3rd Step PRINCIPLE: Faith

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

If I made better decisions, then I would probably not be in AA.  Or I would have introduced myself to the program sooner than I did, because when I noticed that I was not able to control my drinking, I would have sought help rather than order another drink.

The judgment that I brought into the program did not serve me well, and yet as early as the second step, the program trusted me enough to formulate an understanding of God that would help me to be and stay sober.

AA is inherently optimistic.  In the first step, it asserts that men and women who are wired to drink may be able to stop and then be made happily and usefully whole.  In the second step, the program promises that the alcoholic's life will improve through faith, and in the third step, one begins to actively trust the God of his or her understanding.

Place your bets.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal suggests that faith, at best, is an educated guess, but, in truth, it is a gamble.  Pascal's wager, as it is known, says that it is better to assume the existence of God than to act as if one is alone in the universe.

If I place my faith in God, and God doesn't exist, then what I have lost?  A few more wild nights?  But: if God exists and I have faith in this God, then what I have gained?  Everything.

Conversely, if I flatly deny the existence of God and God exists, then I am subject to God's mercy (best case scenario) or wrath (worst case scenario).  If I do not believe in God and God does not exist, then I forfeit only the hope that belief in God provides.

Foster a sense of well being.

Faith and hope are not the same, but they are intimately related.  Both foster a sense of well being that diffuses anxieties and calms fears.

Hope looks forward and trusts that everything will work out for the best.  It clarifies one's place in the world in which he or she lives now, and it motivates one to act in accordance with the promises before him or her.

Faith is more deeply rooted than hope.  Sometimes hope precedes faith.  For example, one may not be able to trust the God of his or her understanding until one has a sense of what one's future with this God will be.  Often faith comes before hope, because faith is passed down from one generation to the next, and in my experience, faith flourishes in communities where human beings gather to be made well.

Encourage and be encouraged.

In the beginning, I applied Pascal's wager to my experience of AA.  I had doubts about the program and even more self-doubt.  I did my best to proceed cautiously and confidently and am happy about where the program has taken me.

Still, I remember in sitting in a Big Book study early on and thinking, "If I give AA everything that I have and AA is wrong, then what have I lost?  But if AA works and I choose not to work the program, then what would I gain?"

AA provides me with a sense of well being by placing me in an open and honest community of people who have suffered and are striving to be well.  Walking into an AA meeting is one of the most honest things that I do.  Nobody asks why I am there, because they are there for the same reason.  As we share in each other's joys and sorrows, we encourage and are encouraged.

Encouragement, in the end, may be the essence of faith and hope, which begin and end in love.

Be decisive.

AA, like life, consists of living with the consequences of a series of choices that begins with the decision to go to that first meeting.  Then, one has to decide if one is an alcoholic or not, if one is powerless over alcohol or not, if one's life is unmanageable or not, if one is able to believe in a Power greater than one's self or not and if one is insane or not.

The questions asked in the third step are: 1) Would God make better decisions directing my life than I have?; 2) Am I willing to trust God completely at this point in my sobriety?; 3) and Am I comfortable enough with my understanding of God to accept this God's care?

In AA, I am positive that I am not alone in the universe.  I feel God's presence in the stories that are told and the experiences that are shared.  Meetings help to center me and to feel connected both to the group and to the God of my understanding, who proves time after time that trust in this God is a sure bet.

INTRO: Fifth Step

The longer I drank, the more I often drank alone.  I sat at bars by myself and would drive home from them almost every night.  When I went out with other people, I would drink as they did, at least in the early years, and drink more after we said "goodnight".  Often I would stop on the way home to purchase more alcohol to drink before I went to sleep.  At some point, I stopped going to sleep and started passing out night after night.

I do not remember much about the accident that led to my incarceration.  When I attended my first AA meeting upon my release from jail, I was not feeling much but fear.  Alcohol does that to a person.  It takes away  his or her ability to remember; it takes away his or her capacity to feel.  

Statements like "alcohol does that to a person" make less sense after the fourth step than they do after the first one.  Even though I knew that I was powerless over alcohol, I chose to take the first drink hoping that alcohol would numb senses and calm fears.  Irrationally, I thought that it would help me to forget the past and set me up to succeed in the future.  It did neither one, because I insisted on dwelling on the past and fearing the future, and in so doing, found it impossible to live in the present.

Looking at myself honestly and sharing this story with another person helped me to accept myself as I was without beating myself up or blaming all of my problems on alcohol.  The moral inventory helped me to recognize how much I lied to myself about who I was and how my drinking affected others.  It helped me to start being honest with myself so that I would eventually be able to trust my thoughts and feelings.

The fifth step opened me to the possibility of trusting God and other human beings.  It is about practicing the honesty that the fourth step demands with somebody other than one's aggrandizing and loathing self.  There were few surprises when I did my personal inventory.  In my gut, I remembered how I wronged others.  The challenge was being honest enough to write down these wrongs.  Then, once they were written, the challenge became speaking them aloud.

The fifth step says that we "admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."  Notice that the audiences are God, ourselves and another human being.  The God of my understanding was familiar with my offenses, as was I, so what I was doing in the first part of this step was simply acknowledging what was already known, and there is power in knowing.  Admitting the exact nature of my wrongs to another person was the bigger problem, because one of the problems that I was admitting was how I struggle with pride.

The word "admitted" appears in the steps for the first time since the step one in which "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol".  For me, this language serves as a reminder that all of the alcoholic's problems are related.  Both the first step and the fifth step are about letting go of that which stands in the way of being who we are and of being well.  

Taking the fifth step with another person is an intimate act (which is not to be confused with a romantic one).  It establishes faith in the possibility of a mutually affirming relationship with another person.  It help one begin to trust again.  It empowers one to set his or her sights on life on the other side of the consequences of alcoholic behavior, and about this much I am sure: this life in relationship with God and neighbors is far, far better than drinking alone.