God, Help Me!
By Dick B.
© 2013 Anonymous. All rights reserved
The Cry to God for Help and
God’s Answer
Psalm 30:2-3 (KJV):
O LORD, my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. O LORD,
thou hast brought up my soul from the grave; thou hast kept me alive, that I
should not go down to the pit.
AAs, Christians
involved in other 12-Step Fellowships, other addicts, and other alcoholics who
want God’s help in overcoming alcoholism and addictions need never shrink from
relating in a 12-Step meeting their own experience meeting as to God, His Son Jesus
Christ, the Bible, their church, and their religious beliefs and practices.[1] Early AAs did so freely.[2] They did not deviate
because of criticisms. They confirmed that they had been cured of their
alcoholism by their Heavenly Father, and that he had delivered them from the
power of darkness and had translated them into the kingdom of His dear Son.[3]
What others may
believe or practice today in A.A. does not give them any authority over
Bible-believing AAs or other Christians in the process of overcoming alcoholism
and/or drug addiction;[4] and it does not give them the
authority to suppress, criticize, intimidate, or censor what Bible-believing
AAs or other recovering Christians may share or read.[5] Stick with the winners![6] The winners were folks
like the highly-successful A.A. pioneers for whom Alcoholics Anonymous claimed
a 75% overall success rate,[7] and the early Cleveland
AAs who recorded a 93% success rate (with no relapses among those making up the
93%!) “by keeping most of the ‘old program,’ including the Four Absolutes and
the Bible.”[8],[9],[10]
The Experience of the First
Three AAs—Asked God for Help and Were Undisputed Winners
How AA Number One, Bill W., Got Sober
Bill W.’s cry for help: The A.A. General Service
Conference-approved book, The Language of
the Heart, quotes Bill’s cry to God for help while he was a patient at
Towns Hospital in New York from December 11-18, 1934, and God’s response as set
forth below.
First, however, the
reader should note that Bill’s cry for help was abuilding for some time before
he called out to God from his room at Towns Hospital.
Bill had received a
virtual death sentence from his psychiatrist, Dr. William D. Silkworth. Bill’s
wife Lois asked Dr. Silkworth, “Just what does this mean, doctor? And the old
man slowly replied, ‘It means that you will have to confine him, lock him up
somewhere if he would remain sane or alive.’”[11]
During his third
visit to Towns Hospital, Bill had a discussion with Dr. Silkworth on the
subject of the “Great Physician.”[12] Dale Mitchel, Silkworth’s
biographer, described the talk as follows:
Silkworth has not been given the appropriate credit for his position on
a spiritual conversion, particularly as it may relate to true Christian
benefits. Several sources, including Norman Vincent Peale, in his book The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, agree
that it was Dr. Silkworth who used the term “The Great Physician,” to explain
the need in recovery for a relationship with Jesus Christ. . . . In the
formation of AA, Wilson initially insisted on references to God and Jesus, as
well as the Great Physician. . . . Silkworth challenged the alcoholic with an
ultimatum. Once hopeless, the alcoholic would grasp hold of any chance of
sobriety. Silkworth, a medical doctor, challenged the alcoholic with a
spiritual conversion and a relationship with God as part of the program of
recovery. His approach with Bill Wilson was no different.[13]
[Referring to a similar situation in the case of a hopeless alcoholic
named Charles who also was treated by Dr. Silkworth, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
related that in desperation Charles had asked who could possibly heal him]. And
Silkworth replied, ‘There is another doctor who can complete this healing, but
he is very expensive.” ‘That’s all right,” cried Charles. “I can get the money.
