"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"
"The moment they read Step 2, most AA newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, 'Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that... our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle...
"... I must quickly assure you that AA's tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith... you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen. Many... like you have begun to solve the probelm by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make AA itself [alanon, ACA, CAS, family teens] your 'higher power'. Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened...
"Sometimes AA comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith. Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go. ...
"Any number of AA's can say to the drifter, 'Yes, we were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us... We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest... became convinced that such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough...
"As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life...
"Another crowd of AA's says: 'We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats'. In spots its morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best. How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the 'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to AA, we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego-feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them...
"It's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified... More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God has deserted us...
"When we encountered AA, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead ew had been telling Him what it ought to be...
"Now let's take the guy who is full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then , can be the matter?...
"There are too many of us who have been just like him... The answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, 'Grant me my wishes' instead of 'Thy will be done'...
"...Step 2 is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every AA meeting is an assurance that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him."
From the "12 Steps and 12 Traditions" book of AA:
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"
"The moment they read Step 2, most AA newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, 'Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that... our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle...
"... I must quickly assure you that AA's tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith... you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen. Many... like you have begun to solve the probelm by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make AA itself [alanon, ACA, CAS, family teens] your 'higher power'. Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened...
"Sometimes AA comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith. Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go. ...
"Any number of AA's can say to the drifter, 'Yes, we were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us... We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest... became convinced that such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough...
"As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life...
"Another crowd of AA's says: 'We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats'. In spots its morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best. How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the 'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to AA, we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego-feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them...
"It's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified... More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God has deserted us...
"When we encountered AA, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead ew had been telling Him what it ought to be...
"Now let's take the guy who is full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then , can be the matter?...
"There are too many of us who have been just like him... The answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, 'Grant me my wishes' instead of 'Thy will be done'...
"...Step 2 is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every AA meeting is an assurance that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him."