The first word of the steps is “We. Counting words like we, ours and steps in which “we” is implied there are more than we ideas per step.
I found the steps before I found my program. Working the steps by myself improved my thinking but did not touch my emotions.
I think of Jesus as the Lord but he identified him self to us as the son of man. In other words, he was saying I am a son of Mary and Joseph. I am a brother to you. I want to be your to be close friends as if we were brothers.
I think any religion that is not based on love of man and love of God is dangerous. The prime example of that was Hitler. A power based system ends up too many times where the leader wants to be God.
In my view, the Christianity I knew as a boy was destructively power based. Be bad and you go to hell. If you do not do things my way you will be neglected and maybe even rejected and in effect thrown out of the church.
I think in the thirties the fundamentalist church thought of the ultimate sinner was a drunk. That’s why although AA came out of the Oxford church movement in England and was in large part out of the heart of an Episcopal priest named Sam Shoemaker it had to grow up out side the organized church. The church could not love those they thought of as the ultimate sinners like drunks.
Human sins committed by a pastor will result in getting defrocked whereas materialistic sin gets you on the church board. If I read of of a dismissed pastor in a fundamentalist church it is bound to be for some sexual failing never because of materialism or covetousness That is despite the fact that Jesus said “The love of money is the root of all evil”
As AA has had to operate apart from fundamentalism real recovery from sexual dysfunction can not happen in the church. That is to the agony and shame of my own sexual development.
I once read a great book on community called “We really do need each other”‘
If I want to be a child sexual predator and not arouse local law enforcement all I have to do is become a Catholic Priest. If I am a priest not only to I escape trouble from the police the church hierarchy will place me in another place where I can continue my cruelty.
Demanding total abstinence sexually from a growing boy only causes him to take his sexuality underground. I once knew a man on skidrow who had his parents tightly tie his hands to the bedpost every night to prevent him from masturpating. My mom completely humiliated me when she caught me.
t
George Caywood 