I can pay his fees”. . . . Oh, but the Great Physician is not at all moderate
as to expense. He wants everything you’ve got. He wants all of you. Then He
gives the healing. His price is your entire self” [said Silkworth to his
patient Charles.] Then Silkworth added slowly and impressively, “His name is
Jesus Christ and he keeps office in the New Testament and is available whenever
you need Him.”[14]
Bill Wilson used the
term “cofounder” when describing Silkworth on occasion.[15] Bill also used the term
“cofounder” when referring to Rev. Sam Shoemaker.[16] And Bill later was to
credit the content of the Twelve Steps primarily to Silkworth, Professor
William James, and the teachings of Rev. Shoemaker.[17] In fact, Bill actually
asked Sam Shoemaker to write the Twelve Steps, but Shoemaker declined,
suggesting that Bill—an alcoholic—should write them.[18] Mitchel added some other
items relevant to Silkworth’s religious beliefs. He wrote: (1) “William had
been taught by his father to serve his God and his country, and he served
proudly without any regrets.”[19] (2) “A devout Christian,
he initially fit well into the temperance mind-set developing across the
country. For years he attended a church that would also have an impact on the
formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Calvary Christian (Episcopal) Church”[20] [of which A.A. cofounder
Rev. Samuel Shoemaker was the Rector]. (3) “Bill Wilson, Sam Shoemaker, and
William Silkworth all became friends through the growth of A.A. . . . William
and his wife, Antoinette, would occasionally still visit the church for Sunday
services.”[21]
(4) Silkworth “spoke frequently about the need for a reliance upon God and a
firm foundation of spiritual strength in order to handle the obsession to
drink.”[22] (5) “He was a man who
believed in a spiritually sound approach to healing.”[23]
Said Silkworth’s
biographer: “It is obvious that in prior visits Silkworth had tried to explain
the ‘Great Physician’ to Bill without success.”[24] And Bill wrote that he
had thought about this discussion before he decided to check himself into Towns
for the last time, at the urging of his wife and his brother-in-law. In Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Wilson
wrote: “Alcoholism took longer to kill, but the result was the same. Yes, if
there was any Great Physician that could cure the alcohol sickness, I’d better
find him now, at once.”[25]
Bill’s next introduction
to what the Great Physician could do for him--if sought for a cure of his
alcoholism--came from Bill’s old drinking buddy, Edwin Throckmorton Thacher
(known as “Ebby.” In the deep throes of alcoholism, Ebby was about to be
incarcerated for inebriety. He went before Judge Collins Graves, a Bennington, Vermont
magistrate. But it so happened that Cebra Graves, the son of Judge Graves, went
to his father and asked that Ebby be paroled to his (Cebra’s) care. Three
recovered Oxford Group friends of Ebby’s—Cebra Graves, F. Shepard Cornell, and
Rowland Hazard (all of them cured of their alcoholism)—had banded together to
rescue their friend Ebby. And Ebby wound up primarily in the care of Rowland
Hazard, then of Vermont.[26]
A word or two about
the three friends, about Rowland Hazard particularly, and about Ebby’s own
situation when he was rescued. And the details have been pieced together in our
book, Dick B. and Ken B., Bill W. and Dr.
Bob, the Green Mountain Men of Vermont: The Roots of Early A.A.’s Original
Program (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2012).
The story goes as
follows:
(1) Ebby’s family were from New York, but they
spent long summers in Manchester and Emerald Lake in Vermont. Ebby had
matriculated with Bill Wilson at Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester,
Vermont, and boarded with Congregational Minister Reverend Sidney
Perkins—receiving substantial Christian and biblical training from both Burr
and Burton and from the Perkins family. Ebby had been strongly influenced by his
family’s church attendance while he was growing up, and the Thacher family had
both Episcopalian and Presbyterian connections.[27]
(2) Speaking of Cebra Graves and Shep Cornell,
“Ebby said they had gotten some pretty sensible things out of it [the Oxford
Group], based on the life of Christ, biblical times—I listened to what they had
to say, and I was very much impressed because it was what I had been taught as
a child and what I inwardly believed.”[28]
(3) Rowland’s story was more powerful, from
Ebby’s standpoint. Rowland had treated unsuccessfully with the eminent Swiss psychiatrist
Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. When Rowland asked Dr. Jung what the problem was, Jung
told him that he had the mind of a chronic alcoholic and that he had never seen
such a case recover. Pushed further, Jung did tell Rowland that at times,
alcoholics had been cured by conversions—vital religious experiences. And
Rowland returned to the United States, accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and
Savior, and was healed.[29]
(4) Ebby spent a week or two with Rowland.
Rowland told Ebby he was impressed by the simplicity of the early Christian
teachings as advocated by the Oxford Group [actually called “A First Century
Christian Fellowship”] and really lived them and practiced them himself. Ebby
said: “he made me believe in them as I had as a young man.”[30]
(5) Then Ebby was lodged with the brotherhood in
Calvary Episcopal Rescue Mission—an outgrowth of New York’s famous Water Street
Mission. And Ebby accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior there on
November 1, 1934, a month before he called on Bill Wilson.[31]
(6) Ebby then visited Bill to help Bill make
Bill’s decision for Christ. The material is thoroughly covered in Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W. and Dick B.
and Ken B., The Dick B. Christian
Recovery Guide, 4th ed. In substance, the facts are these: (a)
Ebby told Bill that he had been to the altar at Calvary Rescue Mission at
accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He used an Oxford Group
expression for conversion, saying: “I’ve got religion.” Ebby told Bill that God
had done for him what he could not do for himself.
Bill
believed Ebby had been born again. Bill wrote: “Nevertheless here I was sitting opposite a man who talked about a
personal God, who told me how he had found Him, who described to me how I might
do the same thing and who convinced me utterly that something had come into his
life which had accomplished a miracle.
The man was transformed; there was no denying that he had been reborn.”[1][32]
(7) He could not get the story out of his mind.
He went to Shoemaker’s church to hear Ebby’s testimony in the pulpit. And Bill
decided that if the Great Physician had delivered Ebby, he had better go to the
Calvary Mission and see if he could get the same results.[33]
(8) Bill then got drunk, but he did go to Calvary
Mission. There he went to the altar and in all sincerity handed his life
over to Jesus Christ. This is an event witnessed by Mrs. Samuel M.
