I heard a story back, a few years ago, on a tape by a Trappist Monk, named Thomas Keating, on contemplative prayer. It was about a mother, who took her children into the pantry and pointed to the cookie jar on the top shelf. She told the children that they weren’t to take any cookies from it. She said that God would be watching them. At least one of the children grew up with that idea about God; He would be watching. Keating said that wasn’t his concept of God. His, he said, would tell him to take a cookie and then to take another.
Two views about God in opposition to each other. Which would anyone of us choose to believe? I would say Keating’s. But, my old idea would say the mother’s.
I’ve heard many people, coming into the program tell how guilty they felt and that they believed God was keeping books on their many sins and felt condemned to hell. I did. Others said that they felt that, when they got sober, that God wanted nothing to do with them. At least that’s how they felt. I did, too. Fortunately I had a sponsor, who kept on me to give up my old ideas. If I didn’t, he pointed out, the results of trying to work this program would be nil, as it states in the BB. So, with help from so many others, I began to adopt Keating’s version of God. I could take a cookie.
This is not a question of who’s right or who’s wrong. That argument has been going on for centuries among all peoples. My God and your God. What it is is about being human and doing the best we can as human beings.
For me, it begins one day at a time without picking up that first drink.
Drinking got me in a place, where I could not help but believe the mother’s version of God. It drove me further and fu! rther away from God. It drove me to drink to forget God. In the end, God was out of my life…but never out of my mind, whether I believed in Him or not. Who knew? Like Dr. Silkworth said, I could no longer distinguish between the true and the false. Alone and full of fear.
Then I came to the program, still full of fear and confusion. What was I to believe? Everyone was talking about the solution. Find a Higher Power, who could empower us to live this life sober. Hard to convince a sniviling coward, who couldn’t find his way through the noise within. Yet, I knew I had to grab onto something soon or it would all be over. I knew that almost intuitively. Grab the first thing to come along. And, it was the old idea, of course. That was handy. A God, who could yank the rug out from under you at the end of life.
These thoughts! are human. Not divine. Nor the thoughts of the theologians. And yet, the more human among us, kept pointing and pushing their vision of this God toward me. A loving God, not a punishing God. Why not choose the God of your own understanding? What kind of God would you like? A loving one, of course! Okay, that’s for me. I’ll take that; one loving God. Why? Because I don’t want to drink again. If I failed the other one, I just might. If I took a cookie, I might.
And being human, I have to depend on evidence. What was that? The evidence in my life and the lives of others. I could see it in the people, who were staying sober. I could see it in their eyes and in their actions. They had faith in a Higher Power, who loved them and wanted only good for them. He was not human, but the one who had all power. Obviously, because these we! re people, just like me, who were trapped in a disease, which wouldn’t let them go. Yet they were free and lived free. Free from the awful disease that had plagued so many of them. All of them.
I read last night about faith and belief. The difference between them. Belief is security. Faith is insecurity.
With that, I think I’ll take a cookie and not a drink. I’ll pray for more faith.