Alcoholics Anonymous and its Spiritual Approach

Does one have to believe in a God to go to Alcoholics Anonymous?

And what about this Higher Power concept?

It may just be that we all are either our own God, or we look outside of ourselves to explain how everything happens?

What if a Higher Power need not be something utterly hard to comprehend? What if a Higher Power could even be The Laws of the Universe?

For consider that Einstein believed in a God, a God that “did not play dice with the Universe” could we refer to a Higher Power as the Power of Cause and Effect, even? And that this is the most scientific, rational idea we could ever wrap our heads around?

The author, 63, studied electrical engineering at West Point, and later, at age 41, began studying a series of fifteen mathematics courses at Berea College. He also has amassed over 160,000 electronic flashcards over a period of fifteen years, using the software program known as SuperMemo.

The author wrestled many years with the definition of God before coming to some peace of mind. He certainly concluded he is not a Magician and thus his own God, but rather, that something else must be dictating what happens in his own life – and his very existence, indeed. For if he doesn’t make things happen, then what does? Chance? Whimsy?

It seems likely that if we are not Magicians, then we certainly cannot qualify for the term God; and if we have problems, in this scientific era, with the very idea of a god or Higher Power at all, then perhaps we could look at other explanations.

Indeed, there have been people of great impact, who had their own views on God or Gods; Einstein; Ralph Waldo Emerson and his views on Nature, too; and Leo Tolstoy, whose view on God resulted in being ex-communicated from the church. Even Dr. Albert Schweitzer was only allowed to be part of a missionary society in Africa because he promised not to preach – for his views on God were considered controversial to the board members, and at first, he was flat rejected when he applied to the society.

The author was raised in the Plymouth Brethren church; at the age of twenty-one, he spent a week at L’Abri in Massachusetts, originally started by Francis Schaeffer; also, the author’s mother once sang in Billy Graham’s choir when she was eighteen, and his grandfather, born in Ukraine, was a Mennonite.

The author later sought out other views, and spent 150 sessions in psychoanalysis with two physicians, in his late twenties, one hundred of which were in San Diego. Additionally, he spent one hundred Saturday mornings at a meditation center in a nearby city, and a year ago, he visited a monastery four times, to attend workshops and talk with two Tibetan monks.

He has helped a family member successfully overcome “over-imbibing”; he had an aunt depart this earth in her fifties due to alcohol; and he has attended AA meetings as a visitor to check things out himself….

He also spent five years helping others and himself at a drop-in shelter in a local area, three times a week, and at West Point, received training as a Peer Cadet Counselor, to fulfill a posting one summer, there, in this capacity.

This book also addresses the concept of Reinhold Niebuhr saying that some things are in our control and some things are not – as per the Serenity Prayer…for how can this be, one might wonder? Can free will and determinism both be true at the same time?

This book is short and sweet but tries to boil down the essentials of Alcoholics Anonymous from perhaps twelve concepts to one or two key ones, perhaps helping us see what is the most essential of the views of Alcoholics Anonymous, and what it most “active ingredients” are, in fact. He has applied his mathematics and engineering skills to try to get to the nub of things.