Shoemaker, reported by Bill’s wife Lois, recorded by Shoemaker’s Assistant
Minister W. Irving Harris, and attested by one of the brothers at the Mission. Bill
wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Dr. Leonard Strong and said that he (like
Ebby) had “found religion.” In his autobiography, Bill wrote, “For sure I’d
been born again.” And Rev. Shoemaker had described Calvary Rescue Mission to be
a place “where God reclaims men who choose to be reborn.”[34]
(9) After that, Bill was drunk and despairing
once again. So he decided to check in to Towns Hospital. Bill decided he should
call on the “Great Physician” for help at once. Checking into Towns, he met Dr.
Silkworth and told Silkworth he had “found something.” Soon he thought it was
time to ask for help from the “Great Physician.” Bill said, “I remember saying
to myself, “I’ll do anything, anything at all. If there be a Great Physician,
I’ll call on him.[35]
(10)
Said
Bill: “And I cried out as a child, expecting little—indeed, expecting nothing.
I simply said, “If there is a God, will he show himself?” Then I was granted
one of those instantaneous illuminations. . . . I was seized with great joy and
ecstasy beyond all possible expression. In the mind’s eye, it seemed to me I
stood on a high mountain. I was taken there, I had not climbed it. And then the
great thought burst upon me: “Bill, you are a free man! This is the God of the
Scriptures.” And I was filled with a consciousness of a presence. A great peace
fell over me. . . . So I hung on, and then I knew there was a God and I knew
there was a grace. And through it all, I have continued to feel, if I may
presume to say it, that I do know these
things.[36] [emphasis in original]
And Bill W. never
drank again!
Bill’s explanation of God’s help: In the current (fourth) edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (“the Big Book”), Bill is quoted as saying to the wife
of A.A. Number Three:
“Henrietta, the Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this
terrible disease, that I just want to keep talking about it and telling
people.”[37]
A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob’s affirmation of Bill
W.’s cure: Dr. Bob stated in
his personal story in the Big Book:
[Bill W.] . . . was a man . . . who had been cured by the very means I
had been trying to employ, that is to say, the spiritual approach.[38]
How A.A. Number Two, Dr. Bob, Got Sober
Dr. Bob’s surrender and prayer for
deliverance. The A.A.
General Service Conference-approved book DR.
BOB and the Good Oldtimers states the following about how A.A. Number Two,
Dr. Bob, got sober:
. . . Henrietta [Seiberling] . . . gathered some Oxford Group members
to attend . . . [a very special meeting]. “I decided that the people who shared
in the Oxford Group had never shared very costly things to make Bob lose his
pride [through their example (this text is bracketed in the original)] and
share what I thought would cost him a great deal,” she said.
. . .
“We all shared very deeply our shortcomings
and what we had victory over. Then there was a silence, and I waited and
thought, ‘Will Bob say anything?’
“Sure enough, in that deep, serious tone of
his, he said, ‘Well, you good people have all shared things that I am sure were
very costly to you, and I am going to tell you something which may cost me my
profession. I am secret drinker, and I can’t stop.’
“We said, ‘Do you want us to pray for you?’
“Then someone said, ‘Should we get on our
knees?’
“And he said, ‘Yes,’ so we did. . . .
“The next morning,” Henrietta continued, “I,
who knew nothing about alcoholism . . . was saying a prayer for Bob.
“I said, ‘God, I don’t know anything about
drinking, but I told Bob that I was sure that if he lived this way of life, he
could quit drinking. Now I need your help, God.’ Something said to me—I call it
‘guidance’; it was like a voice in my head—‘Bob must not touch one drop of
alcohol.’
“I knew that wasn’t my thought. So I called
Bob and told him I had guidance for him.”[39]
Explanations of God’s response: Henrietta Seiberling had received guidance
from God that Bob must quit drinking completely. And the answer to the prayers
by Bob and the group came in a surprising way when Bill W. arrived in Akron to
salvage a business venture. The A.A. General Service Conference-approved book ‘PASS IT ON’ states:
. . . Bill faced a solitary weekend in a strange city where he had just
sustained a colossal disappointment. He had time on his hands and bitterness in
his heart. . . .
. . . There was a bar at one end of the
lobby, and Bill felt himself drawn to it. . . .
. . . [F]or Bill Wilson, the alcoholic, the
idea was loaded with danger. . . .
In New York, he had kept himself sober for
more than five months through working with other drunks at Towns [Hospital] and
at Calvary Mission. . . . . Now he had nobody. As he later recalled, “I
thought, ‘You need another alcoholic to talk to. You need another alcoholic just
as much as much as he needs you!’” . . .
. . .
