to examine this a bit more. It turns out that believing my own reasoning was a form of faith. ??? Well, it says “Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith?”

Then it hits me square! It says “Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason.”

There is a great deal more on those pages but I’d like to move forward to the Great Reality.

“We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.”

The God of Reason only brought me so far… in order to go all the way, I had to let go of the God of Reason and develop a blind faith. Every once in a while I still make that mistake of asking about fairness, but I’ve come to believe that fairness isn’t what it’s all about. It’s about Reality. He is the Great Reality for me, and works a whole lot better than the way it used to be!

A Sober, Clean Day To All…

[Edited and brought into the now May 24th, 2008. I think it’s worth the repetition]

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POSTED IN: Experience, Strength and Hope, Spirituality