Here's something that stumps me.
A central tenet of AA is that you have to believe (in God) before you get better. I haven't had any first-hand experience with it, but my understanding is that this is a critical part of the program. It's often what determines if one succeeds. The variants of AA that shy away from this slant don't do as well.
For those of us who don't believe, or have a different notion of God, what is this about? What is our alternative to this powerful concept?
What do you do with a concept that can, on the one had, help restore life for those who have lost hope, and on the other hand allow for an Orwellian complacency - with ridiculous notions that can entrap a people as slaves?
Now, I know that the answer is not, "well, God shows mercy on you if you believe." Anyone who's read Elie Wiesel's Night understands this...
"Around us, everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves... Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night... Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky... Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever... Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust."
If Life can murder God, than surely God is not its master. I can not understand a merciful God that creates people in his image, and yet those people go about torturing and slaughtering each other like monsters. Believers slaughtering nonbelievers. Nonbelievers slaughtering believers. Believers slaughtering believers. And it happens still today, with our blessed Smart Bombs and torture prisons. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In my name. Damn it, in my name, and supposedly for God and Love and Freedom.
Who is this God, for whom I should show faith and sing praise?
Doesn't anybody see? How can religion be God? Who is God if not Love itself, the energy that connects all things, indivisible and not owned by any culture or people or race?
My sense is that God may be that Love and that energy. An entity that we do not fully control for ourselves, but rather, that we as Human Beings can chose to give or take away from each other.
An almighty God of organized religion might help us to stop drinking for a day. But a God that is Love itself would spare us the abuse, the beatings, the betrayal, the war, the fear that drives us to drink or hate ourselves and each other. It's the God that brings us to an AA meeting in the first place, when we say, "I'm doing this for my son, my daugther, my wife, my parents, those who I love and are hurt by this."
Liberals are acused of being athiest, agnostic, without a God. And we label ourselves as such.
Why can't we see?
We have a powerful God, reflected in a compassion and empathy for others that drives us to seek more from our society... and to struggle when others are hurt in our name.
We have a God, we just don't use that word.
Our God can be found the world over; it's shared by people who have never been taught Western concepts or religion. It can be shared by Africans and Asians and Europeans and Americans, whites and blacks and gays and the poor; it can be there for Christians and Jews and Muslims, if they hold their conscience and compassion over thier doctrine.
I have a God that gives me the strength and passion to fight for others, and for what is right. A God that inspires me, that puts me in awe of our world, that drives me to tears at times. A God that makes me a Progressive.