The topic today at a meeting I attended was the three pertinent ideas. (Which, technically, should be three topics? Or is it really just one? Anyway….)
The one that stuck out to me was number (c), That God could and would if he were sought. Of the three, this is the only one I ever really doubted. A cursory glance was all that was needed to tell me I was a drunk and an addict (among other un-useful things), and since I didn’t really believe any humans wanted to help me, whether or not they could was sort of irrelevant.
I think this is one of the pages that the original writers squabbled over. I have had the opportunity to see parts of one of the original manuscripts of the Alcoholics Anonymous text, and while many in the program consider it to be the mighty word of God, it came with a lot of strikethroughs and revisions and question marks. At some point, they had to get the thing to press, and it is a good thing they did—it has saved a lot of lives.
The paragraph that introduces the three pertinent ideas is in the active, present tense (“our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas”), while the three ideas are in the passive, past tense, with positive and negative constructions (were/could not, probably no human power could, God could and would if) to muddy it up a bit further. The grammartician in me says this is weak stuff—the addict inside me who has been off meth for 2.5 years says it works.
But it didn’t always. And I think the reason is the whole God thing. No matter how many times I heard of our understanding, I still heard Santa Sky Robe Smiting-and-Damning God That Hates You.
So what phrasing would it have taken for me to be able to meaningfully hear this before I did actually have a spiritual awakening? I’m not sure those words exist in any order or tense.
“God can and will if you seek him” probably comes close, because the experience of what others had done didn’t really matter to me—I was a special precious snowflake meth addict &etc. YOUR past experience with YOUR hateful God didn’t really matter to me. In my mind, I had sought that God out, and he had ignored me (and worse).
[In reality, the amount of time I spent on my hands and knees with a flashlight seeking slivers of meth in my shag carpet was exponentially, tragically, comically higher than the amount of time I spent seeking God, but that's another story.]
God can and will IF you seek him is probably what I needed, with the if in all caps. It is all in the if. To me, the seeking is the most important part of the three pertinent ideas. Whatever it is I want, if I don’t seek it, I am unlikely to find it.
I had no problem calling my dealer to bring me meth (he could and would). Today I have no problem calling my pizza guy, or my plumber, or my doctor, or sponsor, or family, or friends, to do the things they can do for me, because I know they will.
God cannot and will not if he is not sought sounds harsh, and almost threatening, but for me at least, it was true. And really, all that matters is that God cannot if he is not sought—his will is irrelevant if he doesn’t have the power. In my life, God’s power rested in me seeking it.
It was through the seeking, through the actions of the steps that I found my own little higher power, and from there that I was able to slowly build something like sanity, and happiness, and peace.
I don’t capitalize my h in he because my God ain’t like that. He doesn’t wear a pointy hat, or sit on a throne damning nations and families and children, or ask for wars to be waged in his name, or give a rat’s ass about King James and all his Thous and Thees. He does want me to be relieved of the life I was living—to be sane, and happy, and peaceful. It took a while to figure that out. But in the end, he could, and he would, and he did. He is.