. Bill asked [Rev. Walter F. Tunks, an Episcopalian clergyman, on the phone] for
help to get in touch with a drunk to talk to. . . . [Rev. Tunks gave Bill the
names of ten people to call. One of the people he called, Norman Sheppard,
suggested Bill call Henrietta Seiberling.]
. . .
. . . Something kept telling him to call Mrs.
Seiberling. He went back to his room and placed the call.
. . .
As Henrietta later told it, Bill introduced
himself over the telephone thus: “I’m from the Oxford Group and I’m a rum hound
from New York.”
Her silent reaction, she said, was: ‘This is
really manna from heaven.” Aloud, she said, “You come right out here.”
. . .
Henrietta relied on God’s guidance in her
life. She was certain that the telephone call was the help she and other Oxford
Group members had been seeking for one of their members.[40]
The A.A. General
Service Conference-approved pamphlet The
Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks
provides Dr. Bob’s description of Bill W.’s meeting with Henrietta Seiberling
and Bill’s momentous meeting with Dr. Bob the following day:
“[Over lunch with Henrietta Seiberling at Mrs. Seiberling’s home,] he
[Bill W.] went into his story in considerable detail, and she [Henrietta
Seiberling] said, ‘I have just the man for you.’
“She rushed to the
phone and called [Dr. Bob’s wife] Anne and told her that she had just the
fellow to be helpful to me [Dr. Bob], and that we should come right over, . . .
“. . . Anne had to
tell her I was bagged [i.e., drunk] . . . and the visit would just have to be
postponed. So Henry started in about the next day being Sunday and Mother’s Day
[May 12, 1935], and Anne said we would be over then.
“. . . We got there at
five o’clock, and it was 11:15 when we left.
“. . . Bill had acquired their [the Oxford
Group’s] idea of service. I had not, . . .”[41]
And, as ‘PASS IT ON’ put it: “Bill Wilson and Dr.
Bob Smith hit it off from their very first talk at Henrietta’s home, . . .”[42]
Dr. Bob’s cure: But
Dr. Bob’s wife Anne was still worried about him and invited Bill W. to live
with them at their 855 Ardmore Avenue home in Akron. Bill W. moved into the
Smith home for the summer of 1935.[43] Speaking of this time
period, Bill said: “We were under an awful compulsion. And we found that we had
to do something for somebody or actually perish ourselves.”[44] By the end of May 1935, within
two weeks or so of their first meeting, Bill W. and Dr. Bob had started
carrying the message to others together.[45] Commenting on his stay
with Bob and Anne, Bill said: “For the next three months, I lived with these
two wonderful people. . . . I shall always believe they gave me more than I
ever brought them.”[46] DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers adds:
Each morning, there was a devotion, he [Bill W.] recalled. After a long
silence, in which they awaited inspiration and guidance, Anne would read from
the Bible. “James was our favorite,” he said.[47]
It also states:
[Dr. Bob’s daughter] Sue . . . remembered the quiet time in the
mornings—how they sat around reading from the Bible.[48]
In the A.A. General
Service Conference-approved book Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes of Age, Bill W. described these morning sessions with Dr.
Bob and Anne in this way:
How well I remember our morning meditation, when Anne would sit in the
corner by the fireplace and read from the Bible, and then we would huddle
together in stillness, awaiting inspiration and guidance.[49]
Then along came the
86th annual convention of the American Medical Association which was
held June 10-14, 1935, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.[50] Dr. Bob “. . . hadn’t
missed one in 20 years.”[51] He decided to go to the
medical convention and “. . . began drinking everything he could get as soon as
he boarded the train to Atlantic City. On his arrival, he bought several quarts
on his way to the hotel. That was Sunday night.”[52] He began drinking again
Monday evening. And he drank all morning on Tuesday, at which point he checked
out of the hotel and headed home by train.[53] The next thing Dr. Bob
knew, “. . . he was coming out of it [a blackout] in the Cuyahoga Falls home of
his office nurse and her husband.”[54] “Five days from the time
Bob left—on the following Thursday—they [Bill and Dr. Bob’s wife Anne] got a
telephone call from Dr. Bob’s office nurse, . . .”[55] Bill and Anne headed over
to the nurse’s home to pick up Dr. Bob.[56]
Then began “a
three-day sobering-up period, . . .” as Dr. Bob “. . . was due to perform a
surgery three days later.”[57] Here is Bill W.’s report
as to what happened early on the third day:
. . . [A]t four o’clock on the morning of the operation, both of them
[Bill W. and Dr. Bob] were wide awake. Dr. Bob, shaking, turned to look at
Bill. He said, “I’m going through with it.”
“You mean you’re going through with the
operation?”
“I have placed both the operation and myself
in God’s hands,” Dr. Bob replied. “I’m going to do what it takes to get sober
and stay that way.”[58]
The “tapering-off
process” ended while Bill and Anne were driving Dr. Bob to the hospital on the
day he had to perform the surgery. “Bill handed him [Dr. Bob] ‘one goofball’
and a single bottle of beer, to curb the shakes.”[59]
The bottle of beer Bill gave him [Dr. Bob] that morning was the last
drink he [Dr. Bob] ever had.
