The Compelling Recovery Need to Hear and
Apply What Bill W. and Dr. Bob Learned in Youth
Faith in God and Serving Others to
Overcome Problems
Dick B.
Copyright 2012
Anonymous. All rights reserved
The New Era findings from the September A.A. History Workshops in
Vermont
·
A theme
in Proverbs 22:6 well worth remembering:
Train up a child in the way he
should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Many of us learned the hard way
that training offered in loving concern for a youngster’s future well-being is not always a
guarantee of performance in renegade years. But many of us who trod the road of
alcoholism and addiction—if we survived to change—found that service to God and
help for others in A.A. often brought us back to better beginnings. These
virtues, if remembered and revived, built the belief in God and joy of serving
others back to a useful, long-standing lesson from which we no longer needed or
wanted to depart. Yes! What was taught from the Good Book could be applied in a
new life, Teaching to the young, often long-forgotten, ignored, and rejected in
miserable times.
·
Whence
came the common thread of training in the lives of Bill Wilson and Bob Smith?
Grandparents – on both sides
Parents
Congregational churches
Sunday school
Rigid Academy requirements—daily chapel,
sermons, Scripture reading, hymns,
prayer meetings, church, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and Christian
curricula
Christian activities fostered by or
stemming from church and school—the Young Men’s Christian Association and
United Christian Endeavor Society.
An unswerving discipline--common to
both cofounders in their early sobriety efforts--in following each of these in
their younger years.
·
Whence
came temptations, drunkenness, addiction to sedatives, disgraceful behavior, darkness,
disaster?
The Book of James was favored by
Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith, and Anne Smith. And of these it said:
My brethren, count it all joy when
ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith
worketh patience (1:2-3)
If any of you lack wisdom, let him
ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall
be given him. But let him ask in faith,
nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with
the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing
of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways (1:5-8)
Blessed is the man that endureth
temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the
Lord hath promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God
cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is
tempted when he is drawn away of his own
lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. . . . But be ye doers of the word, and
not hearers only, deceiving your own selves (1: 12-16, 22)
·
The
discord so commonly resulting from errant behavior and disdain for truth
It often means: Blame whom you will. Say,
“I’ll never do that again.” Fly blind. Reject guidance. Adopt a trial and error
path. Follow the trails of erring friends. Embrace no successful direction. Make
every conceivable mistake. Rise to do it all over again. Ignore the real enemy—whether
you recognize it as excessive drinking or the devil’s doing.
And: Consider the failed, yet determined,
repetitive path of self-knowledge, willpower, fear, with reliance on and trust
in human resources. Coupled with ignoring the solid training received in early
years. Stand fast with your life self-centered, instead of reliant on
God-sufficiency.
Again these verses in James show
the real battle and the real solution:
From whence come wars and
fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your
members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain:
ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not,
because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and
adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye
think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth
to envy. (4:1-5)
·
Bob’s
Turning Point: From temptation and seeming blindness to the power of God
In The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their
Last Major Talks, Dr. Bob told of
his return to his training in the Good Book as a Vermont youngster:
I had refreshed my memory of the
Good Book, and I had had excellent training in that as a youngster (12)
I’m somewhat allergic to work, but
I felt that I should continue to increase my familiarity with the Good Book,
and also should read a good deal of standard literature, possibly of a
scientific nature. So I did cultivate the habit of reading. I think I’m not
exaggerating when I say I have probably averaged an hour a day for the last 15
years (13)
. . . we were convinced that the
answer to our problems was in the Good Book (13)
We already had the basic ideas
[for the Twelve Steps], though not in terse and tangible form. We got them, as
I said, as a result of our study of the Good Book (14)
Now to Bill and Bob: In addition to
their partiality toward the Book of James, Bill and Bob both said that Jesus’s
