Sometime after we come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, we are introduced to the idea that we have an emptiness inside us sometimes described as a “God-sized hole.” The pursuit of something to fill the hole becomes the beginning point of recovery for many. That idea came from a famous quote from a very brilliant man who lived in the seventeenth century. His source was likely an understanding of the many Bible scriptures which he studied.
His name was Blaise Pascal and he was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. This in essence describes the two underlying beliefs that determine which path an individual may opt for in their recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous.
One path, the more common of the two, is the path of practicing character-changing principles in their own effort and without God. And the other is a path where we embrace the biblical God in order to change our character with God’s help. One path is fellowship with the group where the other is fellowship with the Spirit. One path is world-centered, and the other path is God-centered. One path leads to sobriety with perceived help from an imagined god and the other path leads to sobriety, power within us, and eternal life through Jesus Christ. The original program in early AA was based upon a belief in Christ. When that belief is missing, any idea of a non-personal God giving us power is counterfeit and the program reverts to moral change based upon self-effort and a philosophical understanding of God (moral psychology).
Moral psychology follows the path of using self-effort to become more moral. The effort is by one’s own abilities and psychological motivations. One does not need a personal God to follow this path. The AA program deviates slightly in that the belief that some non-defined higher power outside themselves will change them. In Chapter 4 of the Big Book, We Agnostics, we find this:
If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.”
This leads to the need for power from something outside ourselves. It defines the need for a personal God. The original path in early AA was based upon the biblical God and His Son Jesus Christ. The power came from the Holy Spirit living within the one who accepted Christ. This understanding was voided when Christ was removed and was replaced with the idea of “God as we understood Him.”
As many of us do in Alcoholics Anonymous, Pascal also struggled to know the truth about God and pursued that quest vigorously. Finally, he had a spiritual experience, a breakthrough about the reality of God and the way to find Him. He stated that he had a “night of fire,” an intense spiritual experience on November 23, 1654, which, for him, was the beginning of a new way of life. It was after this encounter that the “God hole” understanding was realized as a truth in him. Here is the quote often subscribed to Pascal.
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
Although many in our fellowship recall the “God-hole” statement, there are very few who understand that it is only through Jesus Christ that we can truly find God: a fact that is overlooked in today’s travels in AA circles. But that was not an overlooked fact in Bill Wilson’s recovery path and other recovering individuals in the fledgling beginnings of AA during the period from 1935 to 1939. Ebby Thatcher, had brought the message to Bill Wilson, that sobriety could be found if one surrendered to God and accepted His Son Jesus Christ as their Savior. It had happened to him and Bill, although skeptical, wanted what he had. Just a few days before Bill went into his final stay at Towns Hospital, he had drunkenly gone forward to the alter at Calvary Mission and testified to his belief in Christ. It is probable that Bill Wilson was sensing a desperate need for filling the God-hole in his heart. Bill W. was not conceptualizing a generic god when he had his own white-light spiritual experience in Towns Hospital as he had the inspirational thought “So this is the God of the preachers!” The only preaching going on in those days was about the need for belief in Jesus Christ.
Later when Bill Wilson found himself in need of talking to another alcoholic in Akron, Ohio, the path he had begun his recovery journey on took a major step forward with his encounter with Dr. Bob. That led to Bill Wilson staying in Akron for several months and the initial beginnings of AA began sprouting up as both of AA’s founders were on a path that included Bible Study and Jesus Christ. Bill’s involvement with Christianity was not unknown to him, even prior to his white-light experience. More on this can be found in the article “Building Character – As God Sees It – Does Your Higher Power Have Power” on this website. Both in New York, prior to the Akron visit, and during his time with Dr. Bob, Oxford group meetings were being attended, and biblical Christian principles were being studied and practiced as a way of life. This is the primary and true God path that was offered to drunks over the next few years up to the publication of the book Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939.
Historical information about AA has come a long way since the Big Book was written. We know that at the last minute before the Big Book was published there was an effort to sanitize the program from being a religious path to being a moral psychology path. That resulted in today’s belief and common statement by people in recovery that AA is a spiritual program and not a religious program. This resulted in the Big Book references and the 12-Steps themselves to be changed from God to “God, as we understood Him.” That and other changes in the original manuscript opened the door wide to the moral psychology path. Many see this as a good thing, and it also opened the door to embracing so called “spirituality” rather than “religion.” History tells us that Hank Parkhurst was instrumental, along with some others, in convincing Bill Wilson to agree to the last-minute changes that changed the recovery program from a Christian approach to what is called “spiritual.” The sanitizing of the book reduced the program to a counterfeit of the original program. This has led over the years to a hybrid counterfeit path along with the original godly path within AA itself. The hybrid had the facsimile of a path that promised true spiritual growth without Christ. The counterfeit path is easy to follow, the godly path, not so much. Christ was left behind with the publishing of the Big Book, even when the evidence of Him was in the spiritual experience that gave birth to the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
However, the Big Book has writing that is quite obviously referencing biblical text. The godly path is also hinted at in the statement in the Big Book on page 87 which states “Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.” What they are meaning is that Jesus Christ is where one should end up at, but on a personal spiritual basis. That’s a strong message to personally get on the original path our founders practiced. God’s biblical path, as originally practiced, opens the door to sobriety, inside power, and eternal life while the counterfeit moral psychology path does not. But the counterfeit does provide a path that will yield sobriety even though a misunderstanding of God exists. We can know which path we are truly on by understanding what it means “to be born again.” This expression is found in the Big Book but is misinterpreted as something that will happen on the sanitized moral psychology path. That is misleading one away from the only true path.