Although arguments have been and will be made
for other significant occasions in A.A. history, it is generally agreed that
Alcoholics Anonymous began there, in Akron, on that date: June 10, 1935.[60]
Number Three: How A.A. Number Three, Akron
attorney Bill D., Got Sober
A.A. Number Three Bill D.’s Surrender to God
for help: Dr. Bob and Bill
W. decided to look for another alcoholic to work on. . . “But where can we find
any alcoholics?” Bill W. remembered asking. “They always have a batch down at
the Akron City Hospital,” Bob said, “I’ll call them up and see what they’ve
got.” He called Mrs. Hall, the admissions nurse, who was a friend of his, and
explained that he and a man from New York had a “cure” for alcoholism and
needed a prospect to try it out on.[61]
The nurse asked whether Dr. Bob had tried the new method on himself.
“Yes.” Dr. Bob replied, somewhat taken aback, “I sure have.” Mrs. Hall did have
a prospect—“a dandy.” He was a lawyer who had been in the hospital six times in
the preceding four months. He went completely out of his mind when drinking,
and he had just roughed up a couple of nurses. At the moment, he was strapped
down tight.” This was Bill D., who would become A.A. number three; and Bill D.
became known as “the man on the bed.”[62]
Bill D. himself told of his sense of hopelessness and despair before the
visit from Dr. Bob and Bill W. The attorney also remembered how he was told to
go out and carry the message of recovery to someone else.[63] Bill D. and his wife
Henrietta attended church every Sunday and often prayed about his problem. He
told Bill W. and Dr. Bob: “You don’t have to sell me religion, either. I was at
one time a deacon in the church and I still believe in God. But I guess He doesn’t
believe much in me.[64] Speaking of this
new-found prospect, Dr. Bob called him “Bill D., our good friend from Akron.”
Bob added: “I knew that this Bill was a Sunday-school superintendent, and I
thought he probably forgot more about the Good Book every night than I ever
knew. . . and I’m glad to say that the
conversation fell on fertile ground.”[65]
If A.A. Number Three thought God had given up on him, his wife
Henrietta thought otherwise. Dissatisfied with the progress she and Bill were
making in their own church, she had visited another minister to pray about her
husband’s illness. She became convinced that her husband would stop drinking. And
when Bill W. and Dr. Bob were calling on him, she had no doubt her prayers were
being answered.[66]
He was there about five days before Bill W. and Dr. could make him say
that he couldn’t control his drinking and had to leave it up to God. He
certainly did believe in God, but he wanted to be his own man. Nonetheless, the
two cofounders made him get down on
his knees at the side of the bed right there in the hospital and pray and say
that he would turn his life over to God.[67]
God’s response to Bill D.’s prayers. In his personal story, Bill D. said: “It was
in the next two or three days after I had first met Doc and Bill that I finally
came to a decision to turn my will over to God and to go along with this
program the best I could. . . . I wasn’t afraid that the program wouldn’t work.
. . I still was doubtful whether I would be able to hang on to the program, but
I did come to the conclusion that I was willing to put everything I had into
it, with God’s power, and that I wanted to do just that. As soon as I had done
that, I did feel a great release. I had a helper whom I could rely upon, who wouldn’t
fail me. If I could stick to Him and listen, I would make it. . . when the boys
came back, I told them.. . I am willing to put His world first, above
everything. I have already done it, and I am willing to do it again here in the
presence of you, or I am willing to say it any place, anywhere in the world
from now on and not be ashamed of it. . . . Then they said, ‘There is one other
thing. You should go out and take this program to somebody else who needs it
and wants it.’”[68]
Bill D.’s cure: On page 191 of the 4th edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, A.A. number Three
wrote: “I noticed that the others seemed to have such a release, a happiness, a
something that I thought a person ought to have. I was trying to find the
answer. . . a week or two after I had come out
of the hospital, Bill (Bill Wilson) was at my house talking to my wife
and me. . . . Bill looked across at my wife and said to her, “Henrietta, the
Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible disease, that I
just want to keep talking about it and telling people.” I thought, I think I have
the answer. Bill [Wilson] was very, very grateful that he had been released
from this terrible thing and he had given God the credit for having done it,
and he’s so grateful about it that he wants to tell other people about it. That
sentence, ‘The Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible
disease, that I just want to keep telling people about it,’ has been a sort of
a golden text for the A.A. program and for me.”
What the Successful Efforts of
the First Three—“The Winners”--Actually Involved
Dr. Bob explained
how simple the program had been when he and Bill W. were working with Bill D.
and the other old-timers. In his last major speech (in The Co-Founders pamphlet P-53), Dr. Bob said at pages 13-14:
In early A.A. days. . . our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak
of. When we started in on Bill D., we had no Twelve Steps, either; we had no
Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the
Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely
essential were the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 5-7], the thirteenth chapter of
First Corinthians, and the Book of James. We used to have daily meetings at a
friend’s house.
