Yesterday I walked past a newsstand and saw the cover of a national magazine, whose cover proclaimed the headline “Does God Believe In You?”. I had to laugh, when I saw it. Does God believe in me?
I really sat down this morning and thought about that. And what I thought was not the question of whether or not God believes in me, but what do I believe about God. In the BB the question about God comes up. Either God is or He isn’t.
Either God is everything or He’s nothing. We are presented a choice. What will we believe?
For us in the program it’s not a question of what we believe. It’s a question of living a spiritual life or dying and alcoholic death. In one of his talks, Sandy B. put it this way. He said at that point in his program he wanted to call a doctor and ask him how bad an alcoholic death was. He said we are faced with door number one or door number two. There is no third door. We either believe or we face slipping back into our disease and dying. Faced with that most of us are going to opt for belief and eventually a faith that works.
Most of us, who have found that we were really agnostics, struggle with this question. Bill talks about this in We Agnostics and in the 2nd step in the 12&12. Aside from puttng down a drink, this is probably the next high hurdle we have to face in entering into the program. My take on it, from my experience, is that pride was my biggest obstacle. Wanting to take the credit for my sobriety, until pain drove me to my knees.
I think the answer to the magazine’s question is obvious to us in recovery. We witness and have a spiritual experience every day we go to a meeting. We see the examples of so many who were helpless and hopeless in the grips of an insidious disease, which was at one time killing all of us, sitting there sober and living sober lives. What other evidence do we need?
I often think of St. Paul’s words. Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
This is what I thought about this morning.
Ahhh…imagining that irresistible “new car” smell?