Sermon on the Mount contained the underlying spiritual philosophy of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Matthew 6:23-24 of that Sermon states:
But if thine eye be evil, thy
whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be
darkness, how great is that darkness. No man can serve two masters: for either
he will hate the one and love the other: or else he will hold to the one and
despise the other
Now to Corinthians: One historian
claimed that Bill Wilson favored Corinthians, and it is certain from Dr. Bob’s
words that 1 Corinthians 13 was considered to be absolutely essential. Anne
Smith said that the Bible should be the main Source Book of all. And the
following verses from Corinthians tell the source of the problem and the rescue
the Bible made available:
Therefore seeing we have this
ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not. But have renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word
of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to
every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid
to them that are lost. In whom the god
of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto
them (2 Corinthians 4:1-4)
There hath no temptation taken you
but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to
be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a
way to escape, that ye may be able to
bear it (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Ye cannot drink the cup of the
Lord, and the cup of the devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table,
and of the table of the devils (1 Corinthians 10:21 )
I’ve seen Christian AAs refrain
from quoting the Bible and even lambasting those who do. But when you see how
often Dr. Bob quoted it, you need not timid. When asked a question about the
A.A. program, his usual response was: “What does it say in the Good Book?” And
that’s what this is all about. In brief, go to God. Resist temptation. Kick the
devil out of the picture. Clean house. And God will help you escape.
·
The
simple answer to drunkenness found, once again, in the Book of James
Submit yourselves therefore to
God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will
draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye
double minded. . . . Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall
lift you up (James 4:7-8, 10)
·
How the
Christian upbringing of Dr. Bob and Bill in their younger years was restored to
their minds. This occurred when they had become the lowest of the low, the
worst of the worst, and in such horrible shape that they sought a return to
their training as youngsters, stuck with it, and acted upon it.
In so doing, Bill took advice from
those who knew that a relationship with God through Jesus Christ was the key to
success—His advisers included Dr. William Silkworth, Rowland Hazard, Shepard
Cornell, Cebra Graves, and Ebby Thacher.
In so doing, the cofounders paid
heed to catalysts who had adopted the biblical injunctions that God’s will was that
all men be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. The biblical ideas with which
the cofounders could renew their minds produced knowledge fostered by Calvary
Rescue Mission and Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. in New York; and Henrietta
Seiberling and her small circle of friends (including Anne Smith) in Akron.
Part of the essential return by
A.A. cofounders to biblical truth was galvanized by the successful messengers who could attract
the attention and submission of other drunks—Ebby Thacher to Bill Wilson, and
Bill Wilson to Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith.
Victory through that turnabout soon
enabled the cofounders to say boldly, in Bill’s case: “the Lord has cured me of
this terrible disease,” and, in Dr. Bob’s case: “Your Heavenly Father will
never let you down!”
Throughout their exposure to the
Gospels, Sunday school lessons, YMCA examples, Christian Endeavor examples, and
Salvation Army examples, both cofounders seized on the important factor of service
to others—the concept that brought Bill to the telephone when he called to
Henrietta Seiberling, and the demonstration of Bill’s witnessing that arrested
Dr. Bob’s attention at Henrietta’s Gate Lodge Home in Akron.
·
The new
Akron A.A. Christian program of recovery:
Built upon the biblical wisdom,
experience, successes, and encouragement from a host of others—Dr. William D.
Silkworth, Dr. Carl Jung, Professor William James, conversions, rescue
missions, great Christian evangelists, the Salvation Army, the Young Men’s
Christian Association, and United Christian Endeavor Society.
·
The
successful record of ministering the power of God to alcoholics and addicts:
Was in place and working long before A.A.
became an idea—The earlier ministries and successes existed from the very beginnings
of the YMCA in London; the work in the London slums of the Salvation Army, the
healings through evangelists like Moody, Sankey, Allen Folger, and F.B. Meyer;
the remarkable work of the rescue mission movement brought to the fore by Jerry
McAuley and the Water Street Mission; and the relevant love and service program
of Christian Endeavor.