It wasn’t until 1938 that the teachings and efforts and studies that
had been going on were crystallized in the form of the Twelve Steps. I didn’t
write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing to do with the writing of them. . . .
Bill came to live at our house and stayed for about three months. There was
hardly a night that we didn’t sit up until two or three o’clock, talking. It
would be hard for me to conceive that, during these nightly discussions around
our kitchen table, nothing was said that influenced the writing of the Twelve
Steps. We already had the basic ideas, though not in terse and tangible form.
We got them, as I said, as a result of our study of the Good Book. . . . We were maintaining sobriety—therefore, we
must have had them.
In short, the first
three AAs took their cue from the Bible. Each studied it: (1) Bob had had
excellent training in the Bible as a youngster and said so.[69] (2) Bill had read the
Bible as a youngster, with his friend Mark Whalon, and with his grandfather
Fayette Griffith. All were voracious readers.[70][71] (3) At Burr and Burton
Seminary, Bill attended daily chapel where there were hymns, prayers, reading
of Scripture, and Sermons. And Bill took a four-year Bible study course.[72] According to A.A.
Conference approved literature, Dotson had been a Sunday school teacher and a
deacon in his church, and “probably knew more about the Bible than Bob had
forgotten.” As stated above, each of the three turned to God for help—Bill’s
crying out to God for help at Towns Hospital; Dr. Bob’s getting down on his
knees at Henrietta’s special meeting and praying with the group for
deliverance; and Dotson’s relating that he had given his life over to the care
and direction of God. Each was cured and said so. For the rest of their lives,
each never drank again; and each began serving and glorifying God and also
others who suffered.
And The Emphasis on the Bible
Continued
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers said:
We had much prayer together in those days and began quietly to read Scripture
and discuss a practical approach to its application in our lives, page 111
Bob E. remembered that he, too,
spent a lot of time with Anne. . . She read the Bible and counseled me, page
114
Dr. Bob was a prominent man in
Akron. Everybody knew him. When he stopped drinking, people asked, ‘What’s this
not-drinking-liquor club you’ve got over there?’ ‘A Christian fellowship,’ he’d
reply, page 118
[Frank Amos investigated the Akron
program and summarized it in seven parts. In Part 4, he wrote] “He must have
devotions every morning—a ‘quiet time’ of prayer and some reading from the
Bible and other religious literature,’ page 131
[At the
meetings,] The leader would open with a prayer, then read Scripture, page 139.
After the
meeting closed with the Lord’s Prayer. . ., page 141.
(Dr. Bob was always positive about
his faith, Clarence said. If someone asked him a question about the program,
his usual response was: ‘What does it say in the Good Book? . . ., page 144
The Bible was stressed as reading
material, of course, page 151.
[At the meeting:] Dr. Bob, who put
his foot on the rung of a dining room chair, identified himself as an
alcoholic, and began reading the Sermon on the Mount, page 218.
Stick with the Winners! The first three got well by turning
to the Bible for the answer to their problems. There were no Steps, no
Traditions, no Big Books, no war stories, and no meetings as we know them
today. And studying the Bible for answers was “absolutely essential.”
The Spiritual Battle and What Daily Phone calls, Emails, conferences
and Meetings Keep Telling us about Christian AAs Today
·
Scarcely a day goes by here in Maui, Hawaii
without our receiving phone calls and emails or meeting with some alcoholic or
drug addict who is a Christian and has had difficult experiences with
criticisms, rejections, intimidations, and shout-downs in their fellowship,
group, meetings, and personal confrontations by others.
·
Generally, these Christian AAs are folks with
substantial sobriety and don’t want to leave their A.A. fellowship or cease
serving God and AAs who want and need God’s help.
·
But their concerns as Christians, and often as
recovered AAs with long term, continuous sobriety, leave the problem with
“Whatever happened to God, and God’s love, power, and healing.” And—despite the
rebuffs, their difficult task is to
accept the rejections, tell their actual stories, express thanks for their new
lives, and “Stick with the Winners!”
·
Nobody is trying to Christianize A.A. The
variety of beliefs and unbelief in the Fellowship is an accepted fact today.
But this multitude of views neither grants nor authorizes anyone to suppress
literature, condemn remarks, criticize individuals, and prevent mention of God,
His Son Jesus Christ, or the Bible in a meeting, a conference, a phone call, or
a Central Office.
·
There are no police or governors in A.A. There
is no index of forbidden books. There is no office of censorship. There is not
and never has been an authorized or successful attempt to evict anyone because
of his beliefs, his reading, or his remarks. And that includes the thousands of
Christians in A.A. who have that unfettered right and freedom.