How so? The counterfeit path leaves out Christ. It was Christ who coined the “born again” language when he said to a prominent Jewish leader in John 3:1-3 “Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him. ” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The original biblical path lays out the true journey by understanding God’s intent to rebirth us and grows us in the Christian way. That is from the mouth of Jesus where He says “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This is one of the most exclusive statements that Jesus ever made.
In this verse, Jesus is telling us the single and only way to gain eternal life and clearly dispelling other counterfeit approaches. Further, it should encourage us to not remain too long on the counterfeit path found in AA. Following Jesus is the path of the real and true journey identified by the early AA founders. This path leads to the promise of salvation, which can only be accomplished by God, and not by anything we do. We are indeed powerless. All we can do is to surrender to God, but only by confessing our need for Jesus Christ.
The Bible is very clear about what happens to an individual who accepts Jesus Crist into their heart, receives salvation, and matures spiritually. This is the path you take if you practice the 12-Step program with the biblical God. Salvation consists of the biblical truths of justification, regeneration, sanctification, and finally glorification. Here are the Christian definitions of these terms.
Salvation: Christian salvation is the deliverance, by the grace of God, from an eternal life without God, that is granted to those who accept by faith God’s conditions of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. The bible is clear that salvation is available in Jesus alone and is dependent on God alone for provision and assurance. Not being saved does not mean there is no eternal state of being non-existent in an afterlife. The bible identifies that an eternal life without the true God does exist and is not a pleasant state. Moral psychology is not sufficient to save one from that state. One must not expect to have any part in salvation through any human effort of moral merit. It is strictly a sovereign act of God.
Justification: Justification is an act of God whereby He pronounces a sinner to be righteous because of that sinner’s faith in Christ. According to the bible “the root idea in justification is that one who believes in Christ, sinful though he may be, is viewed as being righteous, because in Christ he has come into a righteous relationship with God.” Justification has to do with God’s declaration about the sinner, not any change within the sinner. That is, justification does not make anyone holy; it simply declares him to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. Justification does not excuse our sin, ignore our sin, or endorse our sin. Rather, our sin is fully punished, Christ having taken our penalty for us. He was our substitute. Justification is fully an act of God and has nothing to do with moral psychology.
Regeneration: Another word for regeneration is rebirth, related to the biblical phrase “born again.” Our rebirth is distinguished from our natural birth, when we were conceived physically and inherited our sin nature. The new birth is a spiritual, holy, and heavenly birth that results in our being made alive spiritually. Man in his natural state is “dead in trespasses and sins” until he is “made alive” (regenerated) by Christ. This happens when he places his faith in Christ. Biblically we are given the Holy Spirit who lives within us. At the time of rebirth, we are also justified and sanctified as holy. That state of holiness is a positional state to God through belief in His Son. It is a free gift for believing in Jesus.
Moral psychology is useless as regeneration is only accomplished by God. The moral psychology viewpoint in AA is not considered spiritual according to the biblical definition. This does not mean that practicing moral change is not valuable to this life, as it has living value, but does not contribute anything to regeneration or eternal life with God.
Sanctification: Sanctification is a state of spiritual connection to God; all believers enter into this state when they are born of God. Sanctification is two-fold in that with salvation we are placed in a permanent positional state of holiness which is a once-for-ever connection to God. It is a work God totally performs. Because we can still sin, the Bible also refers to sanctification as a practical progressive path of becoming more obedient to His Will (Step 11). We are expected to participate in the progressive type of sanctification and should be pursuing this earnestly. This is strengthened by the application of biblical principles.
Prior to salvation, our behavior bore witness to our standing in the world separated from God. But now our behavior should bear witness to our standing before God separated from the world. Little by little, every day, those who are being sanctified are becoming more like Christ. Although progress in character on the moral psychology path happens in AA without inside help, it is not the same as Christian growth. A change in character can change with the application of moral principles, but it is counterfeit to the progressive nature of biblical sanctification. In the original program of AA Jesus was the foundation of the change process of truly growing spiritually. And that is an inside job. Otherwise, it’s just a moral change process without God.
Glorification: Glorification is God’s final removal of sin from the life of the Christian (i.e., everyone who is saved) as one passes into the eternal state (Romans 8:18; 2 Corinthians 4:17).
We have included a YouTube video link to explain these Christian beliefs in more detail. This is the full saving path needed for eternal life. You can contrast yourself and your own personal growth to see if you are on the original AA path or on the moral psychology path, which of course, doesn’t require belief in Jesus Christ. They both can give you sobriety but only one that gives you eternal life. And many old-timers who relapse with long term sobriety, if they make it back, finally shift to the original path. That happened to Hank Parkhurst, who convinced Bill Wilson, to sanitize the original program and move it away from a God-centered program to a moral psychology program. Sadly, he slipped shortly after the Big Book was published and never regained sobriety. It is suggested you review the article on this website called “The Best Kept Secret in AA.“
The following link provides some very solid information that will add value to understanding the difference between the moral psychology approach to sobriety and the original biblically oriented approach to sobriety.
William Schaberg, the author of the book Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A. discusses in the following video, what he considers to be the most fallacious myth regarding early A.A. history – namely that when Bill Wilson left Towns Hospital after his ‘white light’ experience, he was already preaching a very liberal version of A.A.’s approach to spirituality based on William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” and Ebby Thacher’s suggestion that he could choose his own conception of God. Although these are both so called myths, they appear to be outright lies.
Big Book History #21: from Religious to Spiritual – A Historical Evolution (1934-1941)
Additional reference links.
Hadley’s Spiritual Experience – ETERNAL SOBRIETY