·
Compare
the contemporary techniques that were falling short when Bill and Bob founded
Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935.
Treatment:
A long history of treatment
techniques that caused leading specialists like Dr. William Silkworth to
conclude that alcoholism was “medically incurable;” that caused Dr. Carl Jung
to tell Rowland Hazard that he could not help someone with an alcoholic mind
like that of Rowland, and the efforts reported in detail much later by such
researchers Dr. Howard Clinebell and William White.
Prohibition
Anti-Saloon Leagues and Temperance
Meetings
Punishment by courts, jails, and
correctional institutions
Relegating the drunk to
down-and-out status in missions and personal degradation in the street.
Detachment—which, described in
language used in Al-Anon--says: “I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it. I can’t
control it.
Enabling and facilitating the drunk’s
destructive behavior often coupled with efforts to control and restrain the
drunk– fruitless caring for the drunk or admonishing and shaming him without
useful purpose.
Ridicule. Admonishing. Threatening.
Abandoning.
Countless tinkering with societal
remedies in the form of grants, government research, revolving-door treatment
programs, pharmaceuticals, vitamins, and statistical surveys.
·
What
succeeded was the early A.A. Christian Fellowship program that emphasized:
One recovered drunk carrying a message
to another without charge.
Qualifying the newcomer as to his
serious intentions to quit for good and do anything necessary to overcome the
malady.
Insisting on belief in God and
coming to Him through Jesus Christ
Hospitalizing the suffering soul briefly,
but accompanied by visits from other drunks, from Dr. Bob, reading of the Bible
to the patient, and then surrender to God through Christ
Offering drunks free lodging
thereafter in homes, accompanied by family involvement, and attendance at daily
fellowship meetings.
Learning and obeying the will of
God
Growing in knowledge and
application of the love and power of God through prayer meetings, Bible
studies, seeking God’s guidance, using Quiet Time and devotionals, and reading
Christian literature.
Seeking out newcomers to help them get
straightened out by the same means
Fellowship and comradeship (optional
but recommended)
Attendance at a weekly religious
service (optional but recommended)
·
The
challenge to incorporate strong, new, Christian recovery efforts based on early
A.A.’s First Century Christianity principles, practices, and victories
You can’t know those early
principles, practices, and victorious ideas unless you learn them from using. To that end, we suggest:
(1)
Conference-approved literature like a) DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, b) The
Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their Last Major
Talks, c) the Personal Stories in
the First Edition of Alcoholics
Anonymous, d) Alcoholics Anonymous
Comes of Age, and e) The Language of
the Heart.
(2)
Accurate, thoroughly researched, and documented Dick B.
Alcoholics Anonymous History titles such as a) Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, b) The Conversion of Bill W., c)
The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, d)
Anne Smith’s Journal 1933-1939, e) Dr.
Bob and His Library, f) The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual
Growth, g) The Oxford Group &
Alcoholics Anonymous, h) New Light on
Alcoholism, i) The Good Book and the
Big Book, j) The Good Book-Big Book
Guidebook, k) The James Club, l) By the Power of God, m) Cured!, n) When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, o) The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, p) The Golden Text of A.A., q)
Good Morning!: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.,
(3)
The latest Dick B. recovery guides: a) Stick with the Winners How to Conduct More
Effective 12-Step Recovery Meetings Using Conference-approved Literature: A
Dick B. Guide for Christian Leaders and Workers in the Recovery Arena; b) God, His Son Jesus Christ & the Bible:
The Long-Overlooked Big Book Personal Stories in the First Edition of ‘Alcoholics
Anonymous; c) Bill W. and Dr. Bob,
the Green Mountain Men of Vermont: The Roots of Early A.A.’s Original Program; d)
The Dick B. Handbook for Christian
Recovery Resource Centers Worldwide; e)
The Early Manuscripts at Stepping Stones Compiled by Dick B.; f) the 27 Video Class, “Stick with the
Winners.”
·
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