God’s Will by Billiette S.
From the beginning of time, man’s fear of God has developed in his desire to hide and escape from him. Man’s escapism has brought him to a point of denying that there is a God – that God is dead – long live man! Today the person who lives to escape from the reality that there is a God, who rules the universe, finds himself seeking the material “things” of this world to fulfill his needs for happiness until he realizes there is something missing – there seems to be a void in his life.
This longing for the missing link has often brought the “social drinker” to advance over that gray line into the world of addiction. Alcohol – the big daddy of all drugs, becomes his god. After our lives have become unmanageable because of alcohol, the alcoholic may enter into the AA way of life.
Probably for the first time, the alcoholic comes face to face with God, and mask must be removed from his or her face – because the alcoholic is such a proficient escape artist, it isn’t easy for us to face the realities of ourselves to God and to another human being. The 12 Steps of AA do guarantee us a contented life of sobriety, but those who have slips seem to be the ones who avoid taking the 3rd Step “To make a decision to turn our will and our life over the care of God as we understand Him.”
I have heard AA members say, “I don’t understand God, so how can I believe He will help me now?” We don’t understand electricity either, yet we have faith the lights will go on when we turn on the light switch. So, it is with God – have the faith that when you turn your will and life over to Him, “the lights will go on”. When God is turned on, believe and have faith that you’re going to play a whole new ballgame. Try It – It works! But the decision is for you to make.
According to God’s will for the alcoholic, the practice of the Ten Commandments and the Twelve Steps go hand in hand. To put God first in your life is to remove all false gods such as alcohol, drugs, etc. Those who go their own way usually die lonely and disillusioned human beings. To love your fellow man as you do yourself is to be active in AA and to be willing to make 12 Steps calls whenever it is possible. Isn’t it God’s Will that we have faith rather than despair; hope rather than doubt; love rather than hate; understanding rather than to criticize or to gossip: to be forgiving rather than resentful; to give rather than being a taker? Tolerance, patience, and honesty are all virtues that God wills for us. No one can work the AA program alone – it is up to us to help each other and to help the suffering soul of a new member.
God, AA members, and AA meetings, The Twelve Steps are the only way the alcoholic can grow to maturity in order to face the realities of life’s problems and into lasting sobriety. God’s will! Try it – It works! Make this DECISION Today! Billiette S. June 1972
Receiving Billiette’s Call – God’s Will
In the Hitchens V. Hitchens Debate held on April 3, 2008, the Hitchens brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens debate religion. Peter supports the Christian paradigm while Christopher defends his position that god is now great, which he explains in his popular book God is Not Great How Religion Poisons Everything. Christopher’s style has become known at Hitchens’s razor, which Chris writes is “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” [1][2][3] Christopher further asks us to, “remember, miracles are supposed to occur at the behest of a being who is omnipotent as well as omniscient and omnipresent. One might hope for more magnificent performances than ever seem to occur. The “evidence” for faith, then, seems to leave faith looking even weaker than it would if it stood, alone and unsupported, all by itself. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. This is even more true when the “evidence” eventually offered is so shoddy and self-interested” (Wikipedia). After reading God is Not Great, listening to the Hitchens brother’s debate, and studying A.R. Scherling’s The Dogma of a Sinful Constitution, it will come to the Scherling V. Scherling Debate to reach an admirable solution.
After completing draft one of paragraph one, above, I am now trying to see the path onward. I am trying to ‘think’ this next paragraph through but I get lost after the first sentence. Then, I realize that my understanding has always been to just begin and free-write, It will come, It works, Try it. What Billie is asking us to do is daunting – to come face to face with God! To help us she has suggested using the 3rd AA Step, “To make a decision to turn our will and our life over the care of God as we understand Him.” Billie then addresses AA members’ excuse for not taking the 3rd Step saying they do not know God with the analogy that “we don’t understand electricity either, but have faith the lights will go on when switched on.” However, some of us now do understand electricity so, shouldn’t we expect that some of us now do understand God? Let’s try!
Billie admits that it is hard for her to “know the will of God in my life”. However, she accepts that it is God’s Will for the alcoholic to stay sober! She has developed several aids to help her. One is when she wakes in the morning, she remembers that “This is the day that God has made – Rejoice and be glad in it and to ask Him for His help to guide my way through another day of sobriety.” Then she tells us to read, re-read, and practice of the Ten Commandments and the Twelve Steps – they go hand-in-hand. She then challenges us with the task “To love your fellow man as you do yourself”. Here is an issue and our opening! To love the other as you love yourself one has to know how to first love oneself.
An issue is that we do not know how to love ourselves! This is addressed in the Deep Jesus, Us? blog where this conclusion is drawn from the fundamental teaching of Jesus: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye with never a thought for the great plank in your own eye? In order to Love thy neighbor as thy self, one has to learn how to love thy Self. Loving one’s enemy and turning the other cheek follow from actualizing Self-Love and removing the dark shadow plank in our eye is an analytical step. Edinger in his interesting book, Ego and Archetype, suggests that these teaching clearly indicate that Jesus was the first depth psychologist nineteen hundred years before the unconscious was empirically established.” Edward addresses the central issue confronting everyone, individuation is a myth for modern man.
Billiette’s position is that “God, AA members, in AA meetings, using Twelve Steps, and the Ten Commandments is the way alcoholics grow into maturity and live life sober.” We will consider Deep Jesus as we walk our 12 Steps. Steven S. January 31, 2022
Dialectic Analytical Man 