·
The two A.A. phrases: “Love and tolerance”[73]
and “Love and service”[74]
mean that all AAs should look first at their own Conference-approved literature
and then at the recorded remarks of the first three AAs, the cofounders, and
the pioneers and see how much the literature of today encourages mention of
God, of religion, and of the Bible. And, as Bill W. wrote in his Big Book: “There
are many helpful books also. Suggestions about them may be obtained from one’s
priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right.
Make use of what they have to offer.” And these are expressions of freedom of
religious belief, principles, and practices that cannot be suppressed and
certainly can’t be overcome by attacks, bitterness or bellicosity.[75]
First Things First
Scrambling and scrapping over what someone else has to say
about his religious beliefs, or over what he brings to a meeting in the nature
of reading material, or over what he believes as to God or even a
higher-powered light bulb can and should be resolved by Dr. Bob’s explanation
of the expression “First Things First.”: “If someone asked him a question about
the program, his usual response was: ‘What does it say in the Good Book?’
Suppose he was asked, ‘What’s all this First Things First?’ Dr. Bob would be
ready with the appropriate quotation: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’”
If individuals try to control, condemn, or reject some
statement on the grounds that it “violates” a Tradition, or that it doesn’t
come from “Conference-approved” literature, the most appealing starting place
is with A.A.’s General Service Conference-approved Big Book, 4th ed.
at page 85: “Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will
into all our activities. ‘How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be
done.’
It is one thing for a person in despair, depression, and
fear to cry out: “God, Help me!” It is quite another for a person in a meeting to
attempt to play God and try to force his view down someone else’s throat just
because he doesn’t agree with the other person’s belief or religious view or doesn’t
want to hear about it. That’s more like: “Thanks but no thanks, God. I’ll
handle this myself; and I don’t care what your will is.
Most Christians would agree that God’s will is set forth in the
Good Book—often called the “word of God,” and that’s where Dr. Bob urged
AAs to look first for answers to their
problems.
[1]
In speaking of the “forty-two personal experiences” in the “Personal Stories”
section of the book, the fourth edition of Alcoholics
Anonymous (“the Big Book”) states: “Each individual, in the personal
stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way
he established his relationship with God.” Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed. (New York City: Alcoholics Anonymous World
Services, Inc., 2001), 29.
[2]
For example, A.A. cofounder Bill W., as quoted by AA Number Three, Bill D. of
Akron in his personal story in the Big Book, stated:
“. . . ‘Henrietta, the Lord
has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible disease, that I just
want to keep talking about and telling people.’” [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 191]
A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob stated the following in the last
sentence of his personal story in the Big Book:
“Your
Heavenly Father will never let you down!” [Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed., 181]
AA Number Three, Bill D., also stated in his personal
story in the Big Book:
“That sentence [of Bill W.’s],
‘The Lord has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terrible disease, that
I just want to keep telling people about it,” has been a sort of a golden text
for the A.A. program and for me.” [Alcoholics
Anonymous, 4th ed., 191].
[3]
Colossians 1:13 (KJV): “Who [the Father (verse 12)] hath delivered us from the
power of darkness, and hath translated [us] into the kingdom of his dear Son:”
[4]
Tradition Two (Short Form) “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate
authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our
leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” Tradition Ten (Long
Form) “No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A.,
express any opinion on outside controversial issues—particularly those of
politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous
Groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters. They can express no views
whatever.” Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
ed., 562. 565/
[5]
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age provides the
following guides: (1) “Many people wonder how A.A. can function under such anarchy. . . . Happily for us, we
found we need no human authority whatever. We have two authoritative which are
more effective. One is benign, the other malign. There is God, our Father, who
simply says, ‘I am waiting for you to do my will,’”105. (2) “. . . We believe
that ‘spiritual faith’ and a ‘way of
life’ cannot be incorporated. . . A.A. can and will survive so long as
it remains a spiritual faith and a way of life open to all men and women who
suffer from alcoholism,” 127. (3) “. . . A.A. can never have an organized direction or
government. . . . To this rule: Alcoholics Anonymous is a complete exception.
It does not at any point conform to the pattern of government. Neither its
General Service Conference, its General Service Board, nor the humblest group
committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let
alone hand out any punishment. . . someone once suggested we put up a sign in
each A.A. club saying: ‘Anything goes here, folks, except you mustn’t smoke
opium in the elevators!, 119.
[7]
“Of alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once and
remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder,
those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement.” From “Foreword to Second
Edition” in Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
ed., xx.
[8]
For the “old program,” see the seven-point summary of the original Akron A.A.
program: DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers
(New York, N.Y., Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980), 131.
[9]
Mitchell K., How It Worked: The Story of
Clarence H. Snyder and the Early Days of Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland,
Ohio (Washingtonville, NY: AA Big Book Study Group, 1991, 1997), 108.
[10]
“Records in Cleveland show that 93 percent of those who came to us never had a
drink again. When I [Dr. Bob’s sponsee Clarence S. who started A.A.’s third
group in the world on May 11, 1939] discovered that people had slips in A.A.,
it really shook me up. Today, it’s all watered down so much.” DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 261.
