AA Post

A story that really affected me in a profound way and something that I think of pretty often is one of the stories behind the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is an organization that I find heroic and miraculous.  It is a story about part of the experience of Bill W., who had terrible problems as an alcoholic, and who one day reportedly said, "If there is a God, let him show himself."  And soon after that, Bill W started Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped thousands of people overcome addiction and find support during tragic suffering.  People in the group rely on their "Higher Power," and while many people take a conspicuously great effort to point out that Alcoholics Anonymous is not the church, it seems pretty obvious that God himself has intervened continuously through AA from the very beginning.

    That utterance or something like a prayer that is so out of bounds for most people is so amazing to me, and the story inspires me, because it seems just like God to answer just that kind of "prayer," and maybe even to wait for that kind of request that so much reflects the desperation of someone suffering from alcohol addiction.  I could go on and on about it and I am tempted to just translate all my prayers into that format.  Like... if God wants me to do my impossible chores, let him show himself.  And if God wants me to stop cursing at people, let him show himself. 

    But this blog post is about something entirely different, and it is a topic where I really have decided that I might adopt that Bill W prayer mindset about something that has been driving me crazy quite literally for many years.  It has to do with Presbyterian Theology, and how much I do and don't believe it, and what exactly I am supposed to take into the world as a mission when I can't quite be certain of almost everything anyone has ever said to me. 

    I said in another post that I have some Catholic leanings, and some of that is from wanting to believe that there is a more specific application of an all inclusive mercy and justice for people and an ongoing opportunity for anyone to know God personally instead of an all or nothing theology test where if you pray a certain prayer then you escape eternal torture.  I change my mind a lot and actually have learned to just keep myself from obsessing about it and try to be productive in other ways, but I can't quite ever fully escape the ideas I have been taught, and the belief that it must be resolved and might even be the only thing that matters for anyone. Even as I say that, it sounds so absurd, and yet many books in the New Testament support some of that teaching, along with the idea that everything has been predetermined with a good God behind everything that happens. I do find myself thinking that people are pretty stupid to try to do everything good except ask God for Christ's forgiveness.  I mean, how insulting to someone who died to save people from their sins.
    But I still waver all the time and thought recently that I might be able to find some temporary peace and another segment of time where I can keep living life without all the answers if I officially shrug off the burden of being responsible for everyone else, and if I shrug off the pressure of having to believe something that I can't go that long of a time believing.  I think that Bill W's prayer could be the key, and I could just say even after all the revelation from church and time, if the Presbyterians were ever right, let God be the one to say it, and let the Protestant theology show itself. God can make the sky plaid if he wants, or drop a stone tablet on my head that has the Westminster Confession carved into it, or drop stone tablets on the people who are mean to me at the grocery store, or send an alcoholic missionary to help me decide that I do not have to be the one to save everyone.