Learned Helplessness, Electrified Dogs, and the Mixed Gospel of Twelve-Step Programs

Helping the Helpless

I will never forget the illustration that psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw presented in his book "Life Strategies", one which describes many people who want more for their lives yet find themselves unable to accomplish the life and glory that they seek. This frantic frustration characterizes many believers who are languishing in 12-Step and Celebrate Recovery Programs.

Dr. Phil conducted behavioral experiments on a dog in an small enclosed space divided down the middle by a wall. The floor at the bottom of the space was electrified by two separate currents for each side of the floor.

There is no Escape By the World's Pattern

When the dog was on one side of the wall, the experiments would shock the floor, which would startle the dog and cause him to leap over the wall to the other side. Then the experimenters would shock the second part of the floor, which then caused the floor to run an electric current, which sent the dog leaping onto the first part of the floor.

After repeated currents shocking both sides of the floor, when the dog began to learn that both sides of the floor were shocked, and that all of his jumping and fleeing were to no avail, the dog just gave up, fell down, and endured the electric shocks from the floor without trying to get up and away.

The dog's resignation was termed "learned helplessness," the same phenomenon which seems to manifest itself in Recovery programs, where men and women are slowly turned into believing that they cannot live their lives on their own, which is true, but that in order to make it in the world they must maintain a strict "spiritual" regimen of meetings, inventories, and works to keep their standing, which is patently and offensively false!

Dr. Phil presented this experiment in his book "Life Strategies" in part to elucidate the frustrations which keep people in bondage in their lives. The emotional turmoil that prevents people from moving on in their lives stems in part to their repeated attempts to keep doing certain things a certain way, with no respite or respect to bring them further in life.

Men and women have lived according to a set of principles and ideas which lead them into bondage in certain areas of their lives. Even when the ideas fail to bring a man to a better place in his life, he will continue to do and say certain things based on the old, distorted, or false ideas which has grown up with.

John was clear-cut in telling us how to prosper:

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

"For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth.

'I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." (3 John 2-4)

We prosper in our souls when we walk in the truth, which is Christ and all that He is in us (John 14: 6). We walk in truth to the extent that we know who we are in our minds, which then informs our will and emotions.

As long as a man is convinced that by his obedience he pleases God, he is not walking in truth:

"For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." (John 1: 17)

As we grow in grace and knowledge (the truth) of  the Lord (2 Peter 3: 18), we begin to walk more strongly and prosperously in the truth!

The conflict of learned helplessness is fully displayed in the Book of Romans, where Paul explains the bondage and the failure of one who tries to live by the law:

"For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.

"For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.

"If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.

Do Not Mix

"Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

"Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." (Romans 7: 14-20)

Man from birth is dead in his trespasses (Ephesians 2: 1), in bondage to a sin nature, not just sinful behavior. Peter typified this when he fell before Jesus and declared: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." (Luke 5: 8)

We have a deeper problem than bad behavior. Because of Adam's fall, we are sinners all by nature, not just by  nurture or notion. We need more than rules and regulations, for the law which demands us "to do", also brings out the element in us which refuses "to do". "The sin that dwells" in all of us will frustrate and forfeit our efforts to be obedient to the law. We need to be set free from the bondage of the flesh and walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5: 16), under whose control we fulfill God's law and then some without giving into the sins of the flesh.

The 12-Steps are just one more example of rules and regulations which bring us into bondage, a set of "how-tos" which ignore and war against the Spirit of God within us. The 12 Steps breeds a sin-consciousness, one which dismisses and blasphemes the Finished Work of Christ Jesus.

Men and women who are still trying to be obedient in their own effort will create the very sins they are trying to stifle:

"The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law."  (1 Corinthians 15: 56)

But the Way out is through the Person of Jesus Christ:

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15: 57)

Paul also declared the same victory at the end of Romans 7:

"I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Romans 7: 25)

The frustrations which have driven many believers into despair in 12-Step Recovery programs, and even those who are invested in secular programs, are all indicative of the struggle which the dog in the floor-shock experiment. In trying, or better yet "tiring", to work a program -- taking their inventory, confessing their sins, doing service -- all in order to get God's grace and maintain their sobriety, they end up creating the very problems they are trying to get rid of -- resentments, fears -- and even when they do maintain some level of sobriety, their lives are deflated, depleted, and dejected.

The mixed gospel of law and grace has created a meaningless contradiction which brings believers into bondage trying to earn what God so freely gives (Romans 8: 31-32). The life and that more abundantly which Jesus promises to all of us (John 10: 10) we receive as a gift, we receive in a transformation from dead in sin to alive in righteousness:

"Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

"Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

"For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 8-11)

We are alive in Christ, believers! We identify with Him, having received His righteousness in exchange for His becoming sin for us (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

It is no longer our place in this world to think, say, or do anything in order to be, become, or do on behalf of God. As He is, so are we in this world (1 John 4: 17), and the more that we know who we are in Christ, the more that we will believe on Him and produce with stress or strain the life that He lives in us!

Any attempts through laws, rules, regulations, steps to manifest or maintain a life of grace will produce the frustration and failure which characterized the dog in Dr. Phil's floor-shock experiment.

We are in the world, but we are not of this world:

"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." (John 15: 19)


We need to stop living by the traditions and ordinances of men:

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." (Colossians 2: 8)

and

"Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,

"(Touch not; taste not; handle not;

"Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?

"Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh." (Colossians 2: 20-23)

The laws of God and men cannot help us, they merely leave us helpless. We need more than rules on the outside, we need to Ruler to rule us from the inside. And that was Paul's prayer to the Ephesians:

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

"May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3: 17-19)

When we know this perfect love, we will be more like Him, and He will live more in us (1 John 4:17-18). The Lord is our helper, and therefore we need never fear what man, including ourselves, will do to us!