[11]
Bill W. My First 40 Years: An
Autobiography by the Cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN:
Hazelden, 2000), 116-17.
[12]
Dale Mitchel, Silkworth The Little Doctor
Who Loved Drunks: The Biography of William Duncan Silkworth, M.D. (Center
City, MN: Hazelden, 2002), 44.
[13]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 50.
[14]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 50-51.
[15]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 70.
[16]
Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism: God,
Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., 2d ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications,
Inc., 1999), 551.
[17]
The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s
Grapevine Writings (New York: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 297-98.
[18]
Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism, 9,
73.
[19]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 27.
[20]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 11-12.
[21]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 63.
[22]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 34.
[23]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 35.
[24]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 49.
[25]
Mitchel, Silkworth, 44, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 61.
[26]
My First 40 Years, 127-31/
[27]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Green Mountain
Men of Vermont, np, Chapter 4.
[28]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Green Mountain
Men of Vermont, np, Chapter 12.
[29]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Green Mountain
Men of Vermont, np, Chapter 12.
[30]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Green Mountain
Men of Vermont, np, Chapter 12.
[31]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Green Mountain
Men of Vermont, np, Chapter 12.
[32]
Dick B. and Ken B., The Dick B. Christian
Recovery Guide: Why A.A. and Other Early Christian Recovery Efforts Succeeded,
and How to Use Their Methods to Achieve Similar Successes Today, 4th
ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2011), 69-70. This
statement was found by me in my research
at Stepping Stones in a manuscript titled, “Bill Wilson’s Original Story,”
lines 935-942.
[36]
The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s
Grapevine Writings (New York: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 284.
[39]
DR.
BOB and the Good Oldtimers,
58-59.
[40]
‘Pass It On’ (New York, N.Y.:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984), 135-38.
[41]
The
Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major
Talks, (New York, NY:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975) 10-11.
[43]
‘PASS IT ON,’ 147, 151. “. . .
Bill returned to New York City on Monday, August 26, 1935, . . .” ‘PASS IT ON,’ 161.
[44]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 69.
[45]
According to a letter of Bill W. to his wife Lois dated May 1935. See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 70.
[48]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 71.
[49]
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
(New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957, 1985), 70.
[50] As to the actual dates of this convention, see The Journal of the American Medical Association, Saturday,
June 22, 1935, 2258; [JAMA. 1935;104(25):2258-2259.]: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=260319; accessed
8/7/2013; The Canadian Medical
Association Journal, December 1934, 163 [Can Med Assoc J. 1934 December; 31(6): 673.]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1561164/?page=1;
accessed 8/7/2013; and House of Delegates Proceedings.
86th Annual Session of the American Medical Association,
Atlantic City, June 10-14, 1935: http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/ethics/policies.pdf ; accessed 8/7/2013.
[58]
‘PASS IT ON,’ 149.
[60]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 75.
Recently, some A.A. historians have argued that a different date, most likely
Monday, June 17, 1935, was the actual date of Dr. Bob’s last drink, due to the
dates of the American Medical Association’s convention in Atlantic City. See,
for example: Mitchell K., “Dr. Bob’s Last Drink,” http://alcoholism.about.com/library/blmitch5.htm;
accessed 8/7/2013.
[61]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 81-82.
[62]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 82.
[63]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 83.
[64]
“PASS IT ON,” 133.
[65]
The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, 12.
[66]
“PASS IT ON,” 153.
[67]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 85.
[69]
The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, 11-12.
[70]
As to the reading devotion of all three, see Susan Cheever, My Name is Bill, 37-38, 42, 47. As
Cheever put it on page 48: “The more Bill read, the more he wanted to read. He
had read about Horatio Alger and Thomas Edison. He read Heidi and the family encyclopedia and, of course, the Bible. . . .
Bill became a reading addict, staying up all night while the rest of the
Griffith house slept.”
[71]
The details about the reading can also be found in Robert Thomsen, Bill W., 27-28, 32, 200-01, 308. On page
34, Thomsen wrote of Fayette Griffith, “With more free hours now, Fayette r
read more, even sending off to the city
for special books. . . He went on, read his Bible, supported the church. . .”
See also Bill W. My First 40 Years, 19.
[72]
See Bill W. and Dr. Bob, The Green
Mountain Men of Vermont np; Chapter 3, Frederica Templeton, The Castle in the Pasture: Portrait of Burr
and Burton Academy (Manchester, VT: Burr and Burton Academy, 2005), 15, 17-22, 25-26, 33, 42, 56, 67.
[74]
DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, page
338: “Our Twelve Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into
the words “love” and “service.”
[75]
Alcoholics Anonymous ,4th
ed., page 84: “And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol..”
Page 66: “To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got.
The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. . .
. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters
got..” Page 67: “We avoid retaliation or argument.”
