As a believer in Christ Jesus, having received the full and fantastic growing understanding of the Gospel, that Jesus Christ not only died for our sins, but that by His death, every believer receives everlasting righteousness, I have grown uncomfortably aware of how "out of sync" and just plain heretical the 12-Step program is with the Gospel. What is more, every believer becomes a child of God, filled with His Holy Spirit, by which His life and peace are manifested in our lives to guide us and build us and transform us into the likeness of His Son! The program of the 12 Steps cannot provide the life and power that every person needs to escape from death and enter into eternal life, despite the chronic appeal to the need for power which the writers of Alcoholics Anonymous contend.
The Gospel is one of grace and peace and truth, not law and judgement and works, for in Christ we have power, peace, and place -- the place of unmerited and unending favor which cleanses us ever more from all sin and leads us in the paths of righteousness. Righteousness has no meaning if there is no discussion of sin, of an eternal debt which every person owes to God, and AA has put away the sin issue entirely by erroneously claiming that alcoholism is merely a disease, nothing more. The subtle strain of ignorant humanism, which predispose that man is basically good, dominates throughout the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In addition to sitting in meetings where men and women claim to enjoy the program, yet their lives betray a growing bitterness and weariness aside from the hour and a half in the meetings every week (and in some cases every day), I saw that men and women did not enjoy their lives anymore. The hurtful clashes and rivalry that dominates many churches -- where the congregants are unskilled in their righteousness in Christ -- is just as pervasive in AA meetings.
God sent His Son not just to die for us, but also to live for us -- we are not expected to live the Christian Life, which for man is impossible. On the contrary, we submit our bodies to be a living sacrifice, and by grace through faith we received His power and direction to do all which has worked and willed within us to do! AA does not offer life, just another set of "How To" Steps which go nowhere.
The Gospel in its fullness his has been a powerful revelation for me, one which pastors such as Joseph Prince of Singapore and Bob George of Oregon have accorded to me. I praise Jesus for leading me to these powerful preachers, for He has used the meek, the weak, (and even some freaks) to make plain the simplicity that is Christ!
Therefore, I am writing this blog partly in response to the growing conflicts and offensive doctrines which I have seen coming out of Alcoholics Anonymous, a program which claims to help people get sober, but which in truth brings people into spiritual bondage, taking from them one source of temporal happiness, only to force on them a pattern of living which no can live by, which does not offer peace and prosperity, and certainly not the true answers that every person needs.
I am preparing this blog from the point of view of one who has received this glowing and growing revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one based on grace, not works, based on His righteousness, not our right thinking, speaking or doing; the Gospel which magnifies the Finished Work of Jesus Christ, which disdains and dispels any addition, including a set of rules obliquely based on the Bible, but taken completely out of the context of Jesus, His death on the Cross, and the Power of the Holy Spirit who gives us Life!
For those who trust and believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the elements, the value, and the core push of AA is fraught with contradictions which frustrate the grace of God in the life of a believer. Instead of helping the believer to live in victory, the 12 Steps actually halt and stumble a man's walk in the Holy Spirit, by whom we have the Lord's truth and testimony embedded in our hearts and minds.
The 12-Step Programs -- with Alcoholics Anonymous at the top of the list -- presumes too much of man and not enough from God. The grace which every man needs, he cannot find in a set of steps, in a "self-help" program which obliquely references a Higher Power, but makes nothing of this Higher Power beyond a staid set of beliefs which are meaningless without the eternal backing of God's Word.
It is my hope that this blog will not only lead men and women struggling for life in the midst of death that there is indeed a solution, but not in AA meetings. The solution, the answer, the Life that we seek to replace the death of human existence -- which destines a man to eternal death, separation from God, and hell -- is in Jesus Christ. May you receive Him today!
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